"TrailTop" modular trailer topper building components

[gkesseru]

Have you considered making the corners out of a vacuum formed plastic like they use for coolers? Much cheaper than fiberglass and well suited for low volume production. One outfit that I know of is Sailing Specialties in Hollywood Maryland.
https://ssicustomplastics.com/custom-oem/

 

[jscherb]

Have you considered making the corners out of a vacuum formed plastic like they use for coolers? Much cheaper than fiberglass and well suited for low volume production. One outfit that I know of is Sailing Specialties in Hollywood Maryland.
https://ssicustomplastics.com/custom-oem/

Based on my experience with both fiberglass and thermoformed components I believe that fiberglass is the better material for this application. Fiberglass is easy to bond dissimilar materials to (like wood and metal), it's easy to modify and shape (think bodywork) and takes automotive finishes very well. It can also be laid up in different thicknesses as strength demands. And it's easy for me to create high-quality fiberglass parts in my home workshop and garage. For all those reasons I chose fiberglass and the proof-of-concept builds I've done with the TrailTop components have worked out very well.

 

[gkesseru]

Agree that FB is a great medium for one-off items and that it readily bonds to other materials, however it is labor intensive when it comes to quantity (even low quantity) production.

 

[jscherb]

Agree that FB is a great medium for one-off items and that it readily bonds to other materials, however it is labor intensive when it comes to quantity (even low quantity) production.

Since these parts were designed to be used in DIY camper construction in combination with various materials, ease of bonding components to it in a DIY situation was a key requirement. I don't believe making the parts out of a material that would require advanced adhesives and bonding techniques for dissimilar materials would be good for the intended users of the parts.

 

[jscherb]

I've posted a bit in this thread about the Trail Kitchen I designed and use in my Jeeps and my trailer, here's an update - it's in production now (not by me, MORryde licensed the design from me and manufactures and sells it). There are several of them on display in the SEMA Show this week in Las Vegas, here's one in an M416 outside the South Hall:

The Trail Kitchen is also on display inside the show hall in a Jeep in the MORryde booth, and there's one in a Toyota FJ40 in the Cummins booth.

 

[jscherb]

More about the Trail Kitchen... Wednesday at the SEMA Show the 2019 Global Media Awards were announced, these are awards chosen by a panel of international journalists selecting new products that they believed would be most likely to succeed in their respective countries. The Trail Kitchen picked up two of these awards, one from Canada and one from Australia. There was a reception this evening after the close of the show for the day where the awards were presented, in this photo are Jack Enfield, head of sales at MORryde, yours truly, Austin Conrad, MORryde Jeep Marketing and the SEMA Awards presenter...

 

[jscherb]

The conversation with the party that's interested in bringing the TrailTop components to market is continuing, they suggested to me the other day that maybe a good first product introduction could be a chuck wagon kit. These images have been posted before in this thread so I'll repeat them here, these images show a chuck wagon topper on a Dinoot trailer tub kit, but a chuck wagon could be built completely from TrailTop parts without a Dinoot tub underneath, you'd just use longer vertical corner rails and you'd build a floor. Supporting a roof top tent on either version wouldn't be a problem.

The tan parts in the concept drawing below represent 1/4" plywood.

Could do one to support a Trail Kitchen as well (this drawing was done before I designed the Trail Kitchen so the kitchen design in the drawing is a bit different).

Are people interested in a Chuck Wagon kit?

Would a Chuck Wagon kit be a good place for the company to start or would you recommend they start with some other kit or just components?

What do you think a Chuck Wagon kit should sell for? It wouldn't include a trailer frame (a Harbor Freight frame or a custom welded frame could be used). The version for a Dinoot trailer might be a little less expensive than a non-Dinoot version because you'd need less length of corner rail, but you would have to buy an $800 Dinoot kit to build a Dinoot version. A non-Dinoot version could be build with just TrailTop parts and plywood, so let's call it $150 more in plywood than the Dinoot version so a non-Dinoot chuck wagon could be built for maybe $650 less than a Dinoot version.

 

[john61ct]

Congratulations, must feel great to collect such kudos!

My perception is the Aussie market in particular is very sophisticated wrt such gear.

 

[jscherb]

Congratulations, must feel great to collect such kudos!

My perception is the Aussie market in particular is very sophisticated wrt such gear.

Thank you very much. I was very surprised that the Kitchen received two awards, especially the Australian one - for the reason you stated and also because as far as I know the company has never talked to anyone in Australia about it. The company sent the Canadian 4WD Magazine a unit for review and the magazine posted a YouTube video about it a week ago, so that was nice too because they voted for it after evaluating it in one of their Jeeps.

 

[ajmaudio]

I feel like offering components early on would be big for whomever decides to pick this up. Depending on price I think the chuck wagon kit would do well, but I think a great many people would be interested in buying the components. Perhaps even more people than would buy a kit? As far as price, I dunno... I think so many small trailer options on the market currently are vastly overpriced to begin with. I'd really like to see this come to market for a fair price. I even contemplated trying to connect you with a local fiberglass shop.

