Motorcycle Trailers

by Jeff Dean

I love to ride motorcycles, not trailer them. So I do not enjoy towing my motorcycles on or in a trailer. But sometimes I have to. Every year I drive 1,800 miles to Tucson in the fall, and return to Madison in the spring. At those times, I need a good enclosed motorcycle trailer to protect the bikes from dirt and potential road salt. My choice was a Wells Cargo MC122-7 trailer, which I had custom made three inches shorter than standard so it would fit through a common seven-foot garage door (see photo below).

This trailer comes specially made for motorcycles, including a ramp rear door and removable motorcycle-wheel chocks. Its interior is 12 feet long and seven feet wide clear. It has a GVWR of 5,900 pounds (2,676 kg) and a payload capacity of 3,800 pounds (1,724 kg). Therefore, it requires two axles and electric brakes. However, Wells Cargo manufactures a wide variety of motorcycle-specific trailers in different sizes.

The photos below show the trailer with two BMW R1100RT motorcycles mounted in it. A great feature of this trailer is that a couple feet in the rear of it are sloped downward. This gives the greatest door clearance of any enclosed trailer of its overall outside height on the market. This was critical to my choice because I wanted a relatively low trailer that allowed motorcycles into it without removing their windshields. R1100RT and K1200LT models fit with their windshields on.

The photo above on the left views the rear of the trailer, with a BMW R68 on the left and an R1150RT on the right, with the ramp-door lowered. In it you can see the sloped rear floor inside the trailer.

The photo above shows how BMW RTs are strapped down in front (R1150RT on the left, R1100RT-P on the right). I have been asked several times where I run the front straps on an R1100RT or R1150RT. I run soft loops around the forks above the cross-brace behind the front part of the front fender. (The same technique works for a K1200LT or R1150GS.) Then I attach the "S" hooks of the ratchet-strap to the soft loop. For the rear straps, I remove the small triangular panels from the BMW and run soft loops through the frame.

In 2007, I felt I had outgrown the 2-bike Wells Cargo and need a 4-bike trailer. Enter the Pace Legacy 20-foot model (photo below), which carries four motorcycles easily.

Below: A long trailer such as the one above needs “bogey wheels” to keep the back of the trailer from scraping when traveling over bumps.