Very interesting homemade trailer

It looks like it is based on this livestock trailer:
"Roose Manufacturing Company is now in its 36th year of business. During the past years, we have been in the business of building quality agricultural, utility, and industrial trailers for handling, cable, and innerduct reels."
2090 Idaho Drive Pella Iowa 50219 641-628-2529

If you had a good look at the pix you would see that there is a swing down stop on both sides that takes the load off the hydraulics in the travel height position.
Tom

Well it does have the Roose name on it and the seller did mention contacting the manufacturer who dated it and confirmed it as custom made. Like I said, where did the "homemade" come from Iggy?
Tom

I was mistaken, I was wrong to call it homemade.
i

Great. I "looked" but must not have looked well enough. ;-) That should take care of the situation. Thanks for letting us know.
Al

You cause the State to generate and issue a Certificate of Title and a state-assigned VIN when you register a homemade trailer and present receipts/bills of sale for the axle and other major components.
And you cause the State to generate and issue a Certificate of Title when you register a factory built trailer and present a receipt or BOS for the purchase of the trailer, the trailer manufacturer is supposed to have already assigned a VIN number per Federal MVSS - and judging from the maker's decals on the tailgate that's a factory made trailer.
This is all spelled out in interstate compacts on motor vehicle registration and titling, drivers licenses, etc. All states do it roughly the same way so a drivers license, vehicle registration or Certificate Of Title from one state can be automatically accepted in all states. Otherwise the paperwork you'd need to generate when you make a simple move across state lines would be frightening.
Now if that trailer was operated off-road only and never titled and registered for the road, or the seller was in a state that didn't require registration of utility trailers (highly doubtful there are many left, that's revenue they are throwing away) I can see where it could be perfectly legit selling it without a proper title. But the seller would have a BOS from the trailer builder (or sales lot) to him, and more receipts if he wasn't the original buyer... Just a single BOS from the 'seller in possession to you would not be enough IMHO, there is no chain of custody proven.
It's still a big red flag that requires further investigation before you send them a cashiers check. It's trivial to steal a trailer and warm up Photoshop to generate a fake bill of sale.
You pay your money for the trailer in good faith and go to register it, and the VIN number comes up as stolen on the other side of the country. Say bye-bye to your money, and probably the trailer too.
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The same is true of a car. In Ontario there is something known as a "sellers kit" that MUST be provided, theoretically by the seller, to prove the ownership history of a "motor vehicle". In practice, the buyer often pays the $20 to get it - and I would before putting money down on a vehicle. I HAVE bought vehicles without title in the past, before the sellers kit came into existance, and there is a bit of red tape involved.
As for trailers in Ontario, they DO require registration, but the plate is valid for the life of the original owner. HomeMade traler? You just sign a statement that you built it (or had it built) and it is registered.
You buy an old trailer with no title? You fix it up and register it as a homebuilt if the stick-on serial number tag is no longer there. Buy a "trailer kit" from Walmart or wherever? Bolt it together and register it as whatever the label says, or weld it together with some modifications, peel off the sticker and register it as homebuilt. With the used trailer, do your due dilligence and if the deal smells walk away - because if they can prove it is stolen, you are DONE.

I once bought a boat on trailer at an estate sale. The boat was 12 ft, IIRC, in a good shape but it was not anything of real value. I paid $120.
Due to my naivety, I accepted the seller's excuses for not having a title and bought the boat. I do not suspect any foul play, the money involved does not warrant any fraud, the story was that the deceased did not leave a title that the heirs could find.
What I then found, was that I had to get a title for it and the trailer (a vehicle in IL). Otherwise it would not be registered and I could get fined for operating an unregistered boat.
Finding out how to get titles was very painful and in the end, after about a year I realized that it would be an endless nightmare and maybe $200 in fees by the time I am done, if ever.
I ended up selling it to someone else, with full explanation for not having a title, for just $300. (considering that I also bought oars it was not much of a profit)
i

Not true for utility trailer classification in various states including Minnesota. We get a permanent registration, no license plate, and no title for the smaller trailers. Larger ones go by the usual interstate rules.
Bruce L. Bergman wrote: