G & F have been making their trailers in southern California for years. I have owned several and would buy one again if I needed one/found one. They aren’t making many (any?) of them anymore.
I think they are great (with a few caveats) and they are very, very strong. Which can be an issue as they have a lot of steel and are somewhat (not crazy) heavy. If you are trying to pull a 2 horse with an F-150 or similar half ton truck (which I wouldn’t recommend anyway, which is an argument of hundreds of posts of the years on COTH!) I wouldn’t go here. If you have a 3/4 ton truck I wouldn’t hesitate.
George Liblin is the ‘G’ of G & F. ( I don’t know what happened to Fred.) He is probably close to 90 and is a lifelong and wise horseman. He got into carriage driving and started making pumpkin Cinderella coaches so kind of let the horse trailer biz wind down, but before that he made a lot of them of all sizes in SoCal. Bob Hubbard, one of the biggest TB haulers, used G & F for all their smaller trailers for many years.
If you look at the trailer you will find some amazing smart things like: there will be a rounded rod welded around the fender edges, so a horse tied to the trailer and stomping flies can’t cut itself on the standard sharp edge of the fender swoop.
There are usually square tubing drains in the feeders that run straight down from the feeder along the trailer frame to the ground, so you can hose out the feeders and the water will go down these drains instead of pooling in the feeder and causing a rust area (like almost every steel trailer in the world has!)
There will be square tubing below the window frames, so if a horse somehow jumped in the feeder (it happens) and broke through the window, the bottom frame of the window has a piece of stronger tubing framing it instead of just the skin of the trailer which would be sharp enough to totally tear up a horse.
The front radius windows in that trailer you have pix of make it is super light and airy inside- horses tend to load easy and ride well because it is less claustrophobic-feeling to them.
The ramps are massive and long which makes them much more inviting to horses- less incline and less slippery. They are also full-width which means the horses are less likely to slip off the sides. They weigh a lot but come with huge leaf springs underneath and you can usually close them easily with one hand. My giant G & F ramps were much easier to lift and deal with than the ramp on my current mostly-aluminum Featherlite that is probably 1/3 less ramp size.
The narrow window above the ramp is neat- first, the ramp is tall enough that you can haul down the road with that window up, as shown in the photo, if it’s hot for great airflow, and second, it has a rope on it so you can just reach up to pull it closed if wanted… just smart design.
There are purposeful gaps between the floor boards so urine or wash water can easily drain out.
The entire horse and tack compartment are lined with black rubber conveyor belting material which is incredibly durable and easy to wash- great stuff! I used to buy rolls of it from G & F to line box stalls with of horses that kicked so they didn’t dent the stall walls.
The saddle racks are cool, they swing in and out so you can pin them inside the tack compartment, pin them to the outside to reach your saddle easier, or take them out completely. The door baskets hold a lot, and there are usually piles of bridle hooks inside too.
The one you have pictured also has bucket holders mounted on the sides which work great- one for feed and one for water, they are held in place, against a metal backsplash on the trailer, so the horses can’t sling the buckets around and make lovely circular scratch marks all over the side of the trailer.
I was rear-ended once on the freeway with a G & F at fairly low speed and absolutely nothing happened to the trailer or my horse in it- but the little import that hit us looked like it ran into a wall.
A friend was sideswiped in a 30+ year old G & F by a commercial passenger van and it tore the fender right off, but the main frame and horse inside were OK. I think it would have crumpled most trailers.
If you find one and you’re in southern California you could take it to G & F Carriages in Bloomington CA (gandfcarriages.com) and get it checked out. They will likely have the original build sheet and be able to tell you all about it.
I think they are terrific trailers. Another brand you see in SoCal sometimes are Heacock- a very different kind of trailer but large and airy and still see a lot of them around, especially with the H/J crowd. I’d buy one of those too if I came across one- they were very well designed too.
Happy Trails!