So the trailer got jackknifed, messed up the tongue, and had a lot of support beams. The whole thing was about 7 inches out of square. When we flipped in on its back, you could easily see the treads in the tires didn't line up.

We start by flipping the trailer on its back to get easy access to all broken and bent parts.

The main Ibeam and tongue were too bent to salvage, so I cut them off. We saved the jack and most of the hardware for chains and binder storage in the storage area.

When the trailer is upside down, it is easy to see that the wheels are out of alignment because the frame is bent and not Square.

I put some chains and binders across the corners and could pull it back to square, but when I released the binder, it was still off by one inch. So I stretched it back to square and welded some supports under the rafters.

The supports did the trick, the frame measured square, and the treads in the tires even looked like they were tracking straight.

After that fix, my neighbor, who owns the trailer, was as enthused as I was. We were not entirely sure it would ever come back to life. At this point, a state inspection is yet to determine whether it will. But we thought a coat of paint would go a long way to making it last longer.

Por 15 was the unanimous choice, but that also implied many hours of preparation, chipping old rust and paint, sanding, pre-treating the metal, and finishing off with a top coat and lanolin undercoating. So we had to flip the trailer a few more times, but no problem we were getting good at it. It also helps when you have access to a 35-ton mobile crane.

I stripped off the deck boards, sacrificing two torq bits, and attacked the bad spots with a needle scaler, the average rust spots were easily mitigated with a braided wire cup on a grinder.

This is not a job you want to do again for at least five years. It started with a metal treatment from Por 15; on top of that, we did a poor 15 coating black. A topcoat followed that we used to Rust-Oleum black. Then finally, we wrapped up with Atlanta lanolin-based undercoating from PB-Blaster.

Now we have to put the deck boards back on I'm probably screwing them down with new screws and new screw holes. And then finally, we fixed the required lighting and safety tapes.

All this goes off to a state inspection station to get a rebuilt title. Once we get to the title, the trailer can be registered and returned to the road.