The Fascinating History of Teardrop Trailers
An article from the December 1936 issue of Mechanics and Handicrafts is, as far as we know, the oldest known written artifact about teardrop trailers. While including very little deep-dive background on them, it included step-by-step instructions on building a teardrop yourself; the author included a list of materials along with a cost analysis.
In 1939, another article was written for Popular HomeCraft magazine called “Honeymoon House Trailer;” the article featured a trailer designed and built by Louis Rogers of Pasadena, California. Rogers, according to the article, built the trailer for his wedding/honeymoon, literally saving every dime from change to build his unit for what ended up being $60. This one also ran with instructions on how to build an identical trailer, along with sketches and photographs.
The next year, Popular Mechanix ran the article: ‘Streamlined Midget Trailer,’ written by Charles W. Brentner; it included even more detailed instructions to build a larger teardrop trailer than those that came before. It’s at this time we really started to see a boom in teardrop trailers being used by casual campers.
Interested in what else was happening for camping and RVing in the 40s? Check out our article here!
Now if you’ve read that, you’ll know camping dropped off during WWII, but when 1947 hit Mechanix Illustrated dropped an article with what became the most romantic and popular story ‘Teardrop for Two.’ This one directed the use of the small trailer towards the experience, the romance, not just the practicality.
But while these were readily available plans for any readers of these publications, we can thank Bill Worman for the creation of tear-drop trailers as a concept altogether. Described as a “self-learned man,” Worman appeared to be an adept engineer, putting together a ham radio as a teenager, and at 19 passing the tests required to be a radio technician as (reportedly) simply reading an electrician journeyman’s book. He worked in the film industry briefly before WWII dawned, when he moved to management overseeing the building of a trainer aircraft for the war effort.
Odd how aircraft construction and RVs coincide so much eh?
Just after the war ended, Worman started the KIT Kamper brand of teardrop trailers. The KIT Manufacturing Company was based in Norwalk, California out of an “abandoned fruit stand” of all things. The plan was to offer the trailers as kits (clever name, I see) but orders were few and far in-between. Instead, Worman and partner, Dan Pocapolia, pivoted and began to offer fully-built trailers at dealer trade shows starting in February 1946. Trailers were 4 x 8-feet and $500. Quickly orders came for the complete package, booking 500 dealer orders! Worman and Pocapolia took that first model and made many revisions over the next year to quicken production and offer wider options to consumers. By the middle of the year they had over 1,000 orders and had a two-shift work schedule going to produce some 40 trailers per day. These two rapid years of innovation landed then in January 1948 with the shutdown of the KIT Kamper line and designing a larger trailer – presumably to make improved profit, and considering the company became one of the biggest names in high-end RVs it was the right move (Kit operated from 1945-2008 and not to be confused with Kit Campers, a DIY camper company operating today). Although, the original Kit Teardrops is still recognized as a seminal founding manufacturer in the industry, honored in the RV Hall of Fame in the United States.
Teardrop trailers mostly disappeared from the roads between the mid-1960s until the 1990s when they reappeared in the camping zeitgeist with the birth of the internet making construction plans and models readily available for home tinkerers to get their hands on and build their own. Today, many commercial RV manufacturers offer their own models, some even taking off-road/off-grid living to the extreme. You can learn more about today’s teardrops here.
