In February of 2008 I ordered a new Kendon Industries (www.Kendonusa.com) chopper trailer. I had owned three of their standard motorcycle trailers in the past and expected the new trailer to exhibit the same quality of construction as my earlier trailers. Was I in for a surprise. I ordered this trailer from one of their Northwest dealers. It arrived at our shops while I was working overseas, so I did not see it for six weeks after I bought it. My shop guys simply put it in my garage and went on with their business.

  The first hint that I had of a problem was when my wife called me to ask if I knew that the trailer had a production date of mid-2006. The local DMV was giving her grief over age of the "Certificate of Origin". She contacted the dealer who gave her a piece of paper stating that the trailer was out of current inventory. As you can imagine, I was not happy about paying new list price for a trailer that Kendon had built 2 years earlier. Of course, no one at the dealership cared about me after they were paid.

  Once I returned from overseas we started using the trailer behind my 55 Ford pickup to haul my 2007 Thunder Mountain Chopper to car shows around the Northwest. On the first trip out I found that one of the tires was so out of round that we had to stop at a tire store and have the spare put on. Another issue was that the tie down points were too far back for a chopper like mine. They made the tie-downs pull slightly to the rear so that the bike required a 4 point tie down. This is not easy on a highly custom chopper. Places to hook tie-downs are scarce and once found, scratch easily.  We continued to use the trailer to haul the bike to shows.

  Over the summer I started getting negative comments on the trailer. People were pointing out to me flaws, like one rear fender being a different shade of black than the other. They began to point to places where the powder coating was flaking off and rust was beginning to show. This was in July, so I had owned this trailer for four and a half months. By August, the trailer was getting so bad that I was loosing points in the shows we went to. We also had a scare where the bike slid on the trailed when one of my shop guys only used two tie-downs on the front forks. To combat this in the future I welded two 3/4" nuts onto the frame to move the tie down points forward.

  I was finally fed up with the poor quality of the trailer. We are "show" oriented. We do high quality restifications and do not like loosing points over someone else's poor workmanship. Here at C.M. Classics we do powder coating on small parts and we send out frames and such to have powder coated on a regular basis. One thing that is constant is that I have never seen correctly applied powder coat flake off. Never. Finally I decided to contact Kendon. I emailed them and was contacted by Amber, their dealer manager. I explained to her every detail of my situation. I sent her the series of pictures below. She told me that Kendon did not want such poor quality a product out in public and if I could ship it back to them they would fix it up for us. They paid the shipping so I shipped it back to them in California.

  Once they received the trailer I did not hear from them. After a month I started to try finding out what was up. I contacted Amber again and after several calls she had me talk to some lady that was one of the owners. Almost the first words out of this lady's mouth were that their shop engineer said that when we welded the nuts to the front of the frame we caused the powder coat to flake off. I am a mechanical engineer. My degree is from OSU and I own an international engineering company. So I called bullshit on that theory. Never mind that they had pictures from months before we put the nuts on and they illustrated that damage existed then. It was apparent to me that this woman simply did not want to stand behind their product.

  To add insult to injury, a couple of weeks pass before I hear from them again. When I do it is Amber telling me that they want me to pay the shipping, then they will powder coat the trailer again. I decided that the best approach, given the poor quality of their first job, would be for me to get the trailer back, fix the problems myself and have it powder coated locally. I want the metal work done correctly, the tire rail repaired and I want it done to a quality level that will not cost me points at car shows. Their reply- they will not ship it to me unless I pay them nearly $400.00.

See update below.