Ifor Williams Horsebox Accident

In NZ trailers are called FLOATS had us visualizing a wholly different horse transport system but a trailer is a float and a horse box is a horse truck!

Our is an Ifor Williams HB510. The central partition is in three parts, a post in the middle off which hang two swinging partitions that are held in place with breast bars. The rear swinging partition failed due to being very poorly made, you cannot expect rivets placed just 8mm into thin sheets of alloy to resist a horse of any size pushing on the bar for very long. Only the fact that for years we have transported ponies and they tended not to be large enough to push the rear bar has prevented it failing earlier.

We are preparing a webpage with photographs of the damage and what caused it. We have had some repairs done and have several suggested modifications for other Ifor Williams owners to prevent the same thing happening to them. Basically reinforcing the exterior of the partition panels with 50mm x 2mm strips of alloy that connect the front channel to the bar hook and on to the back panel. All bolted through. Easy to do, cheap and very strong, it possibly would have held the horse in the original incident that created this thread.

I had never heard of the emergency release system in these trailers but the agent here made much of it. The bars can be released from outside the trailer, ours needed an allen key but more modern ones can be released using a lever, tyre release or similar. Designed to release the bar and a horse trapped over it without having to enter the trailer. Sounds good but would you remember in the panic of an incident like this?

Our horse is recovering but the scars will never go and her show career is over, an expensive and beautiful horse destroyed because Ifor Williams don't care about the quality of their products!


Suechoccy said:
Chrisr224 - I'm sorry to hear about your horse's horrific injuries. do you mean the central partition that runs the length of the box, or the breastbar that goes across the horse's chest? If partition - is it fixed rather than swinging? Is it a horsebox (lorry) rather than a trailer? What in NZ is a "float" - is it a trailer or a lorry? (We get confusion in UK with "horsebox" which to most horsey people means a lorry rather than a towed-trailer, but to the non-horsey population, and often in media coverage of road accidents, there will be refernce to a "horse box" when it was a towed-trailer).

The OP's IW was a trailer and the breastbar came adrift with the horse's weight on top of it after the horse tried to jump/rear over the top of the breastbar.

If the original poster is still reading H&H (probably not as his post was back in 2012), I sincerely wish his wife, him and his family all the best. We all know we should wear hats, not stand under ramps, that horses are unpredictable and heavy and quick-moving, that breastbars aren't designed for horses weight to be on top of them, etc, etc, and most of the time we follow these guidelines and everything is fine, but it only takes a split-second wrong decision on our parts for a life-changing moment sometimes, esp if that's an emergency panic stressful situation.
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Craig Jones,

Not sure if you have seen my recent post, similar happened to us due to the poor quality of manufacture of the partition panels. I hope you did sue Ifor Williams and won your case. Manufacturing as poorly done as seen in our trailer is dangerous in the extreme - and punishable under the law if it causes damage, injury or worse, death!

All the best,

Chris R
 
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Op posts asking whether anyone else has had a similar problem with their trailer and aside from one or two useful responses gets ten times as many responses from people pointing out how fantastic they are at unloading horses. Honestly, the level of smugness on this forum never ceases to amaze me. Had the post been a request for advice on how to unload I could see the point but I doubt ops wife wants to hear it now.
 
Fun Times

I too was amazed a the responses to OP's post. Some I presume are selfishly trying to preserve their position with their own Ifor Williams Trailers - Ostrich head in sand posture - it must be the user not equipment like mine!

I posted a similar incident with details of a engineers report that shows what the problem is - poor design, cheap manufacture and no quality control hoping the info may help OP and other users of the Trailers. With the speed of the legal system OP may still be involved in a legal battle against Ifor Williams and hopefully this will help.
 
montanna said:
I have heard of so many accidents involving trailers, that I will never again travel my horse in one. My own mare a few years ago managed to go down in a trailer and became trapped under the breast bar and central partition. She managed to lose three of four shoes, and completely ruined her back - she was never the same again. I will never travel a horse of mine in one again!
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I have first hand experience of accidents in horseboxes also so this isn't exclusively a trailer problem. A close friend of mine lost a very talented show jumper when he went down in a big lorry. I will never forget the sight of him coming down the ramp with his front leg swinging due to a compound fracture in the upper bone. Haunts me to this day. I think as somebody previously pointed out, when you have something the size of a horse confined in a small space, this is always going to be risky.
 
Absolutely correct! Moving horses is always a risk as is driving a car! Accidents happen and we have to live with them.

