Daves Trailer Sales and Venture Trailers WARNING!

[Captain TJ]

If you're looking to buy a new trailer for your boat beware of Dave's Trailer Sales in Glen Burnie, MD. They sold the previous owner of my boat an aluminum triple axle trailer specifically for my 282 Sailfish just over 2 years ago. I bought the boat and trailer last August and towed it back to the Pacific NW. First thing is thank god it didn't fail during that trip. Last year the trailer towed the boat to the coast and back once. This year it was going to make 2 trips, one North and the last one South.

Last weekend we were bring the boat home from the coast for the winter and the tongue of the trailer gave up completely. We were extremely lucky that I had to stop to make a business call before driving out of reception and after the call I gave everything a quick once over. That's when I noticed what the picture show. At this point we realized we had to find a solution to this issue right away and tow truck was going to have a near impossible connection due to the length of the tongue to get back to solid trailer. We found a shop able to repair this 8.1 miles away and trailered it there extremely slowly with a chase car watching. I removed the spare before taking off to make sure it didn't drag the ground and there was about 8" of clearance to the ground at the bend. By the time we arrived there was only about 3" of clearance. We are lucky to have caught this before the boat just went rogue and killed someone on the road.

Jump ahead a week we have a price for the repair / redesign to ensure the trailer is built strong enough to hold the load it was originally designed for. It's $3700 which granted does include adding bearing buddies. That is to upgrade the tongue to a much stronger galvanized tube and to add a truss forward to the bow stand so all the load isn't transmitted into that single pinpointed location.

I reached out to Dave's Trailer sales to see what anyone would be willing to help with and got a nice load of excuses. At first I was told that this trailer wasn't sold for my boat and it was just the wrong application. Then I reminded them that the prior owner Andy had bought this trailer for this boat specifically when he bought the boat. Then with skipping even a second he responded that "owe yeah, but he didn't have the trailer adjusted for the boat so it doesn't matter". Seems a little odd that you act like he bought it for a different boat and then in the same breath tell me he signed a waiver that you have saying that he accepts all liability because it was never adjusted. Vantage trailers only warranty's for one year and only to the original owner. The only thing I was offered was $100 off the repair cost if I bring it in to Daves Trailer Sales in MD. I understand these guys may be cheap but be prepared to get what you pay for. Cheap equipment and yes I mean "CHEAP not inexpensive". Bad service and a distinct possibility of killing people on the road due to faulty design.

I hope and pray nobody else has these kinds of problems but I'm afraid it will come up so if you already have a Vantage aluminum trailer keep an eye on the tongue.

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• Captain TJ
• Nov 15, 2021

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• Captain TJ
• Nov 15, 2021
• 1

 

[Captain TJ]

 

[glacierbaze]

Did you contact Venture? They built it, not Daves. It would be interesting to know the actual tongue weight of that rig.
Granted, the tongue should not have bent, but you are miscalculating the loading points. The bow stop is not designed as a load bearing structure. The load should be on the forward cross member, and the boat slides against, not on top of, the bow stop.

 

[Captain TJ]

Did you contact Venture? They built it, not Daves. It would be interesting to know the actual tongue weight of that rig.
Granted, the tongue should not have bent, but you are miscalculating the loading points. The bow stop is not designed as a load bearing structure. The load should be on the forward cross member, and the boat slides against, not on top of, the bow stop.

It's a Vantage Trailer, I misted Venture and have changed it 3 times now. Hopefully it sticks this time. I haven't been in contact with them yet as I was hoping the dealer would give me contact info for them. The weight of the boat doesn't ride on the bow stand but when you hit bumps on the road it does rub against it which gives momentary forward push against it especially if you're decelerating. This is where the problem lies. I am going to measure the tongue weight and adjust it if necessary but I can tell you it doesn't squat my truck any more than my empty dump trailer does.

 

[DennisG01]

I'm not positive on this, but I thought Vantage was a subsidiary of Venture (who's known to be a "price point" trailer).

