In-house weekly payments
We carry the financing ourselves and you pay us every week, out of what the trailer earns. That's it. That's the product. It exists because the way this industry normally finances trailers doesn't work for the people who most want to buy one.
No obligation. No credit pull to get a quote. We answer in one business day or we call you.
The problem
Hispanic-owned small businesses are denied loans, lines of credit and cash advances at roughly 51%, against 30% for white-owned firms — and are fully approved for traditional financing at 19% against 35%. The gap persists after controlling for revenue, business age and creditworthiness.
Federal Reserve Small Business Credit Survey, Report on Firms Owned by People of Color.
Almost every equipment lender wants 6 to 24 months of trading history. SBA 7(a) generally wants 24. Some want $10,000/month already flowing through a business bank account.
But the trailer is the business. You cannot satisfy the requirement that would let you buy the thing that creates the requirement. That's not a credit problem, it's a design flaw.
The lenders other builders route you to cap out low — commonly $20,000, sometimes $35,000, occasionally $50,000. A properly built 16-foot trailer with a Type I hood, suppression, three-comp sink and code-legal propane costs more than that.
So you get approved for a trailer you can't legally operate, or you get sold a shell.
There's no clever financial engineering here. It's deliberately simple, because complicated terms are how people get hurt.
Menu, city, where you'll park, how many days a week you'll run. No credit application, no documents to gather, no fee. This is a conversation, not an underwriting file.
You see the same trailer at three different down payments and terms, side by side, with the weekly number on each. Pick the one where the payment still leaves you a living.
$500 secures your production slot. The rest of the down payment — from 20% of the build — follows before we start cutting steel. From there the build is paid at milestones: frame, equipment, delivery, each with dated photos of your trailer. You are never out a large sum against nothing.
Weekly payments begin after you have the trailer, not before. The point of this whole structure is that the trailer is earning while you pay for it.
We write terms at 52, 104 or 156 weeks — one, two or three years. Shorter term, bigger weekly payment, less carrying cost overall; pick the one your slowest month can survive, not your best one. No prepayment penalty. At the end the trailer transfers to you for a symbolic $1 — you cover the title transfer and registration fees, which are the state's, not ours.
| Us (in-house weekly) | Partner lender via another builder | Bank / SBA | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credit score needed | None | 550–640 typical | 640+ typical |
| Time in business needed | None | 6–24 months | 24 months |
| Maximum amount | The full build | $20k–$50k cap | High, if you qualify |
| Down payment | From 20% | 10–20% typical | 10–20% |
| Payment rhythm | Weekly | Monthly | Monthly |
| Time to a decision | Same week | 24–48 hrs after documents | 30–90 days |
| Who to call if a week goes bad | The people who built it | A call centre | A department |
| Early payoff penalty | None | Varies | Varies |
We're the ones carrying the risk, so we have an incentive to be straight with you about whether this works. Three things we say out loud:
A food trailer nets 6–9%, not 30%. Industry net margin runs around 6–9% — median roughly 6.4%. On $25,000 a month that's $1,500–$2,250 in your pocket. Anyone showing you a projection with a 20% net margin is selling you something. Build your plan on the real number and it will hold.
The payment should be a small share of your gross profit. Our rule of thumb: if the weekly payment is more than about a third of what's left after food cost and labour, the plan is too tight. Put more down, take a longer term, or start with a smaller trailer. We will say this to you even though the bigger trailer is the bigger sale.
We would rather restructure than repossess — and we never have. Six years, and we have not repossessed a single trailer. Not because nothing ever goes wrong; things go wrong all the time. Because a repossessed trailer is a loss for us and a catastrophe for you, so when somebody calls us in a bad month we work it out. The agreement does contain a repossession clause, the way every finance agreement does, and it comes into play if somebody hides the trailer or refuses to return it after written notice. That is what it is for. It is not what we do.
Call us before you miss, not after. That is the whole ask. A week is a conversation. Three months of silence is a problem for both of us.
No credit check means we are carrying the risk on somebody the banks wouldn't touch. Here is how we make that survivable. None of it is a surprise at the table — it is all in the agreement, and we would rather you read it here first.
We would rather you walk away at this paragraph than at the signing table.
You're paying us. It's an in-house payment agreement between you and Your Food Trailers — not a bank loan, not a lease dressed up, and we don't sell the paper on. That's the whole reason it works for people the banks turn down.
No. We don't pull your credit to quote you and we don't pull it to approve you. What we look at is the plan: what you're selling, where you'll park, what you can put down, and whether the weekly payment leaves you enough to actually live on. Financing is subject to a signed agreement.
Most of our financed customers have been. Nationally, Hispanic-owned firms are denied credit at around 51% versus 30% for white-owned firms, and nearly every equipment lender wants 6–24 months of business history you can't have yet. A denial from a bank tells us almost nothing about whether you can run a trailer.
From 20%. It moves with the size of the build and the term. More down means a smaller weekly payment and a shorter term; less down means the opposite. We'll show you three options side by side so you can pick, rather than quoting you one number and hoping.
Up to 156 weeks (3 years). There's no penalty for paying it off early — if you have a strong summer, pay it down and save the carrying cost. We'd rather have a customer who owns their trailer than a payment stream.
Call us. Weather, a broken axle, a slow month after the holidays — we've seen all of it and we'd much rather restructure a payment than repossess a trailer. That's the practical advantage of financing with the people who built it: there's a human on the other end who wants you operating. Specific terms, including any grace period, are in your agreement.
No. We finance the trailers we build, because we're carrying the risk on something we know the condition of. If you already have a trailer and need it brought up to code, that's a different conversation — call us.
No, and the difference matters. With financing you own the trailer and are paying it off. With rent-to-own you're renting with the payments building toward a purchase, which means a lower barrier to start and a higher total cost if you go the distance. We'll tell you honestly which one fits your situation.
Tell us what you're going to sell and we'll send back a floor plan and a weekly payment — no obligation, no credit pull.