Just to avoid confusing anyone, I don’t drive with the dolly attached to the kayak.
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And on the question of trailer configuration, wheels, bearings, etc. - My trailer is a Trailex SUT-350S aluminum trailer. It originally had very light, single-leaf springs and a carrying capacity of 350 lbs. I made a wood frame and added my own flatbed for utility use, plus removable sides (two different heights), and a three-section lid. All of my additions were built as lightly as possible, but using the tall sides and lid lowered my carrying capacity to only 210 lbs. Since then I’ve upgraded to somewhat stiffer springs (still single leaf) that give an extra hundred lbs. or so of load capacity.
I only have 8-inch wheels, but have not had a problem with those. I’m not disputing that you have to be careful with those tiny wheels and tires spinning at high speeds – just reporting my experience so far. I have bearing buddies and can pump in a little new grease each year, but my main precaution is that I feel the hubs and tires for excessive heat at every stop on a long trip. The trailer is also stored fully covered, including the wheels and bearings. I’ve done many 400-500 mile highway trips, at 70-75 MPH, with 200 lbs. load on the trailer. I previously had a Harbor Freight trailer with metric bearings. Then, I carried spare bearings with me. My Trailex trailer has inch size bearings and you can get OEM-Grade cheapie replacements at Walmart, so I choose not to carry spares. I don’t carry enough tools, paper towels, etc. with me to change bearings, so a trip to Walmart or Home Depot for tools would be needed anyway.
One thing I would advise is if your trailer is lightly sprung like mine and you load it near capacity, figure out what you would do if you broke a spring during a trip. I made a specially shaped block of wood that would support the frame on the axle. I would let some air out of the tire on the side with the broken spring (to soften the un-sprung ride as much as possible) and then slowly limp to the nearest exit. I always have a couple of cam straps in the car, and they would hold things together temporarily.
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I was very happy with my decision to buy this little trailer. It was a bicycle kayak trailer, and I modified it slightly and made an adapter to connect it into my car’s trailer hitch receiver, and I used it to pull my kayak up and over the mountain ridges to the four lakes in my subdivision. The drives were a 1/2 mile and never on public roads, so it worked very, very well. At launches I would disconnect it and wheel the kayak to the water. When I got back home, I would hoist the kayak to the ceiling and stand the trailer up against the wall of my garage.
Since moving to Michigan, I occasionally bring it along inside the car and use it as a dolly for launches that are are more than 1/4 mile from the parking lot. It lets me get to remote stretches of small rivers that nobody else ever launches into.
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I do appreciate that you tried to clear this up, but the information about the “service description” (if it’s even there at all) truly is not standardized because I have never seen a tire with numbers and a letter of this format following the basic metric size designation, and I dare say I’ve read the tire-size designation code on a lot of tires in the last 45+ years. As I mentioned, all my current tires have a cluster of letters, or numbers and letters having no clear purpose, but the character pattern is completely different in every difference case so it is doubtful that the same set of information is even being coded in those examples. In fact, on further checking (after I wrote that last sentence), and still in agreement with what I said in my previous post, there’s not a single letter within that code or anywhere else on the sidewall that corresponds to any of the possible symbols related to speed rating (in other words, none of the letters symbolizing a potentially-correct speed rating appear anywhere on the sidewall, alone or in combination with others). I can now say with certainty that speed ratings are NOT provided on the sidewalls of any of my tires.
Here is a website which gives the same information that was provided by the site you linked, including the info about the “service description”, and yet their photo of an actual tire sidewall lacks the very same info they are describing, in exactly the same way that has been the case on every tire I have seen in the last few decades.
Also, most small-size trailer tires are most-definitely intended for highway use but they use an entirely different nomenclature for size designation than that shown here, one which provides much less information overall.
Okay, I just went to the website for the company that makes the very basic 12" tires currently on the trailer for my little motorboat. It’s a big company that makes a lot of different trailer tires, but they provide ZERO information regarding speed ratings in both their website and their downloadable catalog. All they say that might be related to speed ratings is that their tires exceed DOT specifications. What’s a person with 8" tires supposed to do, except assume that those sporadic comments online about such tires having a 50-mph speed rating might be true?
Unrelated to the actual topic but interesting in it’s own way, relates to a stupid error on that last web page you provided. I have to wonder about a website author who either isn’t smart enough to know the difference between “ration” and “ratio”, or who cares so little about his job that he doesn’t even care that the whole world knows it. And I have to wonder, wouldn’t that guy also have a boss who wants to fix this mistake? Since the answer to that question is “no”, it seems that the whole company must be second-rate.
