Needed to pick up our new lawn tractor in Christiansburg. You don’t just load a John Deere L130 into the back of a Jeep Liberty so we needed to buy a trailer.

Found a nice 4by6 one with a 2,000-lb capacity at Lowes. Normally, you have to license the trailer before you take it off the lot but told the sales folks we would hit DMV on the way home and we headed off to pick up the tractor first.

Our first mistake. The L130’s 48-inch cutting deck results in a lawn tractor that’s about 50-inches wide — exactly two inches wider than a 4by6 trailer.

Back to Lowes to exchange the 4by6 for a 5by8 then back to pick up the tractor. By that time DMV was closed and we faced the 25-mile drive back to Floyd with a new lawn tractor on a new trailer with no license plates.

Made it without an encounter with Virginia’s finest only to find the tractor was also too wide to fit into our utility shed.

Oh well. We plan to replace the utility shed as well. So the lawn tractor went into the garage until we get one.

Side does matter.