Until this spring I owned two M105 trailers and a M35A2 (deuce and a half truck). I used the 105 trailers for hauling firewood. What I would do is fill one up, tow it home and park it under a big canopy I built right in front of my boiler. This kept water off of my wood, the wood mess off of the ground, and about 1.5 cords of wood within a couple feet of the loading door of my boiler. Also, I didn't have to lift wood up into the boiler either, just carry it from waist height and toss it in. When one trailer got empty, I put the other one in it's place and then went and filled up the empty one. They work great for hauling firewood...if you have the truck to pull them.
They are heavy. They're over 2,700 lbs empty and almost 4 tons loaded. The pintle height is much higher than almost anything commercial and even on a 3/4 ton truck the tallest pintle plate available is still too short to raise the pintle hook high enough to level the trailer. When you get to that kind of height anyways, the way it's loaded will easily bend/roll the hitch of your truck even if it's a class V and it will be very unstable in the side to side as well. Keep in mind that these trailers are also quite top heavy loaded with firewood. They have a relatively narrow track to them on tall narrow tires. The beds start almost 3' off of the ground and can be loaded 4' high.
I have a 3/4 ton diesel Suburban. I would haul these trailers empty back to my wood pile at my parent's house to fill them up and then bring them home with my deuce. I built a special bumper and hitch combo with a tall pintle plate on it so I could have the proper height for pulling these trailers level. 2,700 lbs isn't much to pull with that truck without brakes on it and I simply used a set of magnetic trailer lights when I towed it like that since the stock lighting is 24v for use on military vehicles and it's a special plug anyways. One time I got in a pinch where my deuce was OOS and I had to use my Suburban to haul the wood home. I kept my speed under 40 mph the entire way and it was still very scary. The brakes on the Suburban did not like to stop that kind of weight and the trailer kept trying to push the rear end when I turned.
They're great trailers but honestly unsafe to haul firewood in unless you're going to use a medium duty truck or larger to tow it. If you must have one, good luck finding lower profile tires to fit those rims. They're 20" tubed rims. The lug pattern on the rims is also special since they're lug centric 6 lug rims where the only application of that pattern I've ever heard of outside of deuces and military trailers was on early 70's Ford MDT's. The only best option for towing one of these guys with a pickup truck is to replace the entire axle with something that sits lower to the ground and has electric brakes.
Look at the M101 trailers if you want something pickup truck sized. They don't dump despite what the ads you'll see will say they do. You can use the trailer's parking brakes and folding capability to sort of make it dump, but it's easy to bend the frame of the trailer doing that and you usually wind up smashing the tail lights too.
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Topic: M105 Military Trailer for firewood (Read 7080 times)