Platt Trailers

[Rick & Nancy]

I recently purchased a 1959 Platt Custom Built trailer built by the Platt Trailer Company in Elkhart, IN. DOes anyone have any info on these trailers? I can find nothing on the internet regarding these.

[Martiangod]

The company went out of business in 1960

http://www.rvmhhalloffame.org/pages/Heritage_Result2.cfm?ID=198

http://goshennews.com/progress/x1709535173/RV-boom-shapes-community/print

Coming to life

In the mid-30s in the midst of the Depression, the trailer company thrived and came to life, Hesslebart said.

But one industry pioneer already had a job when many others did not. According to Harold (Hotie) Platt Jr. Of Goshen, his grandfather had been a railroad signalman, but that career ended tragically and suddenly when he was knocked off a train car and had his arm cut off and nearly bled to death. He received a settlement from the railroad company and started a fox farm north of Elkhart. He also invested in the Deloretta Furniture company and kept building his investment until he just bought the company.

Hotie said his father, Harold, had been working at the Kundered gladiola farm in Goshen when his father talked him into joining him at Deloretta.

Harold Platt’s other son, Eldon, also joined the company, which had been making card tables. The Platts redirected the company to make travel trailers and the company’s Trail-A-Home took off and became popular throughout America.

“From then on it just kind of went crazy as people left those companies and started their own companies,” Hesselbart said of the three local founding companies.

Hotie said many RV pioneers learned the ropes at Platt Trailer.

“It was a training ground,” he said. “Many, many industry officials were either friends or employees of my father.”

Inside his Georgie Boy motorhome parked in front of his Greencroft home, Hotie pulled out a sheet of paper, with neatly typed lists of expenses. It contained humor and friendly greetings from his father to a list of RV industry executives. They had all gone on a pheasant hunt out West and experienced a mechanical breakdown. The list was a division of the resulting expenses.

“All these different manufacturers from Indiana, Michigan and Illinois were really close friends,” Hotie said as he looked back to those golden years of the industry. “We were competitors, but we were also friends. It was a really close industry.”

He also worked at the Platt factory, which went out of business in 1960. He then worked for his father at an RV dealership he started on Cassopolis Street in Elkhart. That dealership continued until 1989.

“He had two long, successful runs in the RV industry,” he said of his father.