Put a new floor on my trailer last weekend. The floor looked ok, but most of the boards had cracks. Water had been collecting in the cracks and caused the boards to rot from the inside out.
CDR's pawpaw wanted to help with the project, so I stripped the old floor and we brought it out to San Antonio.
Ended up going with regular #2 pine for the new floor. I looked into other species popular with trailer builders such as white oak and apitong. I couldn't find any white oak that wasn't big money furniture grade. Apitong is used pretty often on big rig trailers and supposed to be really durable. It was still pretty pricey at $4+ a board foot. At that cost I'd have to replace the #2 pine almost 8 times before I met the price of apitong. With proper water treatment the wood should keep plenty of years.
I wanted to add anchor points in similar positions as most steel deck car haulers. What I came up with is to span two crossmembers front and rear with channel steel. I used C6x10.5. The 6" width worked well with the floor layout. I was able to space things out so all full length boards were 2x8 and where the anchor channels were would use 2x6. The 10.5# weight gives the channel a little over a 1/4" web for strength. The legs of the channel are just over 2" tall, so I had to notch them to 1.5" where they rest on the crossmembers to make the top even with the deck. I'll pick up some recessed d-rings typically used on car haulers and weld them to the channels this week.
http://www.macscustomtiedowns.com/product/48/DRings
Front anchor point. Added a piece of angle to support the end of the board.
Rear anchor point on the dovetail.
Christy's pawpaw putting the final screws in the dovetail. I used floor screws the same as I had pulled out of the old floor. The screws have a T30 torx socket head, and the thread is self tapping.
And the finished deck. Still need to treat it and weld on the new d-rings.