Nick's Huge, House-Flippin' HVAC Tool Trailer

Permanent Mobile Garage in an Enclosed Trailer

Nick and his wife have been house flipping for about five years. They usually live in their current project for some period of time, so the tool trailer can come on site, get the job done, and then be moved to the next house with minimal work.

Many contractors still heavily use their home as a main base for their business, but his tool trailer is the main base!

For Nick, this trailer is where the tools live and it's truly a mobile workshop.

Beefy Trailer Mods

The trailer is a 2017 Continental Cargo Elite enclosed trailer with a flat nose. He ordered it with an arched roof to add headroom and help with snow removal during the winter. The inside ceiling height is 7'6".

Typical trailer wall studs and floor joists are on 24" centers, but he wanted more strength and support, and so ordered the trailer to have these members on 16" centers.

One thing he'd change in the future: the long tongue. He ordered the trailer with 3 feet added to the tongue. This adds significant length to the trailer, and Nick's initial idea was that he'd mount a generator in the extra space. Instead, he has a couple of batteries mounted and says that he'd go with a shorter tongue next time.

A longer tongue can make backing into tight areas easier with the wide trailer body, but you're generally better off with a shorter setup and learning where your trailer's body is.

Steel or Aluminum?

Nick opted for a steel trailer instead of aluminum. Weight, rust, and budget are usually the biggest factors in deciding to go with aluminum or steel.

With his previous steel trailer he says he never had a problem with rust and that his diesel truck is comfortable pulling the tool trailer's weight. The trailer is near its GVWR at 9400 lbs.

The base trailer was expensive at $13,000, so Nick saved lots of cash by sticking with steel.

Heavy Duty Barn Doors

Nick favors barn doors over ramps because his supply house can forklift materials right into the back of the trailer. These are things like furnaces and heat pumps, and he can unload them easily onto a hand truck.

But Nick doesn't use just any barn doors:

He had heavy duty doors built.

On his previous trailer, the doors were 2-hinge plywood that became fragile after a lot of water exposure.

The doors on this trailer are aluminum-framed with inside and outside aluminum skins. Each door has four hinges, so sag and gaps shouldn't ever be a problem. To make them even more indestructible, he had them Line-Xed on the inside to protect them from rain.

All that said, Nick says he normally works with only the side cargo door open 90% of the time. The rear doors are more for transporting large items and there is plenty of wide cargo area to move large HVAC units.

Ron Paulk, but Not

Ron Paulk trailer builds usually feature lots and lots of plywood: plywood shelves, plywood drawers, plywood supports. But not everyone feels skilled at crafting with plywood. Says Nick:

I'm not a cabinet builder, so I was looking for an alternative way to do the drawers, as opposed to building all the cabinets.

So, instead of time consuming plywood shelf building, Nick found several Craftsman mechanic tool boxes on sale and installed them throughout the trailer.

Quick Open, Quick Close

Many mechanic-style tool boxes use a key-lock system to keep the drawers closed, but these tool boxes have hinge-lock drawers. A lift-and-pull on the end of the drawer opens the drawer; this is similar to how many plywood drawer builders make their drawers operate. He never needs to mess with bars, locks, keys, or other mechanisms to keep his drawers closed on the road.

Lots of Cubbies

There are still lots of Paulk-style cubbies throughout the trailer. Nick likes keeping tools outside their cases for accessibility. He also built slots for sheet goods, an extension ladder, and a 8-foot ladder along one wall of the trailer.

There are long, square cubbies for storing materials along the passenger side of the trailer, including one 10-footer and two 5-footers.

Nick keeps some of his heavier HVAC equipment and tanks at the side cargo door. These include typical refrigerant tanks on a plywood rack, plus a nitrogen and CO2 tank standing in a vertical cubby.

How to Deal With Weather Extremes

When Nick built this trailer, he was thinking about three kinds of weather:

• Hot
• Cold
• Wet

When he ordered the trailer, he had it fully insulated. This is a good first step in keeping your tool trailer or work van cooler in the sun and warmer in the cold.

But Nick went a step further and also installed a heat pump on the roof that provides both heat and air conditioning.

A heated trailer can be particularly good for helping batteries charge and keeping liquid materials from freezing. Nick doesn't always run the heat, so he packed cold-sensitive materials (like caulk) in bins so that he could pull them out when necessary.

To protect the trailer from wet, Nick chose to use screwless exterior panel mounting. He also had the floor and first 5" of the walls Line-Xed, plus he Line-Xed the rear cargo doors.

30 Amp Trailer Service

Nick uses a mix of 12V and 120V through his trailer. Dual 12 volt batteries are located on the trailer tongue in battery boxes and provide power for the LED strip lights. They're charged with a battery charger when the trailer is connected to the grid.

Grid power comes in through a shore power outlet that lets him plug in the trailer anywhere. He runs it into a breaker panel with three 20 amp breakers that power:

• AC and heat
• Air compressor and exterior electrical via extension cord
• Interior electrical along the work bench

The install is clean with components easily accessible at the wall near the front of the trailer. At the opposite end of the trailer is a battery charging station with six battery chargers. Charged batteries are placed in a specific bin to separate them from the empties.

He doesn't use an inverter to get 120V in the trailer like some tool trailer builders do, so his 120V and 12V systems are separate, meaning that the battery chargers don't run without 120V.

The Tiny Door

Nick can run a reeled extension cord and a reeled air hose out of the front of the trailer by opening a small door. Both reels are under the workbench in the air compressor cubby.

This is a simple setup, except that he needed to build a door for this to work. We've also seen conduit run along the inner wall of the trailer and extension cord and air hose run through a roller fairlead in the floor.

16 Feet of Workbench

The 16' long steel workbench is pretty unique. Few other contractors have such a long work bench, and this one provides plenty of length for any project Nick creates. He mounted a bench vise and a drill press to either end.