"That's
one fad that won't last long!" Nate
Pendleton remarked derisively, as his eyes followed a trim, streamline motor trailer
skimming smoothly down the road behind a smart new sedan.
Gus Wilson, half owner of the Model
Garage, hung up the gas hose and replaced the filler cap on Pendleton's car. He smiled slowly.
"Maybe so, Nate, maybe so," he observed, watching the trailer
outfit disappear around a bend in the road. "But
you've got to remember that it's a fad that has been popular, in one form or
another, for a long time now. If it weren't
for the fact that lots of our ancestors had a mighty strong urge to go places and do
things, we wouldn't be here today. Touring
in an automobile is just a modern form of that instinct, I guess."
"But why bother with towing an
elaborate outfit in a trailer," Pendleton observed, "when you can stop at a good
hotel? Or, if there isn't a hotel, there
are sure to be tourist camps with cabins, or places with 'tourists accommodated'
signs in the front yard."
"That's all a question of what
you're trying to do and how much money you can afford to spend." Said Gus. "If you're only interested in getting
from one place to another a long distance away in the shortest possible time, then the
hotel or tourist camp is the answer. But if
you really want to take your time and see a lot of the country, and perhaps stay in
different places weeks or even months at a time, then the motor-trailer outfit will give
you the most comfort and convenience at a lot less expense than you can make the same
tour
on any other basis."
"I hadn't thought of it that
way, Gus," Pendleton admitted. "I
can see that there's an advantage in knowing just what kind of accommodations you're
going to have, and being able to stop wherever you want to is a help. Some of the tourist camps and hotels aren't as
conveniently located as they might be, and some I've stopped at were punk. If I hadn't thought this motor camping
business was just a passing fad I'd have taken it up before this."
"If you're really interested
come back in the shop a minute," Gus suggested.
Pendleton followed him into the Model
Garage. Far over in one corner, Gus stopped. "There's my idea of a real outfit,"
he said, pulling open the door of a handsome motor trailer and stepping aside for
Pendleton to enter. "Soon as the work
slacks up a bit, I'm going to put in a month in Florida with a friend of mine, while
Joe Clark , my partner, takes care of things. Then,
next winter, Joe's going to take his wife and make the same trip. During the summer,
we can take turns using it for shorter tours."
"Swell-looking job," Pendleton
commented as Gus showed him the neat arrangement of the "kitchen," the folding
bunks, and the ingenious way in which every square inch of space was used to best
advantage. "Where did you buy it, and how
much did it cost?" he asked with interest.
"Joe and I built it - Joe's
pretty slick as a carpenter," Gus replied. "But
you can buy one like it for anywhere from $600 to $2,000, depending on how elaborate the
fittings are."
"Seems to me," Pendleton
observed, "if you're going to build a house on wheels - which is what this
outfit really is - you'd do better to buy a truck chassis and build the house body
on it. Judging from the size of some of the
truck bodies you pass on the road, you ought to have a lot more room that way."
"We thought of that," said Gus. "We even went so far as to look around to see
what we could pick up in the way of secondhand truck that would be suitable. You can build a regular 'land yacht' on a
truck body. But there are disadvantages to a
big outfit like that. In the first place, you
have to pay a whopping big license fee in most states on account of the weight. A trailer license doesn't cost much - only
two dollars in Connecticut, eleven in New York, and so on - and the size or weight
doesn't make any difference in the license fee in lots of states.
"Another thing: When you stop for a few days in one place and you
want to take short sight-seeing trips here and there, you've got to take the whole
works with you if you have a 'land yacht,' whereas with a trailer you can leave
it in camp."
"Are they unhooked as easily as that?"
Pendleton inquired.
"Only takes a minute or two,"
Gus answered. "See, here is the
ball-and-socket-joint arrangement that is used in one form or another by most of the
trailer makers. This jack supports the front
end of the trailer when it isn't attached to the car."
"Why not make them with four wheels, so you wouldn't have to bother with that
clumsy jack affair?" Pendleton asked. "The
truck trailers I see going along the road have four wheels."
"You could make a motor trailer that
way, too," Gus agreed, "but it would make the whole construction much heavier
and more complicated. Either the front axle
would have to swivel, as it does on a horse-drawn wagon, or you'd have to mount the
front wheels on king-pins and put in some trick mechanism so the trailer would be
automatically steered by the bar connecting the trailer with your car.
"No, that wouldn't be worthwhile," Gus went on. "Two wheels on
a single axle placed a little back of the trailer so that 200 or 300 pounds of
the weight is carried by the back of the
car, seems to be the best combination. Incidentally,
that extra weight, plus the fact that the trailer presses down harder when you put on the
brake, makes it considerably easier to stop the car."
"How about having brakes on the
trailer wheels, too?" Pendleton suggested.
