Hofer Trailer Sales Saves The Day
My husband Joe and I were traveling from PA to MT on our second annual trip to visit our daughter in Big Sky and to attend the Black Hills Bike Rally in South Dakota. We were towing a trailer with our Harleys in it and were pretty much loaded up to the max. Everything was going great and we were making good time when the dreaded alarm comes on in our pickup. The message says, “You have a problem with your trailer connection”. We stop and wiggle and rearrange the connections and hope for the best. All the lights are working but the brakes don’t seem right. Of course when you are hundreds of miles from home, the quick fix isn’t going to work.
On the second day of constant loud beeping we were desperate. If we had to listen to this beeping the whole 2,000 miles one of us was going to break and then who knows what could happen. We tried a truck stop garage, a wrecking/towing place, a Chevrolet dealership; no one would even look at our vehicles. Finally I looked up trailer sales on the internet and found Hofer Trailer Sales Inc. in Sioux City, Iowa. They were four hours away but they were on our route so I called them. Gail Nichols answered the phone and I explained our situation to him. I probably sounded a little frantic and desperate but he listened and asked a few questions. He said yes they would take a look at it. Whew, that was a relief. Now all that we had to do was get through a torrential downpour with no trailer brakes and drive four hours with this loud beeping in our pickup.
We finally got there and sure enough Gail, Chad Hofer, and Cody were waiting for us and pulled our truck and trailer right into their shop. Cody got right to work on the electrical plug. He made some improvements and they started to pull out of the shop to see if this stopped the alarm. Right away it was apparent there was something seriously wrong with the brakes. Back into the shop and Chad was under the trailer. There was the typical chewed wire that you get when something sits awhile in storage but most concerning was the way the brake wires were connected to the wheels. The factory that made the trailer used plastic clamps and some of the wires were barely connecting. Chad changed all those out with connectors with shrink-wrap to make a good seal and ensure that we would have trailer brakes that worked. All of this only took one hour and fifteen minutes and the charge was very reasonable.
Gail, Chad, and Cody were so nice and we left their business feeling like we made new friends and business associates. Thank you again Gale, Chad, and Cody!