Six Reasons to Add Rumber Flooring to Your Custom Trailer
You want your horse to be protected from the moment he comes into your life to the moment that he leaves. Everything in his world is designed to keep him as safe as possible, including his stall, his feeder and the fencing in his pasture, but have you considered ways to protect him on his travels? Sure you can add some safe wall systems and padded separators, but a lot of people forget about the floors. Adding rumber flooring to custom trailers is a great way to increase your horse’s comfort and safety and make your trailer a lot more convenient to maintain.
Why Add Rumber to Your New Trailer?
There are a lot of features that are offered for custom horse trailers purely for aesthetics or comfort, but rumber isn’t one of them. This recycled rubber composite is a must-have for any horse trailer that’s going to hit the road for long trips or frequent short runs across town. There are a number of reasons why rumber is the material of choice for horse owners everywhere, but these are the six most important:
Easy Maintenance. Wooden floors are good for horses, but they’re hard to keep clean and can rot over time. Instead of lugging around heavy stall mats that may cause you to put off important trailer maintenance, rumber floors combine the best characteristics of wood floors and rubber mats. No more lifting and no more worry about rot -- keeping rumber floors clean is as easy as hosing off a stall mat. Unlike stall mats, though, there’s nothing have to put away right after a long, exhausting trip, you only have to hose off your rumber floor and let it air dry.
Durability. According to the manufacturer, rumber doesn’t rot, crack or splinter, it can’t absorb fluids to increase the trailer’s weight and insects leave it alone. It’s guaranteed to last longer than most wood products, ensuring that you won’t be redecking your trailer every few years. Rumber’s a little more expensive to install upfront, but the money you’ll save by not having to replace a wooden floor again and again adds up over the lifetime of your new trailer.
Horse Safety. Everything we do is with horse safety in mind, which is why we love rumber. This product gives your horse a very comfortable surface to stand on for long trips, providing more give than aluminum and better traction than wood alone. Having a floor made of rumber means less stress on your horse’s joints and muscles and an easier ride. Horses who have been skiddish about trailer rides because of poor traction will welcome the new, grippy flooring.
Reduced Heat Transfer. Horse trailers can get hot in the summer -- and we mean HOT. Good ventilation helps, but if your floor is conducting road heat into the box, there’s a good chance your horse is still going to be uncomfortable. Aluminum floors are very good conductors. They can move heat into your trailer and raise the temperature, sometimes to dangerous levels. Rumber is non-conductive, meaning that the heat outside the trailer stays outside the trailer, protecting your horse from uncomfortably hot floors.
Minimized Noise and Vibration. The traditional floors in horse trailers are poor insulators when it comes to road noises and vibration. These sounds and strange sensations can scare horses during travel, making a stressful ride even more troubling. Rumber, on the other hand, minimizes noises and vibrations because of the large amount of rubber in the material -- this component grants your new floor plenty of give and dampens road noises and vibrations, providing your horse a smoother ride. You’ll be amazed at how relaxed your horse is after even the longest trip on a rumber floor.
Environmentally Friendly Materials. Unlike aluminum and wooden floors, rumber is made from 100 percent recycled tire rubber and plastic. These materials would otherwise end up in landfills, which isn’t a great thing for the environment. Instead, rumber uses up these discarded materials and turns them into one of the best horse surfaces currently available. No trees have to be cut down, no aluminum has to be mined, old worn out tires and discarded plastics are instead combined and molded into a useful material with a long life.
Rumber Isn’t for Everybody
We love rumber, there’s no question about it, but there are a few situations where it might not be the best choice for your trailer. For example, if your horse only travels to the farrier or veterinarian and back, there’s no reason to spend the extra money on a trailer that will be used infrequently. Rumber is a more expensive flooring option, so it makes sense to go with a wooden floor if you only use your trailer once in a while to haul younger horses who can handle a few floor vibrations a short distance.
As long as you remember to remove your stall mats, clean all the shavings off the floor of your trailer and carefully clean your wooden floor right after a trip with your horses, a wooden floor can last a reasonable amount of time. Even though stall mats are bulky, if you have plenty of help it’s not hard to keep your trailer exceptionally clean to deter bugs and keep rot at bay. A wooden floor is only as good as its maintenance, though, so before going with this option, carefully consider how much time you’ll have to do trailer chores if you think you’ll travel much with your horse, even if you’re just going to the nearest horse trail and back.
Contact us today with your questions about custom horse trailers, we’ll be happy to explain the differences between common flooring types, including rumber, and walk you through the process of building your own trailer from scratch. We build trailers from the ground up, allowing us to create horse trailers perfect for every horse and every situation. Custom horse trailers from Double D are extremely affordable and built with horse safety at the forefront of everything we do.
