Flat-bed Trailer Rehabilitation

We have loads (literally) of work to do, and lots of that will involve the 1994 'Hudson Brothers' flat-bed trailer.

This trailer is not a 'lawn cart,' the kind used to transport lawnmowers and such. This trailer is rated to haul our Ford tractor and as many implements that can fit on the flat boards.
I got this trailer nearly 20 years ago. Couldn't afford it at the time, so I charged it on my MasterCard and made payments. We used the hell out of it, dragging the tractor back and forth to West Virginia, all the barn construction materials; e.i, boards, roofing shingles, cement, gates, etc.
We parked it in the drive-way at our house, with the tractor and all the attachments under a brown tarp. For months.
For many years it sat in the rain forest that is our place in West Virginia. Have always had legal tags on it, and replaced the tires over five years ago. Along the way it was painted, too, and the brakes done.
Back then we decided to install a telephone pole at the place in West Virginia, but not for phone service. We wanted to put our satellite TV dish on it and install a flood light and breaker box for the trailer and spring head pump.
Back then we were much younger and energetic. We started with an array of tools, mostly for digging, and used an auger that attached to the new tractor's PTO link. Also needed a pry-bar, a sledge hammer, post-hole digger, and several kinds of shovels. For one three-foot deep post hole. In West Virginia.
This simple task took nearly an entire weekend. The hole ended up being enormous, and took on water at the 2-foot mark. We also were burying 'electric' from the barn to the pole, and wanted that to be three feet deep, well below the freeze line. We ended up with a wide ditch with an incredible amount of rocks, mostly sandstone, some with fossils.
We took the truck and flatbed trailer to 'Southern States Co-operative' in Moorefield, the closest 'large' town and county seat, to purchase two telephone poles.
We parked in the gravel lot, and walked into a close replica of the 'country store' on the 'Green Acres' sound stage, complete with characters sitting around the wood stove near the door.
If you're not 'from here' you have to seek help, because if they don't know you, you are invisible. He corners the guy hiding behind the counter and inquires about telephone poles. We'd like two. 'Do you need these delivered?' He says, 'We have a 'Hudson' out front.'
The old man sitting on a folding lawn chair at the stove scoots out of it like a shot, and goes to the door. I could tell he's disappointed that the 'Hudson' is a flat-bed, not a car.

I'm sure he would have been very entertained to watch modern-day Lesters try to put telephone poles in a Hudson.
They get the poles on the trailer, strapped down with our tie-downs, and off we go. Over mountain, through the pass, past Lost River and back to our place. The poles are incredibly heavy. So heavy we really are struggling to lift them off the trailer.
We can only, together, lift one end at a time, and manage to get one off. I see stars. This is going to be harder than we planned.
We get the bright idea to lash the pole to the tractor's roll bar and back it up to the hole, letting it fall in on its own. And that is exactly what we did, and what happened. We still have the other pole, which we cut in two, and never installed as lamp posts, over twenty years ago. In West Virginia.
That one stunt with the telephone pole made us bolder, and we then planned and executed the squarest, straightest pole-barn building in West Virginia.

We used 8 x 8s and installed them into holes the exact same way as the telephone pole. We didn't know anything about 'foundations' or masonry, so this was our only option. And we built it stick by stick, no pre-fabrication because we couldn't lift anything like that.

Once the new tires and rims arrive, we'll be back in business and able to pick up the fence posts (250+), 16-foot fence boards, the box scraper (550 lbs.) and the tiller.

The trailer color was originally chosen to match, sort of, the blue Ford tractor.