Stirling 5 x 8ft. Galvalume Kit Trailer with Side Rails, Ramps and Plank Floor

I ordered this trailer and I am still awaiting customer service to email me back. This trailer came I put it together (MAJOR) but I'm still missing a wheel stud and had a few ones with damaged threading (minor) I was missing some of the self drilling screws, and the dust cover for the zerk fitting was dented in, most all the planks and the ramps I had to re-bend where the connection points were because that had been folded in.

This is a nice lightweight trailer. I selected this trailer for its appearance and its ability to resist rust. I already have access to larger and heavy duty trailers so this one will fill a void for me. A few things I changed from the original design are as follows: I changed the lights to LED. I bought a new set and installed them instead of the incandescent bulbs that came with the kit. I relocated the license plate bracket so that displays above the rear taillight. The factory position leaves the license plate way too close to the ground. I also switched the location of the light to the top so it shines upward onto the plate rather than down towards the ground. To accomplish this I had to remove the lenses from the bottom of the light housing and relocate it to the top. I filled the hole on the bottom with a piece of black plastic which I cut to fit. Finally, I plan to add a type of quick connect for the top corners of the rear gate. This will enable me to keep the gate removable and keep it from shaking around on the bumpy roads in my area.

Ordered this online about 6 weeks ago, it took about a week to get to me, which was nice. I was actually surprised at the speed they were able to get it here. UPS delivered and it came in separate but heavy boxes. Assemble isn't crazy difficult, but it's not fun, and the instructions are quite awful. There are sufficient instructions but they're poorly organized and the order of operations left me scratching my head from start to finish. Problem 1 is that there's instructions for like 10 trailers in the same packet, but they aren't organized cleanly, so you're left bouncing around half the time just trying to figure out if you're even on the correct instruction. Second issue, the language they use in the instructions is often totally ambiguous, they often refer to relative locations such as left or right or up or down, but there's several steps where the trailer frame is flipped and it's never clear after the first few steps what orientation the trailer is supposed to be in, so up may actually be the bottom of the trailer, or left may be the passenger side because it's upside down, and there's not any continuous reference to what position the trailer should be in at any time and the pictures are nowhere clear enough to make it obvious from the picture, or the picture shows the trailer right side up, but it's supposed to be upside down at the time. Assebled half of it and realized that it was supposed to be flipped over at some point, and then happened again, so eventually just gave up and in the end assembled it deck up for the 90% of it including installing the springs and axle. Not super easy but more efficient than flipping this thing a bunch of times. And I;m an engineer and I've probably assembled as many comparable products to most people on the planet, I wanted to burn the instruction packet after about 30 minutes of trying to decipher it. I could very easily see someone not mechanically minded spending a week trying to put this together after they screw something up following the directions as best as they can. They need a 100% overhaul on their instructions, they need to be only for the trailer purchased and not for their entire product line, and not sure who they used but if they used a professional technical writer and illustrator for any of this, that person needs to find a new job and whomever approved these needs to be removed from that responsibility. I also had one rail duplicated and was missing the correct piece, but their customer service got a new one out to me the same day, delayed my assembly a bit, but it happens and they were fast to correct it, 5 stars for the quick help with that one. To get to my deductions, aside from the packet of firestarter with text printed on the pages... Assembly, it's not fun, the instructions make it more difficult than it needs to be and certain aspects like the self drilling screws, the square hole screws are horrible, they strip out, they break, the cutting edge can't make it through the thin metal, they're bad all around. Why on earth did they use longer machine bolts in some areas then shorter flanged ones for the same structural purpose, there's no logic to this whatsoever and the longer machine bolts block the lower ones from being able to use a ratchet on them, where as shorter ones would have allowed it. It's like they had a surplust that they needed to get rid of, so unnecessarly used them for half the build. Parts, you can't order them. I bought this with the explicit plan of buying the longer tongue, my mistake for assuming a trailer purchased at a store down the street wouldn't come with the ability to purchase parts for it from the same company, but you can't, they won't sell or ship individual parts to the US, I'm assuming tarrif related, but you are 100% SOL and on your own on parts and accessories, and guess what, they're proprietary, at least the structural components are not universal, I checked with dozens of brands and there's no off the shelf tongue or other part that I can use without considerable fabrication to get a longer tongue or a 2in coupler. Second is some of the decisions on the build, they went with a small 1 7/8in hitch, not the end of the world, but a horrible idea since 90%+ of the trailer hitches in the US have a 2in ball. Figured I'd swap that out for a 2in, again nope, they used some proprietary hitch coupler, none of the ones I could find had holes that line up, not even close, so yet again, another take it or fabricate something. So, not sure what to do here, I checked with every other retailer of this brand in the US, and nobody has the tongue extension in the US at all and I can't find a 2in coupler to fit the existing tongue holes. And I do a lot of fab work and similar but trying to get a custom sized tongue that isn't 4 times heavier is basically impossible, and accurately drilling huge holes in a steel bar is actually more difficult that it seems when you don't have a proper machine shop. I also dumped the tires and fenders for something better. I know the GVWR on this is low, but the 12in tires might as well be a rolling trampoline, super bouncy, some larger radial wheels made a huge difference, but required more fabrication and aftermarket fenders which I haven't finished rebuilding the rails after cutting them apart. Or maybe they should include the longer tongue on this from the start since it's a proprietary tongue, I would be shocked if anyone prefers the short one, which is so short, you'll have no problem turning your vehicle into the trailer in a tight turn especially backup up. I haven't jack knifed a utility trailer before but this one will do it without much effort. It's really unsuitable for this length and size of trailer, I'd even do a full 4ft longer if I was able to, just to give it some space away from the vehicle. Final, and on the same ticket, you are really limited in trailer jack options because of the short tongue. And they make a trailer jack for this, guess what, you can't get it in the US, so again, you're stuck trying to use a universal trailer jack and probably can't use a wheeled one without the longer tongue that you can't get. So, you get a decent platform to start from, I don't have immediate concerns on durability provided you get it assembled correctly, but the complete inability to get their proprietary parts for, aside from missing pieces which they somehow have no problem shipping to the US, and shipping them fast, I would skip this brand entirely until they have availability in the US.

They didn’t tell me it was a kit. I had to put it together then they didn’t even give them back all my money.