Most trailers have never been measured
Tractors get attention because a driver sits in them and reports what they feel. A trailer is hooked up, loaded and sent, and a great many of them have not been checked since the day they were built.
That matters more than it sounds. A trailer carries most of the weight in a combination and has more tires on the ground than the tractor pulling it, so a trailer running out of line wears more rubber per mile than a tractor doing the same thing. The driver feels almost none of it.
How to tell from outside the cab
The national trailer alignment page lists the signs, and all of them are visible from outside the vehicle rather than from the driver's seat.
That is the point worth holding onto. A trailer has no one assigned to notice it, which is exactly why it goes unmeasured for its whole working life, and why somebody has to look on purpose.
What gets measured
Axle alignment to the kingpin, the relationship between axles on a tandem or tri-axle, and the condition of the suspension and mounting hardware holding it together.
A trailer that has been loaded heavily for years, has taken a dock hit, or has been worked on rough ground is the usual candidate. Age by itself is not the trigger; what has happened to it is.
The combination, not the halves
Billings aligns tractors as well. Heavy-duty truck alignment and trailer alignment measured together answer a question that neither answers alone, because a combination running crooked can be the fault of either end.
For a fleet with stable tractor and trailer pairings, doing both on one visit settles it and gives you a baseline to compare against later.
Agricultural and equipment trailers too
Not every trailer here is a highway van. Livestock and grain trailers, equipment floats and farm trailers run rough ground, take uneven loading, and are among the least inspected assets on most operations.
They are also the ones where tire cost is easiest to write off as the price of the work rather than as a correctable problem. Billings carries trailer tires along with every other Purcell category, so the measurement and the tires happen in one place.
About this store
The Billings store runs sixteen services and is managed by Larry Wagoner. Belgrade offers no alignment, which makes Billings the Purcell location in Montana for trailer work.
See the national trailer alignment page for all 36 locations.