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The Trailer Grows Up

By Julian Leggett

ROM the time, only ten years ago, when it was little more than a big wooden box perched precariously between two wheels, the trailer has come a long way.

Just recently, an auto-and-trailer unit was traveling the desert road beside the Salton sea, with the speedometer needle hovering close to seventy. As the driver picked up the telephone to inform his family in the trailer that they were nearing their destination, there was a loud bang. The driver felt a quick tug at the steering wheel, a sudden drag on the car. But nothing else happened. There was no loss of control, no careening. Cautiously he set the brakes and brought the two vehicles to a stop. Investigation revealed that one of the trailer tires had blown out—at seventy miles an hour-yet not even a dish was out of place in the trailer’s cupboard.

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Mobile Home Expands to Form Three Rooms

Light and compact enough to be drawn behind a motor car like a trailer, a movable type of house can be expanded to form three rooms at its destination. On the road it is supported on two wheels with drop axle and is sixteen feet long and six and one-half feet wide.

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TRAILER LIFE LURES MORE THOUSANDS

Tin Can Tourists’ Reunion in Sandusky reflects growing boom in business of escaping rent by house car dwelling.

NEW impetus has been given the boom in trailer travel by the exhibits and meetings of the Automobile Tourists Association at Manistee, Mich., and the reunion of the Tin Can Tourists of the World at Sandusky, Ohio.

Thousands more are turning to life on wheels and a dozen additional automobile makers are planning to add house cars to their lines as a result of the interest displayed. The Sandusky gathering gave birth to a new organization of builders, the Coach Trailer Manufacturers’ Association.

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Add an internet connection and this looks like a pretty spiffy place to live and work.

Trailer Combines Home and Office

Home and office are combined in a custom-built trailer just completed for an executive whose business keeps him touring the country. Equipped with desks, typewriter, and electric dictating machine, it also provides the owner and his wife with satinwood-furnished living quarters, an upper-deck observation lounge, a tiled bathroom with hot and cold shower, and a stainless-steel kitchen with a range burning bottled gas. Telephones connect office, power car, and galley; and an air-conditioning plant maintains year-round comfort.

Blimp-Like Trailer Is His Pride And Joy

HARRY STEINMAN, Yonkers, N. Y., carpenter, proudly polishes the blimp-like trailer which he has been building in his spare time for the past three years. The exterior of the trailer is covered with strips of metal welded together and the design resembles a blimp, with portholes instead of windows. The interior is constructed for comfort and includes a complete kitchen. Steinman and his family will vacation in the trailer this summer.

Wow, they must be big practitioners of the realism school of teaching because the girl in that bathing class looks pretty damn naked.

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Trailer School TEACHES DRIVING and HOUSEKEEPING

OFFERING a comprehensive two-weeks course, what is believed to be the world’s first school for trailer owners has just been established on the outskirts of New York City. Staffed by a faculty of experts, the unique school provides instruction in all phases of trailer operation, construction, and maintenance.

The course begins in an indoor classroom where present and prospective trailer owners hear lectures, watch demonstrations, and receive their first lessons in driving with model automobiles and trailers that are maneuvered by hand on a table-top driving area. The curriculum progresses to the study of trailer chassis, lighting systems, brakes, springs, hitches, and other construction details.

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Car-Trailer Combination

A radical departure in automobile design is represented by a streamlined automobile in which the body and frame are integral and which, it is claimed, increases safety in driving while combining all of the features of a pleasure car and trailer. The structure is streamlined and is 16 feet long and 6 feet 4 inches wide overall. The inside height is 6 feet 4 inches. The motor is in the rear and operates on the rear wheels. The car is suspended from variable pitch coil springs and has a cruising speed of fifty miles an hour. Its floor is 12 inches from the ground and the road clearance is 9-1/2 inches. This together with improved driver visibility, it is claimed, makes the car especially safe to drive.

Business Men Commute in Auto Trailer
Commuting in an automobile trailer, five business men of Newark, N. J., share the services of a single chauffeur to reach their desks in comfort. The commodious vehicle calls for them in the morning and brings them home at the end of the day’s work, thus being made useful during the time when it is not being employed for a vacation or travel cruise.

I think that trailer was nicer than most people’s homes at the time.

Luxurious Stable on Wheels Speeds Race Horses to Tracks

Transporting race horses in railway cars or in ordinary motor trucks always has been attended with anxiety for the owner and more or less discomfort for the animals. To eliminate these difficulties and to save time as-well, a luxurious automobile has been designed. It is a. completely equipped stable on wheels. Cushioned upon a passenger-carrying chassis with shock absorbers, the car develops an average speed of thirty or thirty-five miles an hour and can swing along with ease and safety at fifty. Two horses and a groom besides the chauffeur can be carried in the roomy, electric-lighted interior. There are two stalls, separated by a partition on a pivot to facilitate loading.

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MIDGET TRAILERS
Here are two simple designs of midget trailers that can be towed by foot-operated juvenile autos or carts. The one at the right is exceptionally easy to build. Sides, seat and floor are plywood while the front and back may be sheet metal. With circular holes in the sides, and the latter cut to a pleasing contour as shown, the thing has a decided streamline effect. Still, there’s no top and the rider seems to project through the roof. For the more advanced young “trailerites” the “covered wagon,” shown below, may be preferred as it more closely simulates the real thing in that it has a roof and a hinged door through which riders have access to the inferior. This one, also, is built mostly of plywood on suitable framing. In both cases a pair of coaster-wagon wheels, preferably of the pneumatic-tire type, are used for comfortable riding

Cyclist Takes Bed Along in Homemade Trailer

TOWING his sleeping quarters behind him in a compact trailer, an eighteen-year-old cyclist of Menominee, Mich., recently traveled nearly 1,200 miles to Boston, Mass., economically and comfortably. Post cards that he sold to curious spectators paid for his supplies during the fourteen-day journey. Streamline in shape, the sturdy trailer is a homemade product of his own design. He is shown above demonstrating his sleeping quarters to an admiring hotel doorman.

Trailer Chapel Has Speaker System

Built into a trailer, a chapel on wheels brings church services to isolated mountain sections of Virginia and West Virginia. Its rear wall unfolds to form a platform before the altar, and a canopy containing two loudspeakers for a public-address system, which carries the preacher’s voice to the congregation. A gasoline-driven generator mounted in the back of the sedan that draws the trailer supplies electric power for the public-address system and for cooking and lighting. Supplemented by a storage battery, the generator unit automatically starts when a light or appliance is turned on, and stops when all are switched off.