"You can get them if you want them,"
said Gus. "If your car has hydraulic
brakes, it's a cinch to put hydraulic brakes on the trailer wheels and hook them up
so they work from the brake pedal along with the car's brakes. Or, you can put on a vacuum operated brake outfit.
But considering how much better a trailer makes the brakes on your car work, most people
don't bother to have brakes on the trailer except for service in very mountainous
country."
"I suppose you'd have some kind
of a quick-detachable coupling for the brake connection, wouldn't you?" Pendleton suggested.
"That would be easy," said Gus. "It could be made to work with this cable
connection that hooks up the tail and stop lights on the trailer."
Pendleton examined the end of the cable
plug. "You just plug this into a similar
one on the back of the car when you hook on the trailer, eh" Neat idea, that.
And I suppose the trailer is lighted inside from the car battery isn't
it?"
"Most trailers are," Gus
explained. "A lot of them being built now
are wired for 110 volts and there is a plug connection, so when you are in a camp that
supplies electric current you can plug in the outside juice and put 110 volts on the
sockets. Changing the bulbs is a bit of a
nuisance, though, so I rewound an old radio power transformer to give six volts on the
secondary. We've got it hooked up so all
we do is plug in the outside current and throw a switch, and the six-volt bulbs burn on
the outside juice stepped down to six volts.
"Of course," Gus added, "if
you're staying for quite a while in a camp where there is no electricity on tap, and
if you don't make side trips in the car every day to keep the battery charged, you'll
have to use a kerosene lamp or a gasoline camp lamp like this."
He opened a locker and pulled out a lamp
of the type that uses an incandescent mantle.
"Well," said Pendleton as he
leaned back on one of the cushioned bunks and examined the fittings of the screened
window, "it certainly is a comfortable little home on wheels. Gives me about the same sensation I'd have in
the cabin of a trim little motor boat.
What do you do about keeping warm in
winter?"
"One of the advantages of living in a
motor trailer is you can follow the birds south in the fall, and you needn't ever
stay where it's cold enough to need heating. But
if you do, an ordinary small oil stove will heat up this small space in no time at all. In fact, you'll have to turn the burner 'way
down to keep from getting too hot."
"Yes, that would be the solution all
right," Pendleton agreed. "And I
suppose if you were in a camp where street current was on tap, you could use a small
electric heater and avoid the kerosene smell. Heat
insulation would help a lot on that. Is there
any heat insulation in this outfit?"
Sure," Gus replied. "There's a
double floor with a layer of cork board between the layers, and the walls and top have
heat insulation between the outside and inside surfaces.
But the purpose of the insulation is not so much to make it easy to heat in
winter, as to help keep it cool in summer. Most
camps that cater to trailer tourists fix things so that you can park under a tree, but if you had to park out in the sun, the inside of
this outfit would get as hot as an oven in no time at all without the insulation."
"Guess it takes quite a little more
gas to tow an outfit like this doesn't it?" Pendleton questioned.
"Bring up that subject with a
motor-trailer enthusiast, and you'll have a real argument on your hands,"
laughed Gus. "Of course it stands to
reason that you can't pull an extra couple of thousand pounds along without using
more power to do it, and more power means more gasoline burned. But the increase is not at all in proportion to the
increase of your load.
"Suppose, for instance," Gus continued, "that your car weighs, say, 3,000
pounds or thereabouts, and your motor trailer weighs in the neighborhood of 2,000 pounds. Adding the trailer would increase your total load
to 5,000 pounds. If weight were the only thing
that counted, and you got fifteen miles to the gallon without the trailer, you should get
only nine miles with it. Actually, you'll
probably only do a mile or two less to the gallon with the trailer than without it."
"How do you figure that out?"
Pendleton asked.
"It's all a matter of friction
and wind resistance," Gus pointed out. "On
level ground, it takes mighty little power to overcome the friction of a pair of roller
bearings, even when they are loaded with 2,000 pounds, and the wind resistance at moderate
speeds doesn't amount to much if the outfit is streamlined a bit. So the only time you really use more power is in
getting the load started and in pulling up hill. Part
of this you get back, because the extra weight makes you coast better on gentle down
grades. Of course, if you will burn up the
road at high speed, the wind resistance is bound to make a difference."
"Want to sell this outfit?"
Pendleton asked suddenly.
"Not on your life!" Gus grinned,
"but I can give you the names of some
concerns that make trailers of about the same type."
"Who are they?" Pendleton asked,
fishing out a notebook and pencil. "My
landlord's getting a bit uppity. Guess I'll
walk out on him, buy a trailer, and the wife and I will head for Florida for a couple of
months. I can afford it if I don't have
rent to pay here."
"He won't be the first landlord
that has been handed a jolt like that these days!" Gus chuckled, as he pulled a bunch
of trailer catalogs out of a drawer.
END
