My friend Doug had invited me to tag along with him to his work this morning. He oversees several divisions where horse and travel trailers are manufactured. I was excited to see how Motel Miguel's were made. Motel Miguel came from a competitor and that was my first mistake, or so I was told!
I was up at five in the morning to be ready by six. We left when the fog was still in the fields. Being in farm country in Northeast, Indiana you have to travel miles in between towns and in our case facilities. First we went to an empty facility that they had recently vacated in order to consolidate plants and he was checking in on it.
We then left to see the plant where Horse Trailers are made. Each plant has a certain number of units that are made each day and shipped out all over the country and in some cases overseas.
In the case of these horse trailers this is how the frame starts out at the start of the production line. The aluminum frames are brought in from another plant.
Subfloors are put in and a team gets to work on each part of the production process.
As it stops in each of the stations more work is done to it and it just moves along on dollies down the line.
The trailers that were being made today were pretty upscale three and four horse with full living quarters.
All of the furniture and cabinetry is made in house.
There's master workmen for everything needed in the trailers.
Once the cabinets are made then they are ready to be installed.
Work also gets done to the outside as it moves along.....
Production line....
The bedroom area...
Looking through the bathroom out to the horse part.....
At the end everything gets tested and quality control checks it....
When it passes all inspections it then gets towed out to the holding yard and waits to be shipped out to the dealerships throughout the country.
I also got to visit a Travel Trailer plant and experience how they are made.
When the bottoms come in the axels and tires are installed....
Along with all the workings of the underside of the trailers...
It is then up righted and the main construction begins such as the walls....
Insulation is inserted....
Furniture and cabinetry is installed....
Interiors and exteriors come along...
This one still needs the slide outs installed.
Detailed exterior work is being done on this one.
Small touch ups are being done on this interior.
Exquisite interiors are put in all of the trailers.
And again, once they are complete and passed all quality controls including rain showers they are detailed and towed out to the holding yards in order to be shipped out across the country.
At the end of the day it was time to go home on beautiful country roads where the traffic jams are usually the Amish in their horse and buggies!
Or their teams of draft horses moving large equipment from one farm to another...
On occasion it's one of the modern pieces of farm machines that block the road.
Everything is so green here from the constant summer rains.
The flower beds are so bright in the warm summer sun and the clotheslines are hard at work!
There's even time to enjoy some wind sports....
Driving through a few small picturesque towns always takes me back to an era gone by that we just don't have back home in Los Angeles.
Today I learned so much about travel trailers and hopefully that will translate into me being able to take care of MotelMiguel a little better!
Many sincere thank you's to my friend Doug and Jeanie, along with all my other friends, without all of their generosity I wouldn't be able to be doing what I am doing and experiencing many things for the first time in my fifty years of life.
Why did I wait so long to do this?
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