Love my SylvanSport Go Easy trailer. Takes standard Thule/Yakima cross bars and all the standard accessories…
Works great as a utility trailer, will carry three kayaks easily, depending on bar width.
(Note: this photo is with the trailer and the shorter tongue, which required ;that I position the kayak further rearward than optional. With the larger tongue installed, the kayak is positioned ideally and it’s easier to guide in reverse.)
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That looks like it would be easy to stash if parking was an issue?
Sure is. It’s easy to move because it’s light. And…the tongue is easily removed. And, by the way, it’s designed to store upright on its rear, taking up little space.
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I guess that’s what we need because that is the only issue for us.
How does it tow?
What else do you use it for? We have always had a pick up but now my husband has a Defender and sometimes we have to haul things.
It’s a wonderful little trailer. Tracks beautifully on the highway. You’ll have no issues with it with the Defender…
It completely disappears behind my SUV, so I put a couple of marker poles on the rear for reversing. You might want to do the same!
As it uses standard Thule/Yakima cross rails, I can put virtually anything on top - fat tire bikes, 16’ lumber, cargo box, etc.
I made sides for the trailer out of PVC and use it for dump runs, garden center runs, hauling all sorts of small to medium size stuff.
It’s perfect for most things that would go into a pickup bed (but it is a bit smaller…) And if I need to haul something bigger, UHaul is not far.
Funny story…I ordered a complete set of supplies for roofing a shed - 4x8 sheets of underlayment, 8’ metal panels, etc., and went to pick it all up at Lowes. The guy wheeling it out said “You’re going to put all this in that little trailer?” I said “Nope, it’s going on top.”
I’ve filled it full of compost at our transfer station and hauled a Peloton home after scoring it as a giveaway!
There’s a couple of used ones for sale that I know of, one in the Boston area…
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Thanks for the information. That’s sounds like what we need. We have a couple of EU e-bikes and they are fairly heavy on our bike racks (we take the batteries off) and then we have the kayaks.
How many narrow kayaks do you think you could get there? (Oh I see you said three ±)
Do the used ones show up on Autotrader or where?
Also if we are Overlanding we could disconnect and leave the boats somewhere for a bit.
Facebook has two groups, one for buying and selling.
And occasionally they show up on Craigslist or FB Marketplace.
Note…there’s a couple of different models…I have the Go Easy, which is the smaller. The Go is a full camping trailer, which would make a lovely utility trailer too. 
This is incorrect. The bearing is in the hub, and if i remove my 8" wheels and replace them with 10" or 20" wheels, the hub is untouched and the bearings remain the same.
Thanks much. 16 years old and still nearly perfect. Everything about it is fantastic.
I could just reply by saying “you didn’t read much” and leave it at that, but a full explanation follows.
One thing I find interesting in this remark from you is that, in the part you quoted, there are the words “… and here’s why.” Those words mean that an explanation of that sentence comes next, and yet for some reason you chose not to read any farther.
That remark that you quoted, and indeed that entire paragraph, was in reference to trailer wheels and hubs in general, and specifically to the often-stated but usually-erroneous idea that the bearings in the hubs of heavier-duty trailers with sturdier axles and bigger wheels spin more slowly at any given travel speed. That idea was stated by another poster, and that is what I was addressing (in all fairness to that other poster, he replied later that he actually did understand the info I provided but he had been over-simplifying). Anyway, if you had read that part you would have seen that I specifically mentioned that sturdier trailers with their larger wheels also have larger hubs with larger-diameter bearings, which I think should have been pretty hard to interpret as being a comparison between larger and smaller wheels/tires mounted on the exact same hubs.
In addition, if you would have read the last two sentences of the paragraph immediately preceding the fragment of text that you quoted, you would have seen where I wrote the same thing as what’s in your reply to me, even including a specific statement that whether or not you are comparing different-size wheels and tires mounted on hubs of the same or different sizes makes all the difference. For your convenience, here are those two sentences:
" Simply switching from 8" wheels to 12" wheels gives you a much wider cushion in terms of the safe rated speed of the tire, and if you happen to still be worried about bearings, such tires/wheels mounted on the same hub (that’s important for this comparison as described below) reduces the speed of hub rotation such that what had been the rotation speed at 50 mph now corresponds to 65 mph (that’s assuming the tire profile is also the same, which for the most common tires sizes results in an increase in overall tire diameter from ~15.5" to ~20"). It’s a fortunate thing that 8" and 12" trailer wheels fit the same hubs (two bolt patterns are available, and wheels of both sizes that fit either pattern are readily available). So switching from 8" wheels to 12" wheels while keeping the original hubs is a no-brainer."
