Abstract: In addition to ensuring safety of the occupants, the lightweight design for the front end structure of the transfer trailer also needs to be considered. In this article, the crash safety performance and lightweight requirements are comprehensively considered. First, the LS-DYNA is used to establish a finite element model of the crash analysis of the typical front-end energy-absorbing structure of the transfer trailer. According to this model, impact of the material selection on the crash safety performance of the overall structure under 100% frontal high-speed collision conditions is analyzed. It is concluded that the change of the total energy absorption, the front longitudinal beam collapse and the peak value of crash force are less than 2% when the materials of the impact beam are aluminum alloy and steel respectively; however, replacing the impact beam with aluminum alloy instead of steel reduces the total mass of the structure by 23.9%, and improves the specific absorbed energy by 31.1%. Furthermore, taking the thickness of each thin-walled beam as the design variable, the structural crash safety performance and weight of the structure are optimized; the results show that the optimum thickness of the crash beam is 1.7 mm, the thickness of energy-absorbing box is 1.8 mm, and the thickness of the front longitudinal beam is 2.575 mm. This research can improve the crashworthiness of the transfer trailer, and it has the advantages of weight reduction and energy saving, which provides a strong support for the optimal design of the transfer trailer.