Trailer Contract?

Ok so i have a friend thats leasing a horse but she doesnt have a trailer. Our 4h group has weekly riding lessons at the county fairgrounds and she asked me to trailer her horse. Now i know in order for everyone to be safe some kind of contract should be negotiated. But im not sure what all should be in it or if anyone has done this kind of thing before. The deal was she would pay $20 a week for me to haul her horse (and mine) to the lessons and back. However because its a leased horse i also need the owners input also. Can anyone help or give some ideas of what kind of contract should be drawn up? I dont want to be liable for anything that might happen, and i dont have insurance that covers horses.

You need to check with your auto insurance first to see what type of coverage you have.

An option is to simply have them sign a waiver of liability. State they are 100% responsible for the horse. Period.

agreed... You need to have the actual owner and the person leasing sign to really cover yourself

Just a heads up. I heard about this law this last summer, but if you are hauling someone else's horse, getting paid for it, and/or competing you need to have a commercial license. Apparently this has applied to horse trailer/truck combos for quite sometime, but was rarely enforced. Now that everyone is short on money they are starting to enforce it. From what I've heard this can be a pain if you get pulled over, as in your horses are stuck there until you can find a commercial driver to drive the vehicle... I don't know all of the specifics in regards to this but if you are taking money or thinking about going to competitions you should definitely check it out. I don't think its a big deal for smaller truck/trailers if there is no money/competitions involved. My brother got pulled over last summer with just his truck and ended up getting a ticket, he then looked up some info and told me about this cuz my friend pulls my horse and her boss's horses. I'm going to check it out before I get my trailer and such figured out this summer. Maybe he was wrong , I hope anyways a commercial license is a bit of a pain.

maybe it depends on the area but simply towing horses around does not require a special license unless the trailer holds over a certain amount of horses and is a certain size. I just have a smaller 2 horse straight load stock trailer. I guess to clarify my question, what are somethings i should put in the contract? because i know i want the owner, and the leaser to sign it and be sure it says they are liable for the horse not me, i was just wondering if there was maybe a generic contract already made up that maybe i could take some notes from. Thanks again for your help

I'm certain the laws on that are different in every state, our trailer is 45ft, and now that I think about it the truck is registered as commercial. But it didn't have to be, that is all pending how much the trailer weights and such.

Maybe inspected as commercial, It isn't here right now so I can't walk out n look at it. But I'm pretty certain it is registered commercial.

You tell the officer that you own the horses. You also don't charge for the actual haul but fuel.

Loop hole!

I think it depends on the size of the trailer/truck and whether or not money is exchanging hands or if you're trailering somewhere to make money. I'm sure it differs from state to state too. I have to look it up for MN so that I'm set for this summer. The only thing that made me thing about this in the OP was that she is getting paid... only $20 but sometimes its the little things that get you in trouble. My friend looked it up and she does need to get her commercial license to be legal, but her situation is a little different than yours. I would just talk to your insurance people and maybe some sort of law person (cop?, not sure) to get an idea of what you need for the contract though. Maybe I'm just old and whiny but I've been around enough that I'd rather be safe than sorry (at least when I'm not riding, LOL)!

I have had friends haul my horses on several occasions. I never even thought of getting any type of contract. My horses are covered under my home/farm owners policy.
If you are worried about it you could just type up a simple contract stating that you (the hauler) are not responsible for any injury's or possible death to the animals. Likewise they are not responsible for any damage their animals could cause to your property (trailer) and everyone signs it.