The real issue here is that these Ifor Williams Trailers have been so poorly made that they failed and caused the accidents due to no fault of the horse or owner. If the seat of your car collapsed and the sharp bits the collapse exposed injured you seriously you would be right to complain to the car maker. If an engineer examined the damage and found it was due to poor manufacturing or faults in the way it was put together you would be suing the car maker.

We all love our horses like our children, we buy what we understand is top quality, Ifor Williams had a fantastic reputation and it seemed to be the best and safest buy. It comes as a great shock to discover that they are built so poorly that they can fail, destroy your horses career if not heir life and Ifor Williams will not even comment on the incident whilst their agent here in NZ blames anything but the trailer!

WinkingWillow said:
I have first hand experience of accidents in horseboxes also so this isn't exclusively a trailer problem. A close friend of mine lost a very talented show jumper when he went down in a big lorry. I will never forget the sight of him coming down the ramp with his front leg swinging due to a compound fracture in the upper bone. Haunts me to this day. I think as somebody previously pointed out, when you have something the size of a horse confined in a small space, this is always going to be risky.
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I have set up a Safety Warning website due to the accident we suffered due to the failure of the partition in our Ifor Williams 510 trailer - http://ifor-horse-trailer.com

This shows what happened and why it occurred.

The site goes on to show the modifications to the trailer we made with help from our engineer.
These are simple, easy to do and inexpensive but increase the strength of the partitions significantly so they can better resist the stress that causes these events.

In my opinion every owner of these trailers and even the new ones should consider strengthening the partitions to prevent any possibility of further accidents due to there failure.

I trust you find the site useful and informative.
 
montanna said:
I have heard of so many accidents involving trailers, that I will never again travel my horse in one. My own mare a few years ago managed to go down in a trailer and became trapped under the breast bar and central partition. She managed to lose three of four shoes, and completely ruined her back - she was never the same again. I will never travel a horse of mine in one again!
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One of the most horrific accidents I have seen occured with a lorry - not all trailers are bad and some of us have no other option....
 
chrisr224 said:
This is probably a long dead thread, I trust you wife has fully recovered by now. We are in NZ and have a 2005 HB510 identical to the one we had in UK before we left. It has been used for daughters ponies over the years but daughters grow aand now she has larger, 15.2hh horses. Two weeks ago two were being moved, they seemed ill at ease, we checked and saw nothing wrong. Two miles later after a huge performance from them whenever we went slowly, very slowly, around a left hand bend, we stopped at the first possible place and opened the rear door.

The right hand horse was in a serious way, blood everywhere, the rear partition had pulled out at the front rivets, collapsed and ended up underneath her. Only her tough full length travel boots saved her life. Bad cuts to the hoof area, her side where the remains of the partition had sharp edges and under her tail where the bar had caused the damage. She is a darling, quiet show hack and will never be able to compete again, even if she becomes ride-able.

The Ifor Williams agent in NZ inspected the damage very quickly and did exactly what we expected, not our fault, the trailer wasn't to blame type response! Ifor Williams UK, the manufacturer, haven't deemed to reply at all!

I got an engineer to look at the damage, it only took him minutes to find the fault. The partitions are very poorly made. A composite of thin alloy sheets riveted into a frame of extruded aluminum sections. The Rivets on the front edge that take the load were only a few mm into the alloy sheet, the polystyrene extended a further 9mm on this edge stopping the alloy sheets bedding down into the frame section. Fatigue has slowly weakened the area around the rivet holes until under light load they failed the partition collapsed and nearly killed my horse not to mention seriously damaging the interior of the trailer. The engineer took the whole partition to bits, the rivet holes at the rear where no stress ever occurs where 20mm into the sheet, he feels this would have been safe on the front edge. The holes were all out of alignment, build quality was amateur at best, deadly is a better description.

This sound so like the problem with your partition, I just wondered what had happened in your case and did you sort it out with Ifor Williams?
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Sorry to hear about your horses accident. I have a IW 510 - about 10 years old now I would think which I bought off a friend. When my friend first had it we were travelling her horse and mine, (both large horses) who both leaned forward on the front breast bar at the same time going downhill. They did as you described and popped the rivets out of the partition which came away from the central post. We had to remove the partition and travel the horses without to get them home. I now use it without a partition to travel just one horse. Luckily neither of the horses in my trailer was hurt.
 
