I saw my first Turtleback at Overland Expo in 2015 and got hooked — on the build quality, and just as much on the community that formed around these trailers. People from every walk of life, brought together by the outdoors. I bought my first one in 2017 and ran it hard all over the western U.S. By 2018 I was hosting Turtleback's community "herd of turtles" events, and I kept running them until 2023, when the company was sold and relocated to Tennessee. A lot of my closest friends today are people I met through these trailers.
In 2019 I started product testing and consulting for Turtleback. My job, basically, was to find what breaks — and I was good at it. The upgrades that came out of that testing are a big part of why a modern Turtleback is as reliable as it is. This trailer has all of them, because it's the one I kept for myself — and the one I've put about 40,000 miles on, across eleven western states, three Canadian provinces/territories, and Alaska.
The biggest one was the suspension. The original design welded undersized 3,000-lb spindles into the trailing arms, and off pavement they broke — sometimes a ruined trip, sometimes a rolled, totaled trailer. The feedback I gave led to the Timbren 3500 HD spindle: a 7,200-lb unit derated to 3,500, on a redesigned arm that bolts on and is field-replaceable. They're symmetric, so one spare covers both sides and you can swap a corner on the trail. To my knowledge nobody has broken one of the new spindles.
The same thinking runs through the whole trailer. I relocated the Guzzle water-purification system off the vibrating rear panel into the protected internal cage and added a service hatch. I designed a proper mount for the water heater after watching several of the factory setups crack and leak on Death Valley washboard. I pulled the heavy steel roof rack and rooftop tent for a lightweight Front Runner aluminum rack and a right-sized OVS 270° awning — lighter up high means a lower center of gravity and a trailer that's far harder to roll.
This trailer rides on brand-new ICON shocks with about 5,000 miles, and carries its own insurance: a full backup set of ICON shocks rebuilt by Podium Suspension, two spare spindles, spare hubs, and two sets of pre-greased, vacuum-sealed bearings. The whole point is confidence — that you can get deep into somewhere remote and know you'll get back. Honestly, I'm only selling because we bought a Tundra with an OVRLND camper, and as we built that out we used the trailer less and less. It's spent the past year sitting under cover in the backyard — and it deserves better than that. It needs to go to someone who'll actually use it the way it was built to be used.
