Last year we were already actively delivering adult pheasants by today’s date. This year, with the temperatures near 90 degrees, our early season customers are holding off taking their first delivery for a week or two. Once we get started next week or the week after that, we will be sending at least 3 full goosenecks (the name of the trailer type in the picture) of pheasants (and some partidges) each week.
We do most of our own maintenance in our shop. We used to send out our trailers for brake jobs, but Art now carries a full inventory of brake parts and with Mike’s help (and Ryan George’s help too) Art repairs/replaces all our trailer brakes in our own shop.
We have four 26′ gooseneck trailers (like the one in the picture). The trailers are sandblasted and repainted on a schedule – and we go through a lot of tires (at a cost of about $240 per tire). The stakes are even higher for us than most in that we are delivering live birds to destinations as far away as Oregon/Washington, to Florida and to eastern Quebec. We just can’t afford to break down. So we proactively replace brakes, tires, wheel bearings etc. with the intent to limit breakdowns.
