Answering the Tough Questions: Slant Load or Straight Load?
There are a lot of tough choices to make when you are looking to buy a horse trailer to transport your prize animals around in. One of the most frequently asked questions about purchasing a horse trailer is whether to go with a slant load or a straight load trailer. There are a number of different factors that you can look at to help you decide which of these trailers is the right type for you.
The most important thing to keep in mind when buying a horse trailer is the safety of your horses. Each individual horse has its own needs. Some horses need to be in trailers where there is a lot of light. The most important thing is that regardless of whether or not you pick a slant load or a straight load; make sure the trailer is safe enough for your animals to ride in and for you to haul.
Image credit: Bēn
Before you can make a judgment call about which of these trailers works best for you, you should know the good and the bad about both slant load and straight load horse trailers.
One of the perks of using straight load trailers is the fact that they have escape doors at the front of the trailer. These escape doors make it a lot easier for you to get out of the horse trailer after loading up your horses. Straight load trailers usually feature some type of ramp at the back to help you load and unload your horses, which is very helpful and convenient. As an added safety bonus, many of these types of trailers have escape doors big enough for the horses to exit out of as well, in case of emergency situations.
Straight load trailers are ideal to use for the bigger breed of horses. The reason these are so perfect for larger horses is because the stalls were designed to be very spacious and accommodating.
One of the only flaws to using straight load trailers is if you need to haul two or more horses, the trailers tend to be very big and very heavy. This will put a lot of stress and strain on the vehicle you are using to haul your horse trailer with. Keep this in mind if you plan on hauling a lot of horses.
There are also a lot of perks to owning and using a slant load trailer. These are especially great to use if you plan on hauling more than two horses at a time. The reason these trailers are called slant load trailers is because of the way the stalls are actually slanted from the right to the left. This allows you to haul more horses without having to add any additional height or width to the trailer.
Many horses actually ride in a slanted position to help keep their balance, so using a slanted stall really helps them to ride comfortably. This tends to depend on the individual horse, as some horses can’t stand in a slanted position long without causing some strain.
One of the drawbacks to using slant load trailers is the process of unloading the trailer. It can be nearly impossible to unload the last horse without unloading the other ones in front of it. This can cause major problems if an emergency should arise and you need to evacuate the trailer quickly.
While each of these two types of trailers have their pros and cons, it’s important to remember that you need to buy a trailer that suits and fits your horse’s needs. Take into consideration how many animals you’ll be hauling as well, as this can be a big deciding factor in which type of trailer to use.