 

[jscherb]

I feel like offering components early on would be big for whomever decides to pick this up. Depending on price I think the chuck wagon kit would do well, but I think a great many people would be interested in buying the components. Perhaps even more people than would buy a kit? As far as price, I dunno... I think so many small trailer options on the market currently are vastly overpriced to begin with. I'd really like to see this come to market for a fair price.

Thank you for the input.

I'm trying to determine what people think a fair price is so I can compare that to the price a company might have to charge to turn the TrailTop components or kits into a profitable business for themselves so if you have an idea what you think a fair price might be please let me know.

I even contemplated trying to connect you with a local fiberglass shop.

Thanks, but if I wanted to sell the TrailTop components and/or kits myself I would have found a fiberglass shop and put them on the market long ago. I'm not in business to sell anything and don't want to be, my interest (it's a hobby actually) is design - I enjoy designing new things and the TrailTop project was one of my design projects. Usually when I design something I build one or a few prototypes for my own use and occasionally for a friend or two, but I don't go into business to sell products based on my designs. My designs get to market when a company takes a design over, manufactures it and markets it.

The reason I posted about pricing several weeks ago and again last night is I'm trying to figure out if there's enough interest in the TrailTop components or kits to let a company take them over. I'm very busy with other projects right now, I've got projects underway with 4 companies (and the other day at the SEMA Show a company I haven't done anything with in the past asked me to do another project) and I'm meeting next week at Overland East with yet another company that's interested in 3 of my designs, so I don't really have much time right now to help a company get the TrailTop components into production. I can make the time if there is interest at a price that makes sense but if there isn't enough interest then I shouldn't move forward with them, I should spend my time on the other current projects I've got.

Thanks again.

 

[ajmaudio]

Thinking about pricing....any idea what kind of time it would take for a company to produce a component.. say an 8 foot profile?

 

[jscherb]

Thinking about pricing....any idea what kind of time it would take for a company to produce a component.. say an 8 foot profile?

Here's the process a shop would use to make a single 8' straight corner rail...

1. Mold prep. Only takes a few minutes with a properly made mold.

2. Gelcoat. Gelcoat forms the outer surface of the part, probably these would be done in white gelcoat although they could be done in any color. Sprayed on with a gelcoat gun, would take less than 5 minutes to coat the surface of an 8' straight section mold. Once the gelcoat is sprayed on, it needs to cure for 90-120 minutes before the fiberglass can be applied. No labor is required while it cures.

3. Apply the fiberglass. In a shop these parts would be done with a "chopper gun", which sprays a mix of resin, catalyst and short strands of fiberglass chopped off a roll-feed into the gun. Probably 15 minutes. Once the fiberglass is applied with the chopper gun and a little hand work is done to ensure proper contact between the fiberglass and the gelcoat in the sharp corners, the fiberglass needs to cure. Probably that's a half day, meaning something shot in the morning can be removed from the mold in the afternoon and the mold can be shot again and let cure overnight.

4. Trimming. The cured part is removed from the mold and the rough edges are trimmed. A straight piece could be trimmed in two minutes on a table saw with an abrasive cutting wheel; curved parts would be hand-trimmed with an abrasive cutting wheel in a hand die grinder.

An 8' straight piece would probably use $25 in gelcoat/resin/fiberglass at wholesale prices.

 

[screwball48]

Jeff, congratulations on the well deserved accolades sir. The chuckwagon is the design I am most interested in. I however would not venture to estimate the price of a kit.


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[jscherb]

Jeff, congratulations on the well deserved accolades sir. The chuckwagon is the design I am most interested in. I however would not venture to estimate the price of a kit.

Thank you very much.

If you're interested in a chuck wagon kit, what would you be willing to pay for a kit? Would you build it on top of a Dinoot tub or not?

And for those looking at my earlier post about the cost of producing an 8' corner rail, the costs listed are just for the production of the single part. Assuming a company selling the TrailTop parts paid a fiberglass shop to make the parts for them, the base cost of an 8' part would of course include the labor to make it plus the overhead/profit requirements of the fiberglass shop. Then you'd have to add the overhead/profit of the company selling the parts, and amortization of the cost of producing the production molds to make the parts. The molds I have are prototype molds, suited for a limited number (dozens probably) of parts, but more robust molds need to be made for production. A good rule of thumb for the cost of a production mold for a part like the one we're talking about is 5-6x the selling price of the part that would be made in that mold, so a percentage of the cost of the mold needs to be added to theretail price of the part to account for the cost of the mold. With all that added in, it turns out that a part that costs $25 in materials plus some labor would end needing to sell for a multiple of that, depending on overhead/profits of the fiberglass shop and the selling shop and mold ammortization.