When you first buy a fiberglass trailer, you are unknowingly joining a cult," laughs Ian Giles. Giles is a proud Boler Fiberglass trailer owner, as well as organizer of the 50th Anniversary of Boler Trailers Gathering on August 15-19, 2018 at Red River Exhibition Park in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The event will be the largest gathering of molded fiberglass trailers in history, with about 400 trailers and 850 people currently signed up to come, and an expected show of about 500 trailers. There is music, food, fun, community, and much more planned at the fairgrounds.
For Giles, the journey to organizing the event started with a purchase in 2011. "We (Giles and his wife) always tent camped and we knew that big RV’s were not our style - we were outdoors people," Giles says. Yet when Giles retired, crawling on the ground to sleep in a tent didn't cut it anymore. Giles looked around and just happened to buy a 1974 Boler fiberglass trailer. "I did not know much about them, but I ended up buying it anyway," he recalls. He is a ‘jack of all trades’ type guy and does mechanics, metalwork, and woodwork; so he went on to renovate his new trailer. "The original beds in these things were 44" so when you are sleeping in the same bed as someone, I like to call it synchronize sleeping," he laughs. "We like to cook as well but there was only 8 inches of counter space."
He started to plan his trailer out and started researching online information about Boler trailers but couldn't find much of anything. "I realized that since these things are only an 1/8th of an inch thick a lot of the things inside the trailer are structural," he says, "So I started documenting everything I could in my rebuild and posted it to my blog on Boler modification ideas and projects." He went a step further and started launching websites on how to fix Boler trailers, where to get parts, and just general community pages.
“Vintage Boler fiberglass trailer with new frame, axle, windows rebuilt and polished by Ian GIles.” [Photo Credit: Ian Giles]
What makes Boler Trailers so special? “They are the original molded fiberglass trailers to be mass manufactured in North America,” Giles says, “So there is a lot of respect for them.” Ray Olecko was the inventor of Boler Trailers. Olecko was always a designer/inventor and worked a stint in the fiberglass industry. After spending time with family canvas tent camping, he came up with an idea to make a camper out of fiberglass, knowing it would be light, leak-proof, and easy to tow. The rest, as they say, is history! And the fiberglass trailer, very much alive with Oliver Trailers, Scamp, and Casita, came into existence in North America.
"These trailers bring you together and it's really a wonderful community," Giles says. Through the years of working on the trailers, he realized that there are a lot of like-minded folks who seek out the small fiberglass trailers. "Many of the people are outdoorsy and appreciate the simplicity of these trailers," he says, "They are prone to nostalgia and like to personalize their trailers." It really is just about love, too - there is not added value to putting work into the trailers, unless it is done in a professional manner, which it rarely is. Though a lot of the cabinets and parts are integral to the structure of the trailer, they are extremely easy to work on. “It’s basically like a bathtub or a boat, so they last a long time without any rot or leaks,” Giles says.
With these insights, as well as recognizing that the 50th anniversary of Boler was coming up, Giles started to organize a 50th anniversary party about a year and a half ago. "I put together a research database through social media, Facebook, and RV forums, and asked who would be interested in coming to an event like this," Giles said, "We had about 650 interested so we figured it would be pretty big." Giles did not have any experience putting on a large event like this, though he did retire as a project manager, so he used his experience from that to break it into tasks and started planning. "It is basically me and my wife and a few volunteers organizing this," he says. He has someone that is handling entertainment, as well as the caravans.
The event decided to organize 6 caravans that will, well, caravan across North America to the rally. There are three in the United States, originating in Sacramento, Oklahoma City, and Chicago, and three in Canada. They have several sponsors that will showcase goods and trailers at the event. "We have Oliver Travel Trailer from Tennessee, Happier Camper in California, and Armadillo in Canada," he says. Long & McQuade, a Canadian music store, is sponsoring Ukulele sessions in the morning, a fitting instrument for the quaint trailers. “It will be so wonderful to have so many people playing the ukulele at the same time. It is an easy instrument to learn and Long & McQuade is very generous to help,” Giles says.
The event is open to anyone with any kind of fiberglass trailer. Giles is expecting about 500 campers, with a capacity for 1,000 at the fairgrounds. The event is a non-profit, volunteer based celebration of fiberglass trailers. It’s also a celebration of a culture. A culture of folks, from millennials to retires, who want to enjoy the outdoors through the workmanship of a great trailer and the RV lifestyle.