Without knowing the specs of the trailer vs the specs of the boat we don't know if the trailer is the proper trailer to start with. Maybe the previous owner bought a skimpy trailer to save some money? Next, would be if the previous owner did, in fact, take on the adjustment of the trailer himself, it seems he never did it correctly.

As noted, the amount of tongue weight could very well be the issue - even though it may not be a high quality trailer, improper adjustment and too much TW could be the cause... which, it sounds like, has nothing to do with the dealership... but everything to do with the owners of the trailer.

Yeah, this totally stinks that you have to deal with this, but if the trailer was never adjusted properly - that's the issue.

Another possibility is repeated "hard" loading. I bump my boat into the bow roller when I load - but I "gently" bump it. Coming in too hot over and over could cause this issue, too.

Can you share the specs and a full side shot of the whole trailer/boat?

And... $3,700 for a piece of galvanized tube and a short truss bolted on? Yikes.

 

[family affair]

While an unfortunate situation, the trailer has likely performed as intended unless the tongue tube was the wrong thickness and overlooked in manufacturing.
The trailer is likely engineered to have an inexpensive, easily identifiable, and ductile failure for the owner to identify before something catastrophic happens. In this case the tongue weight is far too high and/or the trailer is terribly overloaded.
Like Dennis mentioned, the $3700 to fix a tongue tube is the worst offense in this whole story.

 

[family affair]

Another observation. Was your ball mount at that height when it broke? If so, that could be a contributor if the trailer has torsion axles. Unlike leaf spring axles that typically are equiped with spring equalizers to handle uneven loading or trailer that isn't level, torsion axle trailers need to be almost perfectly level to distribute the load to all axles.
Also, if someone "back yard" engineered a "fix", they might have unknowingly shifted the failure mode to something that will be a lot uglier than a bent tube when it fails.

 

[PNW_Drifter]

Dang TJ, saw your same post over on the Grady Owners Facebook group. They are really roasting you.

 

[Mustang65fbk]

Another observation. Was your ball mount at that height when it broke? If so, that could be a contributor if the trailer has torsion axles.

I agree completely. I wasn't there of course, but imo it looks like the trailer ball was much higher than it should've been. If the front of the trailer was that high and had all of the weight up front, that very likely could be what caused the issue. It should be much more level than that when trailering.

To the OP, it's frustrating to hear that you're getting the "run-around" from the trailer shop... that being said, if they only give a one year warranty on the trailer and only give it to the original purchaser, I'm not sure how that is the fault of Dave's Trailer. Nor do I see where it's their fault to begin with as it's a Vantage/Venture brand trailer. Perhaps a phone call to them would be better than simply the dealer you purchased it from? Lastly, if it's truly a Venture brand trailer, which it kind of looks to be... per their website it says the warranty period is for 2 years but only extends to the original purchaser and isn't transferable. So, since you bought the trailer used from the previous owner, the warranty is void, and it's over the 2 year period anyway. So... either way, it's not really Dave's Trailers fault, nor is it even really Venture's fault/responsibility at this point.

 

[PNW_Drifter]

I could replace the tongue of that trailer in less than 2 hours with hand tools. Order the part and start wrenching. You've spent more time trying to flame the poor dealer on multiple sites than it would take to fix it. Why didn't you lower your drop hitch? Had it cranked way up!


Look at this: https://www.facebook.com/groups/gra...38645&ref=notif&notif_t=group_comment_mention

 

[glacierbaze]

I don't think that is a tow vehicle, with the high hitch. I don't want to insult someone's truck, but that looks like the front and back of a fork lift to me.

 

[Mustang65fbk]

I could replace the tongue of that trailer in less than 2 hours with hand tools. Order the part and start wrenching. You've spent more time trying to flame the poor dealer on multiple sites than it would take to fix it. Why didn't you lower your drop hitch? Had it cranked way up!

