One in nine used trailer checks throws up a problem

The facts

Flag rate 2026

11% of checks, or roughly one in nine

Flag rate 2025

10%

What gets flagged

Theft records, outstanding finance agreements, other security interests

Database size

More than 1.8 million items, including about 950,000 trailers

Who uses it

Buyers, sellers, dealers, auctioneers, police forces, insurers

The Equipment Register, which keeps a database of plant, agricultural and stolen equipment, has published its 2026 numbers. Of the checks run on second-hand equipment this year, 11% came back with something attached: a theft record, an outstanding finance agreement, or another financial interest in the item. That is up from 10% in 2025. TER's manager, Treve Jenkyn, says the rate has sat stubbornly high for the best part of a decade, so the 2026 rise comes on top of an already bad baseline, not off a clean slate.

Around 950,000 of the 1.8 million records on that database are trailers. Horseboxes and trailers sell well second-hand, at home and abroad, which is exactly what makes them worth stealing. The same database is used by police forces and insurers, so a check does two jobs at once: it protects your money, and it feeds information back into tracing stolen property.

The part worth sitting with is TER's warning about assumption. A trailer that looks right, has a tidy advert and is being sold through a platform you have used before tells you nothing about its finance history or whether it was legitimately the seller's to sell. Appearance is not provenance. Neither is a friendly conversation in a yard.

None of this needs to slow a sale down much. It is a check done before the money moves, not after, and the cost of skipping it is the whole purchase price.

What this means for you

Anyone buying a used trailer or lorry privately

Run a history check before you hand over any money, including a deposit. A deposit paid on something with finance attached is money you may never see again.

Pony Club families buying a first trailer

This is usually a big single outlay on a tight budget, often from a private seller found online. It is the exact situation the figures describe.

Buyers using dealers, auctions or familiar selling sites

A known platform is not a guarantee. TER makes the point explicitly that a legitimate-looking route to sale is not evidence of a clean history.

Current owners

Your trailer's details on a register make it harder to shift if it is stolen, and easier to trace. Knowing your chassis or VIN number by heart is a start.

What to do

1. Find and write down the chassis or VIN number of any trailer you are considering, and check it matches every document the seller shows you

   Before you agree a price

2. Run a history check with a register such as TER to look for theft records or outstanding finance

   Before any deposit changes hands

3. Ask the seller directly whether the trailer has ever been on finance, and ask for written confirmation it is settled

   At viewing

4. Keep a signed receipt with the seller's name, address, the chassis number and the price

   On the day of purchase

5. Record your own trailer's identifying numbers and photograph them, so you can act quickly if it ever goes

   This month