Trailers and buggies, when worlds collide

Guy stuff and a friendly clash of cultures was how I would describe today.

The Laredo travel trailer we bought was built right near here in Goshen, Indiana at the Keystone plant. Actually, there are 18 plants. They offer plant tours, but the Laredo plant is currently undergoing renovations and was not available to tour.

We did however tour the plant that makes the popular Hornet trailer. The process is pretty much the same, we were told, so we received a pretty good idea of how the trailers are made. It was very interesting.

As you can see from these photos the trailers are put together in an assembly line. An assembly line powered by human strength. At each step there are about 15 people working to quickly install parts of the trailer and then when complete there is a call for a "line shift."

Four or five people then push the assemblies to the next station and the process continues. About 22 trailers a day are completed this way. Workers, many of them Amish, are paid by the piece so the workers are eager to complete as many as possible during their shift.

No one was working during the tour as they start at 4 a.m. and work until 2 p.m.

It was interesting and comforting to see the work that goes into making the trailers and making them sturdy. And, of course, they are made right here in the good ol' USA.

Next we went to an Amish furniture maker "Lakeside Furniture" so Diane could look at dinner tables and she found one she is considering to buy for her new kitchen. Calvin was the furniture maker and he had a delightful sense of humor and seemed to tolerate us modern folks just fine.

The buggies were out in force today, including three of them parked at the grocery store we stopped at and I snapped a quick photo, which is attached. Amazingly, some of the folks also parked the buggies and then walked across the street to a McDonald's for dinner.

Don't know why that made me smile, but seeing an Amish family going into a McDonald's for dinner seemed a little odd. More tomorrow.

Our tour guide was Tom Wiley, who is initially from Flint, so we had a nice talk about that. Great fun, but again, it was hot.