SAFETY IN DESIGN
STRAIGHT LOAD VS SLANT
By Tom Scheve
Horses evolved over 45 to 55 million years ago from a small multi-toed creature, Eohippus, into the large, single-toed animals
of today. They existed on the open plains, conditioned to fight or flee. Why on earth would they want to climb into a
box on wheels? The answer is “they don’t,” and yet they do, and much of the reason has to do with the trailer design.
Horse owners have assimilated definite opinions
about which horse trailer designs work best for t
heir horses. Unfortunately, most of those opinions
have come from friends, trainers, vets, and the
internet, which, more often than not, are poor
resources of information, since much of the advice
is conjectured rather than researched. But all horse
owners do tend to agree on one basic premise
when it comes to towing horses; they want them
to travel safely.
STRAIGHT LOAD
SLANT LOAD
SLANT LOAD DESIGN
No one is sure who created the first slant load trailers,
but we know approximately when they came into
the market, and why. It was introduced to the quarter
horse market in the late seventies, early eighties, with
the purpose to stack more horses into a shorter trailer,
thus making the loaded trailer lighter. Since trucks
back then could only tow about one third the weight
of what they can now, a shorter, lighter trailer was a
welcome idea, especially since many quarter horse
owners needed to carry four to five horses. But the
slant load design had its limitations, and either no one
Horse trailer designs can be broken down into two basic
designs: straight load trailers and slant load trailers. The
difference is simple to understand. A straight load trailer is
where the stalls and dividers are parallel to the sidewalls of
the trailer, (horses typically stand front to back). In a slant
load trailer, the stalls are diagonal between the sidewalls
of the trailer (horses stand at an angle). A few incongruous
designs have cropped up in the last five or so years, such as
rear-facing trailers and reverse slant loads, but they still fall
into the category of straight loads and slant loads.
wanted to admit it, or no one understood the problems.
Instead, manufacturers and dealers promoted the design,
touting that horses traveled much better standing at an
angle, using all sorts of outlandish reasons. Below are a few
statements that appeared in articles over the years promoting
slant style trailers.
“When horses walk onto an open trailer, they tend to
stand at a slant, telling us that they prefer to travel standing
at a diagonal.”
Since the trailer isn’t moving, how they stand in a box is
irrelevant to how they travel. The horse probably wanted to
look out the window.
“With the dividers swung against the wall, horses are more
willing to enter the large open space.”
But like a Venus flytrap, once they board and the divider
is swung into place, the horses are asking what the heck
happened.
“When someone is standing facing me, it’s easy to push
them off balance. If the person is standing at an angle
(slant) in front of me, it’s more difficult to push the person
off balance.”
Someone needed to tell this person that a horse has
four legs.
66 www.EliteEquestrianMagazine.com EQUINE Lifestyle
What those looking at slant load designs need to know is
that horses approaching 15.3 hands do not fit in most standard
size slant load horse trailers. Since the DOT (Department
of Transportation) limits the width of all trailers to 102”
(the axle width), the maximum usable interior width of a
horse trailer, without wheel wells inside the stalls, is 80 inches.
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