Re: You Know The Saying "trailer is worth what you paid for the boat" **I Disagree**
Re: You Know The Saying "trailer is worth what you paid for the boat" **I Disagree**
A few things come to mind with this ....
First, based on the photos that you have posted of the frame, this trailer is so obviously near the point of complete failure, that you should have known what you were buying. I have to think that you merely took the salesman's statement at face value and didn't inspect the trailer to any significant degree. Given that you did notice some rust and thought enough about it to mention that fact to the salesman, I think you pretty much blew it on the "buyer beware" situation.
I also agree with other posters that you need to get the boat off of that hunk of junk asap. In lieu of that, consider blocking the boat between the frames, just to prevent failure and/or prevent damage to the boat if it does fail. Also, don't be surprised if a flatbed driver refuses to pull it up onto his truck. If I were such a guy, that is exactly what I would do, because that trailer is quite likely to fail under such stress.
As for liability, folks can argue all they want about what you should or should not have known. If that trailer had come apart on the road and killed someone or seriously injured them, I promise you that both the dealer and Mastercraft would have been sued. This is not a statement that suggests Mastercraft was at fault, it is merely a fundamnetal truth.
If I were the dealer, I would absolutely lose money on the deal, if that's what it took to make you happy. Why? Because his salesperson told you that the trailer had been inspected and cleared as roadworthy, and apparently you can substantiate that fact. Simply put, unless the dealer employs people to do such inspections, who have an IQ of about "6," are blind and have never heard of rust, no one looked at the trailer with the intent to inspect it. I can not come up with any other explanation other than that you were lied to - plain and simple. On that basis alone, the dealer has great deal of liability that "as is" language is not going to protect him from.
Further, who in the world would believe that no one at the dealership noticed the completely unsafe status of this trailer, given that it would have been seen without a boat on it? Based on your photos, you couldn't possibly miss that mess!
On proper care, what could a person using a trailer like that in normal use, have done to prevent what you see? Washing a trailer down in any normal fashion would not have prevented the condition that it is currently in. While some of the rust on the flat plate sections would have occurred due to paint chipping, the rust in the box frames clearly occurred from the inside out. Normal washing would have done nothing to prevent that.
Unless the original trailer is completely unusable, I think your best bet is to have the boat put back on it. You can then deal with the running gear as needed.
As for the dealer, if you are reading these posts, I think you better sit down with your sales person and explain the Ricky Ricardo theory of life to him .... as in Lucy! You got some 'splainin' to do!
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