Non-streetable Jeeps/vehicles and "broken" ones need trailers
Well this thread certainly went to "crap" after the series of humorous photo postings :lmao:
Back to the topic at hand... there is a very practical/legal need to trailer vehicles that are not licensed for street use - they cannot have their wheels touching the pavement/be legally driven or towed on the road, AKA in some states you can't flat tow them if they are licensed for off-road use/racing use only (aren't licensed for public roads).
The other reason is mechanical breakage (read a couple of paragraphs below).
To avoid a trailer or dolly, we fitted CJ5 with Warn rear (yes rear) hubs on the Detroit-locked Dana 44 for "flat towing" behind a diesel pusher RV (yes modern-day Jeeps can be flat towed w/o disconnecting drive train components if you follow the instructions in the owner's manual). But the hubs are hard to position to re-lock them after free-wheeling them, and we blew one hub out at a Death Valley run possible too much V8 power to the wheel or the hub had a mech failure. Have heard of others blowing hubs too. There were a good number of Warn rear hub part at teh run and we were able to repair the CJ5 for the return run home missed out on a few days of runs wrenching on the Jeep. If you break and axle or drive shaft on the trail the hubs are handy to have if you can't do/don't have the parts for a trail fix.
Also it's nice to have a couple of road-licensed Jeeps on trailers in your run group on an outing - so if someone in the group breaks an axle or road-critical suspension component on the trail, you can limp the Jeep back to camp and drag it onto a trailer for a ride home, sometimes hundreds of miles away. The rule was you had to foot the gas bill to return the drive-able originally trailered Jeep home, and maybe even be the one to drive it, so the trailer owner could drag your broken Jeep home with their tow vehicle and trailer as a favor to you.
So lots of legitimate reasons for trailering a Jeep beyond vanity or whatever.
Not the best photo of the driver's rear Warn Dana 44 full floater rear hub but you can see this in an early build photo of our '74 CJ5.
Another photo of the Warn Dana 44 axle/hub kit I saw some new REar Warn hubs for sale on the website for a popular speed shop that has a warehouse in Reno, Nevada.