Look at this: https://www.facebook.com/groups/gra...38645&ref=notif&notif_t=group_comment_mention

^^^ Exactly! I try to spend as little time on the Book of Faces as possible but now I'm curious haha.

 

[Mustang65fbk]

I don't think that is a tow vehicle, with the high hitch. I don't want to insult someone's truck, but that looks like the front and back of a fork lift to me.

I'd be willing to bet some serious coin that it's a motorhome, one with the trailer ball being wwwwaaaaayyyyy too high....

 

[PNW_Drifter]

I don't think that is a tow vehicle, with the high hitch. I don't want to insult someone's truck, but that looks like the front and back of a fork lift to me.

It's a huge pusher diesel RV.

 

[glacierbaze]

That makes sense, didn't think of an RV when I saw all that grill in the back. Not in my toy box.

 

[HTHM]

I'd be willing to bet some serious coin that it's a motorhome, one with the trailer ball being wwwwaaaaayyyyy too high....

He probably lifted it up as a response to the tongue failing. That is an adjustable ball height receiver.

 

[family affair]

He probably lifted it up as a response to the tongue failing. That is an adjustable ball height receiver.

I wondered the same.
From the limited view of the photo, it is very likely the tongue weight is way too high. Typically the winch post is behind the point that the I-beams come together, not in front.
From my experience most trailers are leaving the factory with axles placed for stern heavy CC's and DC's, not our "old fashioned" bow heavy WA's. Mine was so far off from the factory that I had to move one of the axles in front of a cross member to get the load to balance - and it is still a little to tongue heavy.

 

[Mustang65fbk]

He probably lifted it up as a response to the tongue failing. That is an adjustable ball height receiver.

I see that it's very clearly an adjustable height receiver, that was never in question. But yeah, I'm not buying that he lifted it up after the incident based off the attitude of the OP and him trying to shift the blame towards just about anyone else besides himself. From hearing the vague description of the event to the bit about the previous owner not paying to have the trailer properly fitted first before then signing something to accept the blame for anything if it went wrong. I think the OP didn't do his due diligence to inspect the trailer before purchasing and/or just assumed that everything would be fine. Especially since it sounds like he knew that the previous owner signed something to accept all blame if there was an issue with the trailer. If I heard that from the previous owner I'd be very skeptical and have the entire trailer looked over.

Lastly, if I walked back and saw that mess on the front of the trailer and how much it was already bent, I sure as hell wouldn't trust the tongue jack to support the weight and try to raise the height of the receiver up even more. He's lucky there wasn't more damage done, especially any damage to the boat or to any other vehicles/persons or anyone else getting into an accident because of him. It's your trailer and your responsibility to make sure it's safe to be on the road and if it isn't, that's your responsibility. Not the previous owner and sure as hell not the manufacturer's or trailer company's fault. Especially when the previous owner bought what is likely the wrong sized trailer, combined with not paying the extra money to have it properly fitted, signing a form accepting any fault for any issues resulting from that as well as being out of the original warranty period and not even being the original purchaser of the trailer, as the warranty is non-transferable. At the end of the day, you're buying a used boat on a used trailer from what sounds like a private party. If you had concerns, you should've had a surveyor come out to look over the boat and trailer or at least taken it to a shop to have the trailer looked over with a fine tooth comb. Doing multiple long distance cross country road trips with success and now having an issue also doesn't help the OP's argument for not being at fault either.

 

[Mustang65fbk]

Dang TJ, saw your same post over on the Grady Owners Facebook group. They are really roasting you.

I joined the group just to read the comments as it's a private group. But yes, I agree with what they're saying about the incident as well.

 

[Jrspawn]

Man you are bashing this company everywhere and it all boils down to operator error! It’s not their fault you you have the hitch way too high, a ridiculous amount of tongue weight, the boat not loaded correctly, and truth be told too small of a trailer. You bought the thing years ago second hand, man up and take some responsibility.