Top Gun's 6x12 HVAC Install Trailer (with Everything)

An HVAC Trailer's Layout

Organization is important to Jon, Top Gun's owner, and you can also see this in his Ford Transit HVAC van organization.

As an installation trailer, Jon's idea was to keep as much inventory on the trailer as possible to minimize runs to the supply house. Parts runs can cost you significant amounts of time and money, especially if your inventory isn't dialed in or you're in a "supply house desert".

Jon says:

The goal is really just to have basically everything that we could ever possibly need on an install.

The basic layout of the trailer is shelves for tools and inventory on the driver side and space for units on the passenger side. Since they are invested in the Milwaukee Packout system, the shelves are designed to fit several Milwaukee Packouts.

Right now, the shelves hold bins of parts that are easy to see and easy to grab. Visibility makes it simple to know when you're low on stock and easy grabbing speeds up your work.

The trailer came with 1/4" plywood walls. This is pretty thin for mounting shelves, so they stripped the plywood on the driver side and replaced it with 3/4" to make it stronger. If you're ordering a custom trailer, you can request thicker plywood walls to make mounting shelves easier.

Be aware of the weight you add with thicker plywood. For an HVAC trailer, this will probably be negligible, but for a full plywood shelf buildout, the weight adds up very quickly.

Trailer Floor Storage!

Unlike most tool trailers, this one has a false floor with storage! The floor is raised about 3" on the HVAC equipment side, leaving space for long materials that are around 2" tall. This space is used for storing up to 10' lengths of Unistrut or PVC.

The front of the storage space is ramped so that a dolly can easily travel over the edge carrying HVAC units.

Organizing Other Stuff

The tank racks in the trailer are made of plywood and hold refrigerant, nitrogen, oxygen, and acetylene. The tanks are located just forward of the inventory/tool shelves.

A single large diameter PVC pipe mounted in the center of the ceiling holds about 9 sticks of PVC, which Jon says gets the installers through any typical job.

There are 2 ladders on the trailer. One is an 8-foot ladder that is stored along the driver side behind the shelves in a "ladder garage". This keeps the ladder well out of the way. The other ladder is mounted on the passenger side wall on Rubbermaid FastTrack with hooks. To keep it from banging, they also added a bungie cord.

What Would He Do Different?

The trailer has a ramp. Ramp doors have pros and cons, and Jon says in the next trailer, they'll go with barn doors.

For HVAC work, the real feature of barn doors is that you can have HVAC units forklifted directly into the back of the trailer - not possible with a ramp. This can save you a lot of time and some frustration from struggling up a ramp with your hand truck. Save the struggle for the job site!

You can still pull HVAC units out onto a hand truck with barn doors. If you really needed it, you could also build a ramp to help with unloading at the job site.

Ramps also have gaps where the ramp meets the trailer floor and the ground. Make these gaps disappear with a ramp gap filler and a ramp toe made with some piano hinge and plywood.

Jon says the next trailer will be at least 7'x14' with a double axle. He says they've fit two complete systems into the trailer, but it's a tight fit in a 6-footer.