FTFY, I get the impression here that you've not taken a trailer down anything technical? seems your speculating hard to justify your aversion to em.. border crossings are nothing for a well built trailer, and if your shipping vehicles across oceans, whats a few more thousand dollars in the grand scheme of things? Ive taken lil trailers onto ferries just fine, just costs a lil extra.. switch backs are fine, a trailer will follow your tracks and turning capability.. solid built trailers will survive more trails than a Jeep will, they are rather simple creatures that are easy to maintain.. now im not talking about some wood staple thing from forest river, I'm talking an actual purpose built trail rig.
Not speculating at all actually, I have a fair bit of experience towing a bunch of trailers through a variety of terrain. This is our second JK, and all told we have hundreds of thousands of kilometers overlanding in this platform since 2011, and a few hundred thousand more on other platforms. There is a reason we are only getting to this "lose weight" approach seriously now -- we've tried lots of other ways first, and they didn't work for us. Trailers, tailgate storage, roof racks, backpacker-kit only, and more -- we've tried 'em all, and are refining our process more every year in preparation for our next steps.
I don't have an aversion to trailers at all -- for a lot of applications they work great and I generally recommend them to a lot of folks. The ease and convenience of hooking up a trailer and hitting the road for a weekend of adventure is fantastic for the vast majority of people. And some of the purpose built trailers are amazing -- with a price tag to match for some, but even some of the basic purpose built models are fantastic, robust, and useful.
As far as my reasons for not wanting a trailer, I've only scratched the surface of things we've considered. Switchbacks in my experience
can be much harder with a trailer (XOverland has a good episode demonstrating this), as can be choosing a good line or getting around tight corners in heavy trees. Not always, but if we can do without, why have the headache? And shipping vehicles isn't just about the cash, a trailer does limit some versatility. I can fit our JK and the bike in a 20' shipping container, which opens up a world of possibilities for moving the rigs. If we had a trailer, the cost increase is real as we would have to go with a 50+' container, but more importantly is that can limit the types of transit you can do (a 20' can go by rail, ships of various sizes, or various sizes of truck; a 50' is more limited/expensive for all of the options above as only certain ships, certain trains, and certain trucks can take the load). While this is not an issue for 99.999999% of people, it is an anticipated issue for us so its one of several reasons a trailer isn't a good solution for our application. On the part of border crossings, my concern isn't about the robustness of the trailer, it's about the folks holding the stamp collection -- the more registered vehicles you have, the more paperwork you need, and that can cause delays and hassle that we prefer to avoid if we can. And we can, by taking a "lose weight" approach instead of the trailer. In short, our preference is to take a more minimalist approach to this stuff, rather than tack on a trailer.
Anyway, to be abundantly clear on my position as there have been lots of discussion around trailers: Trailers are fantastic for the vast majority of people. Especially with the limitations of the JK platform, a trailer can be a game changer. For us, it's not the best solution
. That doesn't mean they don't work for a billion other people, or if we change our style of travel, they won't work for us in the future -- for our current approach, we've investigated trailers top to bottom and tried a few out, and we prefer compact, light, and mobile for our trips.
