J and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary by taking a trip to a local trailer dealership and starting the paperwork on our tiny home trailer.

Sure, dinner out at a fancy restaurant would have been nice, but J and I aren’t that type of couple. For our first anniversary, we drove to Moab, Utah to go off-roading (I was 9 weeks pregnant, no less!). Our second anniversary was spent at the beach. There may be nothing fancy about sitting at a dealership for 2 hours, but to me that signified the start of a new adventure for our little family.

We decided to buy a new, custom built tiny home trailer because we could customize it to suit our needs and we had no qualms that it would be heavy duty enough to support a 10,000 lb tiny house. There is without a doubt that you can buy one used, which we certainly looked at, but we felt it was best for us to buy a brand new trailer that we knew was made specifically for supporting tiny homes.

Imagine it with no rails, no wood and 6 feet longer and that’s our trailer! 

Our trailer is 24′ long and 99″ wide. When building tiny homes, you need to factor in that the materials (i.e. siding/shutters) add width to your house. If you buy the maximum width trailer, which is 102″, you are already at your max width and anything added to it will make your tiny home too wide and therefore it becomes an oversize load and you’d need a special permit to haul it.

It is also crucial to note the weight rating on your axles. Our trailer is rated for 14,000 lbs. Our tiny home will be built to as close to 10,000 lbs as possible, but having it rated at 14,000 lbs means that we know the trailer won’t be stressed. The trailer is our tiny homes foundation and a strong foundation means a longer lasting home.

Another detail we flip-flopped on was whether to get a drop down deck (which would give us an extra 4 inches, crucial in such a small space) or keep the standard 26″ deck. While that 4 inches was rather enticing, we went with the standard 26″, only because while the tiny house was being hauled, steep hills and bumps would be a hindrance. No one wants to have a 10,000 lb tiny house teeter-totter!

#tinyhouse #tinyhousetrailer