Gladiator Horse Floats

This is a review of a 2023 Gladiator 2 horse straight load extended float and the process of buying it from Gladiator in Wollongong. We've now lived with this float for two years. The floats good points : The float is very sturdy and the finish is great. It seems to be very well made and we enjoy using it. Horses always happy to get on and the ride seems smooth - we each took a turn traveling in the float on the dirt road that goes to our place. We've added a sleeping system which consists of some aluminium angle and some thin ply that gives us a double bed above the padded sides. It's nice to sleep in especially with the fly screens on all the windows. We've camped out in some very wet weather and have never had any leaks.

Some other things worth a mention : We were shocked at how noisey it was in the float when on a dirt road. It was seriously loud. We spent a lot of time inserting rubber tube and washers to all the pins and bushes in the float that held the centre divider, rump and chest bars and the stallion divider. This quietened the noise down a lot. It was quite acceptable then but we do need to occasionally replace bits of rubber when it wears out. The rug rack was also very noisey but was fixed with some silicon and rubber weather strip. The rear ramp is very easy to open and close but is hinged in a way that means there is a decent lip where the ramp meets the float which is quite annoying when you're trying to sweep the poos out as they just accumulate at the raised lip. One of the front tack doors is slightly too big for the frame that it sits in so it's hard to close as it scrapes on the door frame. I've tried to adjust the door position which is how I discovered that it's just a dud fit. One of the float doors does not sit properly so the rubber seal does not touch the body and you can see daylight through it. Only seems to let water in in driving rain while traveling and even then it's not much but a shame it's that way from new. We asked for a storage box above each wheel guard which were fitted but they are the cheapest rubbish. They are made of alfoil and were very bent and flimsy. Very out of keeping with the rest of the float build quality. Don't bother getting them. The roof vents are the same Chinese ones as you'd get in an import float. They are very hard to open and won't close completely as the rubber seals seem to be too big for the vent. We've never opened the rear vents for fear that we'll never get them properly shut again. The float was a bit heavier than we were expecting from the online specs but we've gotten used to it.

Now to the worst part - Dealing with Gladiator. At the start every thing was rosy. We did most of the planning by email and asked for a few modifications to the standard float which gladiator were happy to accommodate. No problems with good communication. We finalised a design and paid a deposit. Then it turned to trash. Communication dried up almost completely. We were told it would take six months to build and supply the float. We contacted them as that time drew near and initially got no response. We persisted and then got only a terse response saying it wasn't ready yet. We kept waiting. We tried communicating again roughly monthly after that with very limited response. In fact it was so bad that we suspected they had gone broke and we'd lost our deposit. We were very concerned and asked to a least come up and see the float to reassure our selves that it actually existed. We were told no. At the 10 month point we sent a strongly worded email asking for our deposit back. No response. Eventually after 11 months they called us and said it was ready. We got up there as fast as we could and took it home fearing that they would shut up shop any day.

So... all in all it's a good float with some small annoying bits but we can easily work around those. However dealing with gladiator was a right pain in the hole and we wouldn't do it again.