every time I think about a roller trailer, I envision a couple of old farts(think Oz and Lee
) with some antique tri hull, arguing at the ramp, Usually one of them has his long pants rolled up above the knee trying to keep from getting wet(still gets soaked) while hooking up the rusty cable, while the other one(usually seated in the boat and with a beer
) is telling him what he's doing wrong. After listening to the winch cycle for about 20 minutes winching the aforementioned floating water hazard onto the undersized break back roller trailer, they finally pull away from the ramp (meanwhile at least 20 other people have loaded and unloaded their boats in the adjacent ramp). About the time they crest the top of the ramp, you hear something break, the whizzing sound of a winch in high speed, and the crunching sound of water logged fiberglass hitting the asphalt. The following arguments and actions tend to be along the lines of a three stooges movie
. This is a scene I've seen to often
In all seriousness, when I worked at the Sea ray dealership, I launched and loaded probably an average of four boats a day, With the bunk trailers, I was always able to safely launch and load the boat by myself. With roller trailers, we always had something go wrong, granted these trailers were used and abused, but they gave us a lot of issues. Rollers are very expensive, especially if you get the non marking kinds. the hardware on a lot of trailers is proprietary and expensive(odd brackets and pivots). We also had quite a bit of damage from roller trailers to the boat hulls, We ended up converting all of our rollers(except for the biggest trailers for 35'+) to bunks. The only reason we left the big trailers roller was they usually fit the hulls better and gave us clearance for the props. When I bought my V, it had a heavy duty single axle roller trailer under it. I don't know if it was the original one or not, but there was no way it would sit level and even on this trailer, I tried to adjust the rollers, but there was no way to get it to fit with out one set of rollers sitting on a strake. I gave the roller trailer to my father and bought a used galvanized tandem axle bunk trailer. the boat sits at least a foot lower, and sits even now, with nothing resting on the strakes.
As far as advantage to one style or the other, it boils down to what fits your boat, what makes loading and unloading your boat at your particular ramp easy and safe