My Story
Like most successful ventures, this one started by accident.
In the fall of 2007, I sold my old beloved Subaru Legacy with 327,000 miles on it for a Jeep Cherokee. Once I had the Jeep, I started planning ways to camp with it. I thought a DIY rooftop tent would be great. My wife -aka Senior Management – disagreed. I searched for an alternative and discovered the off road teardrop trailer.
At the time, I was a high school history and film teacher so I planned our build of the jPod for the summer break of 2008. I also decided to blog about the build for my dad -who wanted to keep up with the process but couldn’t be around because he was raising money for a charity.
These simple events led to the formation of a company -Overland Industries, LLC – with a good friend of mine, Nathan. Commercial production of our take on the teardrop trailer – the 58 Heald- began in 2009.
Also in 2009, through a series of surprises and some work, pre-production began on a feature-length documentary about Teardrop Trailers (read more here). Amazon published the film in 2011 after it played the film festival circuits.
In 2019, Nathan and I decided to stop production of our commercial line of teardrop trailers. Clearly our Teardrop Builder community is still strong and where I find most of my joy – a born teacher never stops teaching.
You can make a load of adventures too – Just Make Your Own Teardrop Trailer!