Flashing Amber Beacons for Rear of Trailer

I took out my inside of my 3 tail lights and installed my strobes. I wired them to the hot wire for the tail lights and installed a switch to turn them on and off.

Taillights on/Switch on Strobes on. Switch off Strobes Off

 

The trailers I used to pull had the lights in them from the factory. The ones I pull now our shop installed an extra receptacle at the back for us to plug our light into. Should be that hard to install on your trailer. All you need is lights, someplace to mount them and electricity.

 

What happened to the Steel Dynamics gig?

 

Keep in mind there are states that require the lights at the rear of the trailer to be a 360 degree and wont accept the beacons built into the back of the trailer. For that reason, I carry a magnetic mount beacon (for those big loads that extend past the rear of the trailer), a beacon without any mount but has the little tabs so I can either nail it or screw it to the wood on the rear deck, and our trailers have the beacons in the back from the factory. I've been asked twice about 360 degree lights on the back of the trailer, once was in Florida and the other was in Tennessee. I believe in Illinois, I had a scalemaster tell me that if the light on the trailer wasnt 360degree, I would have to have a light on the top of the cab.

 

What I did to avoid cutting any wires is I made a cigarette lighter pigtail harness that feeds off my trailers 2pin license plate light. It looks like a Y shaped harness with 3 ends.
One end of my harness gets plugged into trailer light hot feed, the other ends have a female lighter outlet and the other one I plug back into the plate light. Then I stuff the entire harness inside the rear trailer cavity leaving only the lead with the lighter socket exposed, then I push the light back into the grommet which wedges the lighter feed in place, then its just a matter of plugging in a strobe up top. When im done with the load everything comes back apart, I unplug the harness, rehook light and everything is back to factory with no splices.
I had a big 6" strobe and it did cause a slight flicker in the marker lights when it pulsed so next trip I went with a 4" that causes no flickering- not to mention its less obnoxious to peeps/escort behind me.

 

Yes Illinois^ they say the light must be visible from the rear so if you have a load obstructing the view of the cab lights there has to be on the rear.
Georgia turn them off unless you have a permit to have them on
MI- your provision sheets must specifically say to run them, if it mentions nothing about having beacons on then dont because they will pull you over to ask why theyre on and will want to see permits & provisions.