What started as a hobby has undoubtedly turned into a thriving business, and we're excited for the future. It was only a couple of years ago my wife and I wanted to do something different in our lives. Our daughter was all grown up and moved out of the house. We were young empty nesters with a sense of adventure.
We were looking for change. "Let's move to Orillia", I thought, Mandy liked the town and was into the idea. We lived in Newmarket for around 16 years at the time, and loved the outdoors. I thought to myself, Hey, lets get a hot dog and ice cream cart and sell food at the beach in Orillia. Well, after some research I quickly realised the idea was not as easy or as simple to do as I thought. But determined to do something different, I still daydreamed of that portable hot dog cart. So, One evening I did a little surfing on kijiji.
"Hot dog cart" I typed in the search bar, "Hot dog trailer" I then tried. Hmm, these carts seem expensive I thought. How about I just get a trailer and build my own cart. So I typed in, what was soon to change my life forever. "Trailer"...
What the heck is that ? A Teardrop trailer ? I never heard of one before. I was in love, Instantly. I showed Mandy right away, she was also in love with the little trailer. What an awesome way to go camping, no more tent set ups, no more high priced cottage rentals. Just us and a cute little 4x8 camper to be towed wherever we want to go. But one problem. They are too damn expensive. Now what ? I went online, found an entire community of teardrop trailer campers and builders, and got my very own plans to build my first teardrop trailer.
When I started building it, I started making my own changes, and really personalizing it for our needs. The first thing I had to do, was make a cool screened panoramic window so when you wake up in the morning you have a brand new sunrise view. Another benifit to having an opening to the kitchen, I could make Mandy breakfast in bed. Mosquitoes ? That was easy. a removable screen. And to this day we have that setup in every one of our trailers. "sleeps 2, room with a view."
But how was I going to make a business out of this ? Rentals ! First year, we rented our little 4x8 woody every weekend we could. I would take the trailer with me to work and meet the customer in my bosses backyard at lunch time. Hitch the woody to the back of the customers car, He would sign the rental agreement and they were off, meeting me back at my house when they were done with it. One problem.
We never got to use it anymore. No more rentals, I thought. I want to take the woody out on weekends instead.
Well wouldn't you know it. People were stopping us, asking us where we got it, how much to build one for them. And that's when we had the Ah Ha moment. We knew we were on to something big. Nobody here in Canada knew about these, or if they did, they thought they were too over priced. Well long story short, we've built 16 trailers and have an order for another 7. We plan on building rental units for the spring of 2016 and have no intentions of slowing down. We sell teardrop trailer parts,doors and trailers too.
As of Sept 1st we are finally moving into our very own shop, Working full time. 5201 Vivian Rd, Cedar Valley. Just 10 minutes outside of Newmarket. We use quality materials and offer our trailers at an affordable and reasonable price. Our trailers have already travelled to California,Florida and Oregon. We have sold teardrop trailers and trailer parts across Canada. From Victoria BC to St. John`s Newfoundland.
We can`t wait to see what the future has in store, and look forward to building our 4x8 and 5x8 teardrop trailers for our satisfied customers. You're probably wondering what happened to our first trailer ? We sold it to a guy in Nova Scotia. We needed the money, after a lay off at work. Hopefully this year we can build another one for ourselves, now that we have our brand new shop. It will be a 5 x 8 Silver bullet "Diamond Edition" Named after our 2000 Jimmy 4x4. I think it will be a hit with the public, and we look forward to many of our own camping trips too. There's a saying I firmly believe in. Do what you love, and you'll never work another day in your life. Well Sept 1st the doors open, and you can be sure we love what we do :-)
Building teardrop trailers for one happy camper at a time...