Replace or refloor?

Dry vans are a dime a dozen these days. Cheaper to replace with new or less used trailer than repairing it. The labor cost alone would be enough to get you 2 used 53's from a dealership

 

SHC is correct- the labor costs will be prohibitive given the used dry-van market being dirt cheap. If you have, or can source the materials on the cheap, and can save money by fixing it yourself, that might be OK. If it were me, I'd consider other variables, too, such as condition of the tires / brakes, any extras like 200 chicken lights, Alum wheels? If you've taken good care of it, and have extras that you'd otherwise lose if you replaced the trailer, maybe consider patching or replacing the floor yourself.

Take some pictures and post them here so we can see the floor damage. That'd be interesting and might help you get more feedback on your thread.

Good luck with your decision.

 

I replaced the floor in 2 1995 Great Dane 53 footers with excellent results. Cost about $1900 each, ~$1600 for the wood (1" ship-lap Apitong) and ~$300 for the torxhead self tapping fasteners w/ a new Tyvek liner for both. If I had it to do over, I would have used a heaver liner. Tyvek isn't stout enough.

That aside, I sold both trailers 2 years ago for $8000, which (IMO) is about twice what I would have gotten if I hadn't replaced the floors.

 

Nice

 

I'm running a mix of older and newer vans, some as old as 1996, some as new as 2007. If you trade that 1999 in for a brand new one you'll be 17-20000 bucks for a new one. If you buy another used one how long will it be till you're at the same place you are now? I don't know what shape your floor is in, but it's hard to believe ALL of it would need replacing. If you have a skilsaw, sledghammer, drill, you can pull out the bad spots and replace them with new wood. Use torx head screws, phillips head will strip the head b4 you get them driven all the way down. Your local small trailer shop will have supplies and pointers if you ask in a nice way. Most likely they'll be happy to let you have at it, since busting out wood floors isn't too much fun. To get it out, what I do is draw out the areas with a magic marker, than take saw and cut from top.Note that you don't want to go all the way through the wood,since every 12-16" you will go over a crossmember. You'll know if you're too deep Than take the hammer and pretend you're mad at the old lady and it will make the job much quicker !!!!! Yes just bust the flooring down. You'll have screws and residual wood at the cross members, but the hammer will clean that off too. Making the new part fit into the cutout one can be tricky, but if the first one don't work,well there's alway more wood. Than take a 11/32 drill bit and drill through the wood and crossmember, and you're ready to drive the screws. Around the edges of the new piece I like to squeeze some Vanguard caulk to seal it, plus after I'm done screwing it down I'll fill it in with caulk. After about 2-3 loads it'll look like it's been there for years. Any questions you might have I'll happily answer. Just send me a PM

 

Sounds like you need to come visit me awhile, I'll keep you busy LOL

Myself I like to use 1 3/8 or 1 1/2 thick.

 

We recently started hauling for a new company. The loader operators make sport out of running forks into my floors. It sucks. But bottom line, this is where the business is and where I gotta work and so I need to get up to speed really quick on repairing trailer floors before these jerks put me out of trailers. Your directions were helpful. What kind, and where do you get the wood to use in repairing a hole in the floor?