Quite often, I've been driving down some highway and I'll see a road that
juts off of that highway
and wondered where does that road go?
Travel is extremely important.
It's not a luxury.
It's a necessity.
I feel getting out into the middle of nowhere helps you recharge.
My name is Britton Purser.
I own a company called Vintage Overland.
We build teardrop camp trailers.
We, being my two younger brothers and myself.
And we are located in Grand Junction, Colorado.
This is Britton's business.
This is his idea.
This is his product that he's come up with.
He started getting phone calls.
A lot.
I have a long-standing, crazy love for these vintage trailers.
I just love them.
It felt like in the realm of destiny.
Like I got to go do this.
Teardrops were first introduced after World War Two.
The reasons they have the materials that they use: the jeep wheels,
the aluminum, things of that nature,
is quite simply they were using army surplus.
Between the three of us, we've done it all.
All the trades.
Carpentry, tile work, sheet rock, electric, plumbing, you know all of that, cabinetry.
Phase one is the woodworking phase.
So we put the pattern down on here.
And, we've traced our lines.
And I cut it rough with the jigsaw.
Very imprecise.
I'm just getting most of the material out of the way.
And now I'm going to put the pattern, clamp the pattern back on here.
And I'm going to rout out to a finer degree with the router against our pattern
to make it more precise and smooth.
What I'm doing right now is building what we call the H frame.
It's really the spine of the trailer.
In the shop it's mostly Cullen and me.
Britt doesn't have time.
He's making phone calls and answering phone calls and selling.
So we cut out the wood, finish everything.
Put the box together.
So now we have a wooden box.
A lot of people don't understand hand tools.
But they're absolutely the quickest to get things done a lot of times.
I try to do the maximum amount of quality with the bare minimum of tools.
Building each caravan, it takes approximately two weeks to assemble and finish.
The second step is, we insulate the box and then we skin it with aluminum.
It's a soft aluminum, so we have to be very careful in the shop.
We dent the side of the trailer, we got to
pull that piece of skin off and put a new one back on.
So it's just learning to work very precisely and carefully.
Cody's role in this has been to be an absolute pain in the butt.
Like, like never happy.
It is never good enough.
Are you flush?
It's good.
OK.
If it was Britton and myself, they'd be pretty neat, they'd be pretty nice, but with Cody
in the mix, they're unbelievably over the top.
This just came back from the Powder Coater.
We put the completed box on a frame.
Then we jack that frame up and put the wheels on.
Cullen starts making the side doors and then we work on the rear hatch door.
After that, it's finishing details.
I get inside and we put in some trim.
Add the switches.
And I just test the lights.
Dome lights.
Beautiful.
Test the fan.
Beautiful.
All three speeds.
And we put in a slide-out table.
And then after that, we peel all the protective plastic off the aluminum.
We have to be very careful because these knives will scratch the surface.
Put on the decals.
Just lightly put it in place.
And then peel off this real slow.
And the very last step is to put the hub caps on.
Because they're chrome, we want there to be no scratches.
And we just put them on and it goes pop.
That's a sense of relief.
And now we can get on to the next one.
What I envision, is you take that caravan and not with a new vehicle.
You take it with an old vehicle.
You take it with an old Jeep, you take it with an old Land Rover.
Our caravans are built to be taken off road.
It takes you to areas that not everyone can get to.
The thing about these trailers is not what they are, but what they aren't.
They are not an RV.
These are symbols of simplicity; they're symbols of sanctuary, of solitude.
You get inside them, and I don't know if it's the feeling of a womb,
but the roundness inside and the warmth of wood...
They're a retreat that goes with you.
The whole goal is for someone who purchases a caravan from us, not to go somewhere.
That's not the point.
The point is to go nowhere.
You are in the middle of nowhere.
You go out and you camp.
And you look at a fire.
And you realize that all that matters is food in your belly, warmth, protection.
And it's just good to go remember that.
And then you go back into the nonsense and it doesn't threaten
you quite as much.
It's freedom versus security.
Yeah, and we choose freedom.