The Hunt

…began immediately. We wanted an inexpensive, old trailer in decent condition that would not break the bank while also being cheap and affordable. Cheap, if you didn’t notice, was a primary consideration.

I raked through Craigslist postings for weeks, sent out dozens of emails, received approximately 2.33 replies, and was generally loosing my grip on hope. Before I had begun serious research, it had seemed like CL was bursting with trailer opportunities. On the surface, it seemed like there was an excess of cheap and decent trailers just waiting to be snapped up. As I neared, however, those mirages faded away into sand.

Just as we had learned from car shopping, “cheap” and “decent” are a rare combo. And if both are present in one listing, then they are already sold and the owner will not email you back to tell you so. If the seller happens to break his vow of silence and reply – a few weeks later – he’ll be all huffy about being bothered with something that he already sold. In those cases all I can figure is that they’re under the impression that the computer machine knows when they’ve sold a thing and takes the listing down automatically.

Then, there are the people who do reply but only to change their minds just in time to qualify for the last possible moment. One particular fellow texted me just four hours before we were supposed to meet him in a neighboring city that was three hours away. He wanted to let me know that he was going to let his friend use the trailer for the summer and so couldn’t sell it to us. We had been negotiating for over a week at that point.

There are also people who outright lie, don’t care at all, or struggle to showcase common knowledge.
Actual conversation:
Me: Regarding your trailer on CL… do you have any pictures of the inside?
Any leaks or water damage?
(if anyone says their 40 yr old trailer does not leak, they are lying)

Trailer seller: I updated the craigslist post and updated the pics. Let me know if u need more. Looks like some small water damage in places. But it is ready to go.

Me: Thanks, that’s helpful.
How much water damage are we talking? Replacing some rotted walls or floors?

Trailer seller: Few little soft spots one near front and one around skylight in bathroom. Had them leak just little with snow. I never felt the need to fix or mess with it

Hm?

He calls a ceiling and floor that are so rotted that the wood itself has lost all integrity and is probably molding “ready to go”? Ready to go where exactly? … the dump?

There are the people who are just unreasonable. For us, this was the guy 9 hours away who wouldn’t answer the majority of my questions and insisted that if I wanted it, I’d just have to drive the 9 hours to see it in person (mind you, we didn’t have a tow-vehicle at the time). Needless to say, we didn’t bother risking over 18 hours for a questionable trailer that we weren’t sold on based on the fuzzy, poorly composed phone pictures of 2ft sections of the trailer.

Finally, there’s every shopper’s all time favorite listing type. And I quote, “Trailer for sale.” There is no description and no picture attached. Consequently, there is no sale either.

After looking for a few weeks, we came to the sad conclusion that there were no cheap and decent trailers to be had in the tri-state area. The problem was our definition of “decent.” What we had really meant was 80% restored so that we wouldn’t have to put too much work into it. This realization brought James and I to The Conversation: were we willing to overhaul a trailer ourselves or not?

To my utter astonishment, for the second time in my life, James said yes. The first time was agreeing to move to China… I donno what you were thinking. Nosey.

And so The Search: Phase II began. By this time, we had also decided that an old aluminum was the way to go. An Avion, Streamline, Silver Streak, Spartan, or Airstream. Our rational was that aluminum can be polished while fiberglass can only look worse than it did two minutes ago. Believe it or not, some trailer parks don’t allow any trailers that are more than 10 years old… unless they happen to be nice looking vintage trailers. The classic, silver bullet look, for instance.

Again, I sent messages throughout the land looking for such a trailer – this time, cheap and 20% restored. We wanted the electrical, subfloor, and plumbing in.

Then one day in June, one of messenger pigeons stumbled back in from a far land called Minnesota saying that there was such a trailer, a 1977 Airstream Sovereign, that had a new subfloor, part of the plumbing redone, and original but good functioning wire in the walls. The owner had listed it for $6000, my limit was half that, and he would take it. He would even meet us in South Dakota, effectively saving us 8 hours of drive time.
But perhaps most astounding of all, he was communicative. In short, he texted back in a timely manner and at least attempted to answer all of my questions.

It was not a steal but it was good enough – a decent deal, if not quite a decent trailer.

We would have a trailer. Well, at least we had a shell and a pile of work lying inside of it.
Little did we know what was lurking just under the floor and hiding in the walls.

– stay tuned for another riveting episode –