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Do you have a trailer for your Bennington ?

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Bugsbunnyboater

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Do you have a trailer for your boat.  I noticed a lot of the people in wet slips with pontoon boats seem to not have trailers. In my case my used one came without a trailer which help


Keep the cost way down.  I have been lucky we have 2 guys at the club with trailers in the storage field. One is going to let me haul out my Benny and install my Baystar this weekend. 
 
Nope,my Benny resides behind our 2nd home in Ocean City Md. I Bought the boat to run around the bays near by and never intended to haul it around. But then again, a trailer is only a Criags List away.
 
Nope. Pay our dealer to pull in fall and drop in spring. Figure with cost of trailer and inspection, storage for it, etc..... We are better off. We would have to pay a minimum $360/yr just to store it locally. Costs less than that for dealer to drop/pull.


Oh, and cost of vehicle to tow it ...  ;)
 
Mine has the trailer, but then I'm not like these rich folks on here. I have to trailer mine a half a block to our community's ramp. :D


We also pull ours to various lakes/rivers. Just pulled it up to Douglas Lake in TN. In a couple of weeks, we're pulling it up to Lake Quachita in AR.
 
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Yes, we run around to various lakes in central OH and the annual trip or two a little farther away.  Also, we camp and sometimes take the benny with us, quite a few OH parks are around lakes.
 
Are you sure you want to put in Bay Star instead of Sea Star?  Remember, it goes with the boat not the motor. In other words, you might want a bigger motor someday, and may kick yourself for not going with the bigger cylinder.
 
kaydano said:
Are you sure you want to put in Bay Star instead of Sea Star?  Remember, it goes with the boat not the motor. In other words, you might want a bigger motor someday, and may kick yourself for not going with the bigger cylinder.
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We don't know what boat they have. I don't have a trailer either.
 
I have a trailer but honestly, I haul more non boat stuff with it as the boat sits on a lift all year. In the past few months I have used it to haul deck lumber, drywall and a carousel (don't ask). A couple years ago I used it to haul a hot tub too. Bunk trailers are quite versatile.
 
Yes we have a trailer.  Had intentions of hauling it around to different lakes/regions.  Just returned from lake Norman.  Hope to make another trip before the weather breaks.
 
We trailer every time we boat. We run on the Missouri river north of Omaha, some area lakes and this summer towed 5 hours or so to the Lake of the Ozarks.


The boat stays in our shed at the house.


Couldn't boat without one.


Brian
 
You would think a trailer for a toon is Only a Craigslist Ad away.  Not no not even.


If a used one pops up its gone quick.


Yeah I picked baystar I have a 90hp. On a 2001 2275 center console. The bay star will take me up to 150 hp. Buy I have no plans ever to go that high never ever. Lol. 
 
We started out without a trailer.  We had a boat dock on the back of our house in saltwater in Charlotte Harbor.  Take four lines off and away we went.  This worked great for nearly 4 years.  We had two elliptical pontoons, easy as pie to get underneath and clean them.


Fast forward.  We move back to Ft. Myers, and get a wet slip at a nearby marina ($180 per month).  We replaced the dual ellipticals with the tritoon SPS.  A nightmare to get underneath it to clean.  Having to work on the inboard sides of the outer pontoons, as well as cleaning the center pontoon is extremely difficult.  I've taken my scuba gear, anchored in about 6' of water and got underneath it to clean.  More of an effort than I prefer to do.  I anchor in 3-4' of water, on my knees, frog-walking between the pontoons.  Still difficult.  Compounding all of this with the simple fact that I've now got a 3rd pontoon to clean.


I finally decide that I'm going to trailer the boat.  The problem is, I now need a tow vehicle to do this.  The good news is, I was in the market for a new truck anyways, so I just made sure that my new truck would be capable of towing 6,000 lbs of boat & trailer.  2016 Nissan Titan XD SL diesel.


I had a custom trailer built by Owens & Sons in St. Petersburg, FL.  Beautiful trailer, exceptionally well built (aluminum frame, SS brakes, LED lights).  The cost was about $1,000 or so above the regular stock trailers, but it truly fits the boat perfectly.


We now take the boat to many more places than we used to go in the past.  We were very active with the boat, and would think nothing of going from Ft. Myers as far north as Sarasota, and as far south as the Keys.  Still, having the boat on the trailer now makes it exceptionally easy to go.


