OK so I may have been wrong about how often bearings and races need to be changed. I checked Google and found a VERY WIDE RANGE of recommendations as to how often it should be done. One typical suggestion for REPACKING:

Wheel bearings on trailers with regular sized tires should be repacked every 10,000 miles on trailers used regularly, especially if they are heavily loaded. You can get by with repacking every two years on trailers that are lightly loaded and do not see many road miles. On trailers with tiny wheels like boat trailers they should repacked as often as every 2,000 miles. The smaller the wheel, the faster the bearings spin, and the greater the need for good lubrication.

I didn't find many articles that actually stated how often bearings and races should be REPLACED but the few that I did find seem to recommend it about every 20,000 miles. I based my other post about 3000 miles on what I THOUGHT I HAD read and heard from people like DC Chopper's Dad. All of the articlas say that races and bearings should both be replaced at the same time just to be safe.

I figure that I trailer about 5 to 6 thousand miles a year and I have been replacing my races & bearings every four to five years. I REPACK THIM EVERY YEAR.

I bought my first boat & trailer used from a friend. I was new to boating and never gave a thought to the wheel bearings until I had a wheel bearing go out half way between E-town and Nolin. After that happens to you one time, you (I) get skittish and you make sure it doesn't happen again even if it means changing bearings more frequently than you really need to.

Any other ideas or thoughts would be appreciated

Grumpy