Thank you for the warning I'm slightly freaked out now. We bought our 510 classic trailer in 2005 brand new but apparently it was made in '03 according to ifor records. We bought it for a difficult horse who had jumped the front bar, we purchased the ifor because of how easy it is to collapse the partitions if the situation ever arose. Just recently my 3 year old 15.2hh jumped the front partition and when I did find him he wasn't putting weight on the bar as his sheath was just on the bar. I was thankful that the box was big enough that he could stand in the front and caught in the bar with room to relax and nothing moved to frighten him. Now I'm thinking if he had sat on it and it broke the outcome wouldn't have been good at all, he actually would have wrecked himself and the box. Thank you so much for putting this information online, I for one am going to get my partitions looked at!
 
hoggedmane said:
Sorry to hear about your horses accident. I have a IW 510 - about 10 years old now I would think which I bought off a friend. When my friend first had it we were travelling her horse and mine, (both large horses) who both leaned forward on the front breast bar at the same time going downhill. They did as you described and popped the rivets out of the partition which came away from the central post. We had to remove the partition and travel the horses without to get them home. I now use it without a partition to travel just one horse. Luckily neither of the horses in my trailer was hurt.
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It looks like the partitions failing is a common problem with this model of Ifor Williams trailers, looking at how poorly they were made it is not a surprise to me. I'm very pleased your horses were not hurt, imagine what could have happened if you had been forced to do an emergency stop in those circumstances.

Ifor Williams just seem to ignore the issue, these trailers are still being used everyday by hundreds, if not thousands of owners unaware of the danger. Looking at images of FOR SALE Ifor Williams I see lots have the new partitions even though they date back to this period - clearly they have been changed by the owners or the suppliers at a later date.

Our dealer tried to blame us for the failure, we had the bars in the wrong way around, apparently you are supposed to have the hooked end on the partition and the clip on the outside wall. We have never heard of this previously, it is tricky to do when loading since the bars would hang from the moving partition end. All the images on the internet, including one recommending our dealer show the bars being used the other way, hanging on the outside wall and being clipped onto the partition when the horse loads. Only the new brochure and website pix show the reverse!

Apparently it is to let the bars drop if you undo the allen keyed bolts on the outside of the trailer, my engineer laughed at the suggestion, it would help in your case but could be deadly in an accident where the trailer had overturned onto it's side. Choose you accident type in advance and put the bars in the correct position!

Check out the website detailed above to see what happened and how we modified the partitions to make them safe.
 
Just as an aside, for people in the UK, the Fire and Rescue Service would always recommend that you treat a horse that is in trouble in a horse box or trailer as a 'hazardous material' and to call them (Animal Rescue Team 999 call) to get help rather than risking your life. Call the vet at the same time as the Animal Rescue Team that they can work together to extract your horse safely. Two incidents highlight this: The first was the chap killed by his horse when he went in to see what was wrong, and the other the incident with 12 polo ponies on the A303. If you want to find out more about animal rescue teams then the Hampshire Service (which trains fire fighters from all across the country) has a Facebook page Friends of the Hampshire Animal Rescue Service.
 
chrisr224 said:
It looks like the partitions failing is a common problem with this model of Ifor Williams trailers, looking at how poorly they were made it is not a surprise to me. I'm very pleased your horses were not hurt, imagine what could have happened if you had been forced to do an emergency stop in those circumstances.

Ifor Williams just seem to ignore the issue, these trailers are still being used everyday by hundreds, if not thousands of owners unaware of the danger. Looking at images of FOR SALE Ifor Williams I see lots have the new partitions even though they date back to this period - clearly they have been changed by the owners or the suppliers at a later date.

Our dealer tried to blame us for the failure, we had the bars in the wrong way around, apparently you are supposed to have the hooked end on the partition and the clip on the outside wall. We have never heard of this previously, it is tricky to do when loading since the bars would hang from the moving partition end. All the images on the internet, including one recommending our dealer show the bars being used the other way, hanging on the outside wall and being clipped onto the partition when the horse loads. Only the new brochure and website pix show the reverse!

Apparently it is to let the bars drop if you undo the allen keyed bolts on the outside of the trailer, my engineer laughed at the suggestion, it would help in your case but could be deadly in an accident where the trailer had overturned onto it's side. Choose you accident type in advance and put the bars in the correct position!

Check out the website detailed above to see what happened and how we modified the partitions to make them safe.
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It doesn't matter which way round you hooked them you can still drop them though...

In an older trailer a horse leaning on the partition pulled it through the outside wall, no accident was had though and we didn't even know it had occurred until we got home, the 2 horses were unaffected.
 
I always have the bars hanging from the partition?? then clipped to the wall..and you use that little rubber thingy to bungee the partition over. IW doesnt come up as having any customer service :(
 
I had one very nasty incident in a IF trailer and the petitions giving way saved the the horse from serious injury .
It is how ever very very difficult to collapse the front bars from the outside if the horse is either hanging from them buy his tummy to stifles or standing on the with his fore feet.
When I had one standing forefeet of the Brest bar legs locked and trapped it was impossible to remove the bar using an Allen key when in was loaded with the horse weight .
I removed the over front bar the petition at the other side then the petition broke at the seam near to the central pilar freeing the horse.
It really scared me about what you would do if you had the same situation with a full width Brest bar with no petition .
My trailer is the Allen key type but I am replacing the fittings with the new type when the trailer gets it's service in the summer .
 
