A brown and red manufacturing facility in a small rural town.

We're Moving!

By Jen HudakOctober 25, 2019

We're moving! For the last 28 months our company has been operating out of an old 1940's garage in Wanship, Utah. We’ve made a lot of changes here, not only with the building, but with our team.

Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane.

In June 2017, Chris & Jen Hudak moved Escapod out of Jen’s mom’s garage into this 4-bay service station. Later that summer, Chris Eckel got his first real exposure to the company during a visit when he was roped into hanging corrugated metal on the exterior of the building for a face-life. Then he hit the road in an Escapod for the first time, falling in love with the lifestyle and recognizing an opportunity to be a part of this business’ growth.

We hired our first employee in this building just over a year ago. We got our own CNC machine and switched from hand-cutting and measuring everything, to having consistent pre-assemblies. In an effort to maximize space in the garage, we tore down numerous walls and turned the 12’ x 8’ office space into inventory storage, our break room and the rental fleet HQ.

image of a man remodeling a Manufacturing shop.
A brown and red manufacturing facility in a small rural town.
Teardrop camper being built in a small manufacturing facility.

You may not realize, but the only running water we’ve had in this building comes when it rains. There’s very little insulation, no vented heating and certainly no A/C. But we wouldn’t have wanted to do it any other way. This space forced us to be creative, it allowed us to keep prices of our trailers down as we grew this business, it brought our team closer together (literally & figuratively), and it kept our focus on what was most important - delivering a great product to our customers by whatever means possible.

Our 1800 square foot space certainly has been a great starter home, but we've more than maxed out our production capacity here. And, with a 15-month build queue it is clearly time to make a change. As a company who has long-been committed to resourcefulness and ingenuity in our growth, this next step will follow the same path.

What's Next:

Back in January 2019, Chris Hudak found a dream location in Coalville, just 10 minutes up the road from where we are now. It was an old used Ford dealership that wasn’t on the market. After an 11-month courtship with the owner, we’re set to take over the space in November.

As they say, “Location, location, location!” And we couldn't imagine a better location for Escapod's next chapter. We explored countless options in Salt Lake City, but none of them felt right. Escapod was born in the mountains & bred for adventure. Our future Coalville home is the embodiment of those ideals.

While we'll take possession of the property on November, 15th it will require some work to get it up to speed. We’ll promptly begin renovations on the 9500 square foot building and plan to move into the completed building in March 2020. Rest-assured, if we can create what we did out of our shop in Wanship, we’ll be creating magic in Coalville.

Over the next few months, we’ll continue to build trailers out of our Wanship location. Our commitment to the customers in our current build-queue is top-priority, and we’ll be meeting those delivery deadlines without fail. As we increase our production rate in the new space and can shorten our build-queue, you’ll be the first to know.

We look forward to sharing this process & journey with you as Escapod enters its next chapter!

For more insight into why we chose Coalville as our home check out this article from the Park Record.

Ready to learn more? Check out these recommended blogs:

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