I've also noticed that I take much better care of the boat.  I bring the boat from the storage location over to the house, and can get a lot of work done by myself that in the past I had to rely on the dealer to do.


So all in all, I'm personally much happier with the trailer.  Wish I'd have done it years ago.
 
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I have a trailer but have only used it 3 times.  Twice to pull out and do annual service and once to return to dealer for Mercury factory recall.  We bought because we could thought we might want to trailer it to some other area lakes.  That has never happened.  We keep the boat in a slip on a local lake and that's the only place we have used it thus far.  I put about 140 miles on trailer hauling it home from where we purchased it, and about 30 miles since the.  It still has the little rubber tips on the tires.
 
No trailer here. Pontoon stays on our lake. I use my neighbor's scissor trailer to put it in and take out to winterize, or if I really wanted to take it elsewhere. (I let him store it on the back of our property). He stores his pontoon on dollies in his garage and I just leave the trailer under mine (with the boat set down on styrofoam blocks) for the winter. Our dealer will come to the lake to service if needed while it is under warranty. 
 
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No trailer. Our cottage is a couple of blocks off the water and although we have a large garage, the Benny will not fit due to height. As such, it would have to sit in the drive or on the front lawn, neither of which is acceptable. 


Because of that, it stays in a marina until I ask the dealer to move it to their storage facility. Pluses and minuses for sure, but no real need for a trailer now. 
 
Yes we do have a trailer, but the dealer sold it to us with the boat at his cost, but then we have an enclosed boat shed within sight of the house, and live less 8/10ths of a mile from our ramp.  


There are getting to be more and more reports of boat houses getting broken into or vandalized on this lake, which is disconcerting to us.  Our house is 1/4 mile from a county road on a private drive, and the boat shed and the house itself are not visible until the last 300' of the driveway.  It's a very nice setup.


Bull Shoals is a Federal waterway, and boat houses must be looked after very closely, and permits are getting more and more scarce.  Just two weeks ago, we chased some kids off a boat house that had been vandalized in the past.  It sits next to another boat house that was vandalized as well, and we have friends that have had theirs ransacked as well.  I would imagine anything that will make money for the druggies is fair game.  Our friends now have three different security systems on their boat house, but then they have a beautiful Cobalt and two Honda jetskis under cover in their shed.


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I have a trailer made by sport boat trailers in Northern California. It's very well made and although I would have preferred electric brakes, the surge brake works really well. I recently pulled it from Ontario,CA to Lake Mead Marina in Boulder City, NV and back. It's rock solid and the wind guides make it really easy to get the boat on. 
 
Yup we have a trailer. Trailered for 7 years before moving to Lake Norman. We keep it on the trailer in the winter months. Wouldn't be without one...........
 
Just bought a trailer last month. I will probably only use it a few times a year... haulout twice a year and for periodic warranty and/or service work. Pontoon boats are not supremely popular in this area...much less a tritoon. Marinas personnel often look down their noses at pontoon boats. When  I brought my boat over to my local Yamaha service center for its 20hr service, I was surprised to hear the owner apologize to me and confess that the facility did not have the equipment necessary to haul out my tritoon. 


I had a nightmare experience last year when I purchased a 2012 Bennington in October and a Marinemax marina agreed to store the boat for the winter. They promply damaged both eliptical pontoons by storing the boat improperly. They confessed later that they knew nothing about proper weight distribution on pontoon boats. (They bought back the boat.)


I believe my decision to purchase a trailer is a wise choice since I can now guarantee that the boat is being hauled and stored properly.


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No trailer for us either. We are in a wet slip, in a covered boat house 9 miles (15 minutes) from our house. For service, there are quite a few marinas near us on the river with Yamaha authorized service where we get our annual service. Less than a 1/2 mile from us is another marina with a big hoist that will raise our boat out of the water for $170.00, and they charge me $3.00/foot to pressure wash. Or my selling dealer will come get it and bring it back for around $280 if I want it to go to them for service. If it's warranty work, the transport is their $$. 


Works for us and our situation, but they are all different. I drive to the slip, take off the playpen cover, and am backing out of the boathouse in just over 30 minutes after leaving home. And no need to find a place to store the boat or trailer.
 
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