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My 2006 510 Classic has withstood some pretty hefty battering without any problem.

The late chesnut git once came part way over the front bar and hung there for several minutes until I released the breast bar from the outside with the allen key. The trailer was undamaged. My claustrophobic mare used to lean hard first one way then the other, and also lean hard on the breast and breech bars, again without damaging the trailer at all. I have always been very impressed with the build quality of my trailer.
 
chrisr224 said:
In NZ trailers are called FLOATS had us visualizing a wholly different horse transport system but a trailer is a float and a horse box is a horse truck!

Our is an Ifor Williams HB510. The central partition is in three parts, a post in the middle off which hang two swinging partitions that are held in place with breast bars. The rear swinging partition failed due to being very poorly made, you cannot expect rivets placed just 8mm into thin sheets of alloy to resist a horse of any size pushing on the bar for very long. Only the fact that for years we have transported ponies and they tended not to be large enough to push the rear bar has prevented it failing earlier.

We are preparing a webpage with photographs of the damage and what caused it. We have had some repairs done and have several suggested modifications for other Ifor Williams owners to prevent the same thing happening to them. Basically reinforcing the exterior of the partition panels with 50mm x 2mm strips of alloy that connect the front channel to the bar hook and on to the back panel. All bolted through. Easy to do, cheap and very strong, it possibly would have held the horse in the original incident that created this thread.

I had never heard of the emergency release system in these trailers but the agent here made much of it. The bars can be released from outside the trailer, ours needed an allen key but more modern ones can be released using a lever, tyre release or similar. Designed to release the bar and a horse trapped over it without having to enter the trailer. Sounds good but would you remember in the panic of an incident like this?

Our horse is recovering but the scars will never go and her show career is over, an expensive and beautiful horse destroyed because Ifor Williams don't care about the quality of their products!
Click to expand...

Regarding the allen key to release the breast bar. We have had one in a prime location ever since we bought the trailer from new. It's in the truck and there it stays, only used it once when a looney pony (not mine, doing a friend a favour, last time I did that!) decided to jump over and got stuck. The whole bar dropped down and it took seconds..

It's not the first time I've heard of people not knowing about it. I just researched the trailer well before we bought it and then asked the dealer about it who then demonstrated how it worked.
 
Tiddlypom said:
My 2006 510 Classic has withstood some pretty hefty battering without any problem.

The late chesnut git once came part way over the front bar and hung there for several minutes until I released the breast bar from the outside with the allen key. The trailer was undamaged. My claustrophobic mare used to lean hard first one way then the other, and also lean hard on the breast and breech bars, again without damaging the trailer at all. I have always been very impressed with the build quality of my trailer.
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Us too, we have that model and it's used very regularly with many different horses. Even when OH's horse decided he didn't like it anymore and decided to kick the hell out of the side and us the partition as support (no damage, just left sweat marks behind!) it came out unscathed!
 
Can you please let me have any more detailed info re your engineers inspection of the failed partition as I am building a file of similar complaints in order to bring this matter to the attention of more owners. My original post appears to have been hijacked by people who do not understand the method of construction of the partition or like to read their own interpretation of a matter which is incidental

I fully concur with your efforts to strengthen the partition mounting. You will note that on the latest models the mounting is much more substantial and a definite improvement over the pattern which you describe and with which we both have encountered a major problem
 
Craig Jones said:
Can you please let me have any more detailed info re your engineers inspection of the failed partition as I am building a file of similar complaints in order to bring this matter to the attention of more owners. My original post appears to have been hijacked by people who do not understand the method of construction of the partition or like to read their own interpretation of a matter which is incidental

I fully concur with your efforts to strengthen the partition mounting. You will note that on the latest models the mounting is much more substantial and a definite improvement over the pattern which you describe and with which we both have encountered a major problem
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Good to hear from you, I too trust your wife has made a good recovery now. I feel it would be better to discuss this more privately, if you post a comment on my blog we can set up an email conversation. As you rightly say your original post was hi jacked, I do not want the same to happen here.
 
