Towing a Trailer

As my role in the company evolved, I was beginning to spend a lot more time on location, in support of the productions we were doing.  This usually took the form of me setting up a laptop and a couple of hard drives where ever I could find the space to work, ideally with a source of power available.  The best work environment always came from getting space in a production office trailer, if one was available.  Otherwise I was out on a folding table under an overhang.  But as the data and processing requirements increased for the work I was doing on set, I needed more and more gear to support it.

As we prepared for the upcoming feature film shoots, I knew things were only going to continue to scale up, more cameras, and more footage to handle.  So I began to look into getting my own trailer to work in.  I had no experience with anything to do with trailers, so it took a bit of research.  The simplest solution seemed to be buying a tow hauler.  A dedicated office trailer would be more expensive, but toy haulers have a large open area in the back, designed to store ATVs, that I could build into an office with a workstation and monitors.  So I started looking for a good deal on a trailer.

I was also going to need a truck to pull it with.  I went car shopping for the first time in my life, with my dad.  Ironically, after seeing all of the new options available, he was the one that ended up buying one.  Then I bought his previous truck from him, which was six years old by then.  It was a bit smaller than I was looking for, which limited my trailer options a bit, but that was probably a positive thing.  A larger trailer would have only added to the challenges, with few benefits.

So I eventually found a good deal on eBay, from a guy about a half hour away.  I made a decent deal with him, but now realize that I probably could have negotiated a lower price.  It is a learning process, and that was the largest purchase of my life.  He agreed to deliver the trailer to my office, where I had arranged to store it, so I didn’t have to tow it myself until a few months later.

Fortunately there was an area next to my office where I could experiment with maneuvering it, backing up and parking.  So I had a few practice sessions, with people setting up cones to work between and such, but that was still a far cry from taking it out in LA traffic.

I had a desk built against the back wall, and installed my computer and monitors in there.  My dad came to visit for a weekend, and helped me build overhead shelves with shock mounting for the systems and gear.  I setup a large battery power system, which would allow me to operate for a few hours without generator support.  It was the biggest investment I had made in my life, and a pretty extensive project to get up and running.