Maintaining Your Livestock Trailer Brakes

When towing your livestock in a trailer, road safety is crucial. You’ve got a heavy load of live animals behind you, so you want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to keep your livestock safe, as well as protecting yourself and the drivers around you from harm.

To that end, the brakes on your livestock trailer need to be kept in peak condition so that they engage as soon as you need to come to a stop. Not sure how to maintain them? Double B Trailer Sales, with locations in Centerville to the north and Hurricane to the south, is your Utah livestock and horse trailer dealer. Keep your brakes in good shape with the following maintenance tips.

How Trailer Brakes Function

Before you begin any livestock trailer brake maintenance, you should know how your trailer’s brakes operate. There are two primary kinds: electric and surge brakes.

Electric brakes make use of an electrical connection between your towing vehicle brakes and the trailer brakes. When you engage your towing vehicle’s brakes, this tells your trailer brakes that they need to engage at the same instant to bring your towing setup to a complete stop.

Surge brakes are activated by the forward motion of your trailer as you slow down your towing vehicle. The system will sense any motion and activate the brakes to prevent your trailer from careening into your towing vehicle.

Perform Regular Inspections

It’s vital that you take the time to thoroughly inspect every part of your brake system to look for signs of damage or malfunction so that your livestock trailer doesn’t break down while you’re going 55 miles an hour down the highway with several animals in tow. Check over the drums, shoes and shoe-return springs as well as the hardware. 

You’ll want to be very watchful for signs of rust and corrosion, and you don’t want any parts to grind together. If your shoes or drums seem thin or worn, make sure you get them replaced before you use your horse trailer again. If you notice your brakes wearing at an uneven rate, then this may mean that your hitch is malfunctioning or that you’re not loading your trailer correctly. Either way, if you have issues that you can’t address yourself, don’t hesitate to contact the service department here at Double B Trailer Sales so that we can help you out.

Inspect your horse trailer brakes at least once per year or every 12,000 miles if you drive a lot. Performing regular inspections is especially necessary when you don’t drive your trailer very often, since it will have sat around your driveway or garage gathering dust. To help prevent the parts of your livestock trailer from rusting, try to use your trailer every few months or so.

Understand The Type of Brakes You Have

There are a few different types of brakes for trailers, as we noted above, and you’ll want to make sure you’re performing the right inspections for the type that you have. With electric brakes, you’ll need to inspect the connections and all of the wiring for fraying. When you have surge brakes, you can push the trailer to check whether they activate correctly. If not, there may be a problem with the brake fluid levels or with the cylinders.

Searching for horse trailers for sale near Salt Lake City? Visit one of our dealerships in Centerville or Hurricane today to take a look at our full stock of horse and livestock trailers for sale. Double B Trailer Sales proudly serves the cities of Ogden and St. George, Utah.