Have been offline for two weeks but I would like to contact you by e-mail as suggested to discuss the matter further but have no idea how to access your blog. Can you enlighten me please?
 
also very sorry to hear about your wife and i hope she does eventually make a full recovery

..but i do have a few points
firstly about the rivets...I am vaguely aware of growing concerns about the difficulty in removing breach bars in the event that a horse gets stuck on it, having experienced this a few times when finding the correct allen key is as ever very difficult..so hypothetically could the easily broken rivets be an attempt to help this problem? just a musing on my part

secondly I hate to jump down your throat but (I do own an ifor and have done for sveral hears) I am failing to see how your wife could of been stood out of the way to the side and be hit on the head by the metal bits that prevent the edge of ramp touching the ground.

i wish your wife all the best for a full recovery
 
LittleRocketRider said:
also very sorry to hear about your wife and i hope she does eventually make a full recovery

..but i do have a few points
firstly about the rivets...I am vaguely aware of growing concerns about the difficulty in removing breach bars in the event that a horse gets stuck on it, having experienced this a few times when finding the correct allen key is as ever very difficult..so hypothetically could the easily broken rivets be an attempt to help this problem? just a musing on my part

secondly I hate to jump down your throat but (I do own an ifor and have done for sveral hears) I am failing to see how your wife could of been stood out of the way to the side and be hit on the head by the metal bits that prevent the edge of ramp touching the ground.

i wish your wife all the best for a full recovery
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Hi there, I suggest you go to my website [B]http://ifor-horse-trailer.com/blog/[/B] and look at the photos!

The rivets tear out of the alloy sheet leaving razor sharp edges on the alloy which could and did in our case, seriously cut your horse. These injuries have the potential to kill so I do not see how it could ever have been designed in as a safety system!

The photos also show the incredibly poor standard of build, bodged is the best word! Nobody in their right mind would design a panel to take the full weight of a horse supported by just ten rivets into thin alloy sheets with the holes just a few mm from the edge of the sheet - there is nothing more - the frame is just decorative, not joined at the corners and the breast bars are just bolted through the panel, albeit with a bit of timber in that spot to replace the polystyrene but not tied to the supporting edge of the frame in anyway.

It makes me worry about even more important bits of the trailer, are the wheels held on in similar fashion?
 
LittleRocketRider said:
also very sorry to hear about your wife and i hope she does eventually make a full recovery

..but i do have a few points
firstly about the rivets...I am vaguely aware of growing concerns about the difficulty in removing breach bars in the event that a horse gets stuck on it, having experienced this a few times when finding the correct allen key is as ever very difficult..so hypothetically could the easily broken rivets be an attempt to help this problem? just a musing on my part

secondly I hate to jump down your throat but (I do own an ifor and have done for sveral hears) I am failing to see how your wife could of been stood out of the way to the side and be hit on the head by the metal bits that prevent the edge of ramp touching the ground.

i wish your wife all the best for a full recovery
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In response - the rivets we are talking about are those holding the hinge strip to the partition and are nothing to do with the location of the breach bar.
Secondly - my wife was NOT standing under the ramp but to the side. It would appear that with the ramp coming down suddenly she fell backwards onto concrete severely damaging the back of her head. Hope this helps with your understanding.
 
Craig Jones said:
In response - the rivets we are talking about are those holding the hinge strip to the partition and are nothing to do with the location of the breach bar.
Secondly - my wife was NOT standing under the ramp but to the side. It would appear that with the ramp coming down suddenly she fell backwards onto concrete severely damaging the back of her head. Hope this helps with your understanding.
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ok thank you I think I may have been getting a bit confused I think by reading through all the other posts:o ...now it makes more sense and all i have to say is sorry if I have caused any offence in any way and strong HHO vibes for your wives recovery.:)
 
chrisr224 said:
Hi there, I suggest you go to my website [B]http://ifor-horse-trailer.com/blog/[/B] and look at the photos!

The rivets tear out of the alloy sheet leaving razor sharp edges on the alloy which could and did in our case, seriously cut your horse. These injuries have the potential to kill so I do not see how it could ever have been designed in as a safety system!

The photos also show the incredibly poor standard of build, bodged is the best word! Nobody in their right mind would design a panel to take the full weight of a horse supported by just ten rivets into thin alloy sheets with the holes just a few mm from the edge of the sheet - there is nothing more - the frame is just decorative, not joined at the corners and the breast bars are just bolted through the panel, albeit with a bit of timber in that spot to replace the polystyrene but not tied to the supporting edge of the frame in anyway.

It makes me worry about even more important bits of the trailer, are the wheels held on in similar fashion?
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oh yes I can't see the photos but know from what you were saying that that is not a safety feature. I just got confused and wasn't sure if the breach bar colllapsed or broke or if it was the breach bar at all. :)
 
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