Trailer Travel: The Bowlus Road Chief

It’s the ultimate travel trailer. Enter the Bowlus Road Chief. Have yet to hear of it? Owner and reviver John Long has teamed up with his daughter Geneva to improve the nearly century old manufacturer. Follow their entire story on Petrolicous.

JL: Well, I got fascinated with a Bowlus because sort of three things. One, it’s the original, so Airstream is copy of Bowlus, Bowlus came first with the ridged aluminum trailer. Second, Hawley Bowlus was just an absolute fanatic for light weight. If you look at the design of the 1935s, it’s just absolutely amazing. It’s a fanatical devotion to making light weight so that you could actually pull it with a normal car. Because he was a sailplane manufacturer, he was phenomenally interested in aerodynamics in terms of trying to make a shape that was the most aerodynamic, so that you could pull it easily with a normal car.

This seemed like it was the thing I had to get because it combined a real interest in light weight, a real interest in aerodynamics, and it was a trailer. It was really, really revolutionary for the time.

Check the rest of the interview out, right here: The Bowlus Road Chief