So there’s even more relevant info that you could have decided to read the first time around.
Just as an extra detail, I will point out that you will never be able to mount stock 20" trailer wheels on trailer hubs that are made for 8" or 12" wheels. The hubs that 20" trailer wheels are made to fit are much more heavy-duty and therefore much bigger than the hubs for 8" and 12" wheels. I mention this because this is directly related to the point I was ACTUALLY making in that whole paragraph for which you chose to reply only to the introductory line.
Just to add a little to the bearing controversy.
Wheel bearings in trailers are not plain bearings or sliding bearings. They are roller bearings and have an inner and outer race and in between them are rollers. The number and size of the rollers along with the length determine things like load rating and speed rating under load. Larger bearings are going to have larger rollers and it is the speed of the roller rotation along with the fact the roller goes thru a load unload cycle each time it revolves once around the axle CL.
In general larger bearings that have higher load ratings will respond to the speed of rotation differently than a smaller bearing even though it may be traveling with a lower surface feet per second. It is not all about rotation speed all this factors together.
There are many calculations that go into bearing selection and another is duty cycle. The duty cycle for a locomotive bearing or over the roar semi truck is considerably different than that of a passenger auto and the auto is quite different than a low-end utility trailer. It is a cost vs capability vs user expectation. In order for Harbor Freight to sell their 1000 pound capacity utility trailer for 520 bucks they need to not only build it in China but also cut a lot of corners on every piece that goes in it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work because they couldn’t sell any if it failed in ten minutes.
For me I like to caution people with them on things like overloading and keeping the speed down along with way more preventive maintenance.
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Read the whole thing. I agree with pretty much everything you wrote.
…and…the statement I highlighted as factually incorrect (or ambiguous) could simply have been clarified.
And to put a point on your comments – bicycle trailers and spindly kayak karts/trailers should never go on the highway. They are light duty only (30 mph max, around town use)
Thanks for that additional insight, Bud. You have probably figured out that I’m pretty good with understanding concepts but I’ve never gotten into the details that a mechanical engineer with special expertise would do. In one of my earlier replies to you I pointed out that such factors as the size of the rollers and how this affects their rotation speed in relation to their travel speed plays into the whole thing, but that wasn’t for your benefit. It was just to show that I was aware that things are more complex than simply comparing travel speeds between the races for different bearings having different overall diameters.
Your comment about load-unload cycles reminds me of something you might find interesting. I have an old Chevy Suburban that has what I believe is just ONE bad roller within one of the rear-axle bearings. There’s a quiet roaring sound that cyclically increases and decreases in volume at a frequency corresponding to roughly half the speed of tire rotation. I figure that means the culprit has to be a single roller since a roller runs around its circuit one time for approximately two complete turns of the bearing, and only at one location on the circumference of the bearing is the load on that roller at its maximum. I replaced the wheel bearings (including the axles, to be on the safe side, since the inner race is built onto the axle shaft) and found no culprits there, and indeed the sound remains. So, I figure it’s one of the side bearings in the differential, with the applied load from the ring gear affecting the cyclic nature of the sound (indeed, the sound nearly disappears when coasting, which should have been a clue for me in the beginning, but at the time I had another reason for thinking a wheel bearing might have gone bad), instead of that being caused by vehicle weight as would have been the case for a wheel bearing making that same sound. That’s a bigger repair project than I wish to undertake myself, but when I do get it fixed (by a good mechanic who will let me help and see firsthand what’s going on), it will be interesting to see if my diagnosis turns out to be correct. That’s totally off-topic but it’s a set of symptoms you might find interesting. Oh, and of course, what’s simply one bad roller (or so it seems) right now will spread throughout the bearing if I don’t address the problem!
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My first kayak trailer was the Yakima one and it turned out to be a mistake. Firstly it could not be used to put the kayaks in saltwater as the racks were too high off the ground and the wheels and bearings could only be used in freshwater.
I replaced it with a jet ski trailer that had the kayaks much closer to the ground and so I could offload them directly into the water at a boat ramp. I had two 13.5 ft Hobie kayaks mounted on the racks which were adjustable. It had full size wheels and so no worries about pulling it at freeway speeds. It also have oil bath bearings and so no need to keep adding grease to the bearings as I have had to do with other trailers I used with inflatable boats for diving.
Great to be able to rig the two kayaks completely and then back the trailer into the water and tie the boats up at the finger dock and quickly park my truck. Same applied to sliding them up on the trailer afterwards and then driving to a parking spot and taking my time removing gear from them.
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