City company provides new lease on life for travel trailers

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This article was published 20/04/2023 (949 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Stu Pynoo and Maegan Clerihew do not like waste. Pynoo, proprietor of ReVolution Trailers, and his project manager Clerihew renovate old travel trailers, sprucing them up with new fixtures and fittings to give them a new lease of life.

The duo, who both have extensive renovation backgrounds, started their first project in January 2020 and to date, they have worked on 25 full renovations as well as countless repairs.

The Winnipeg-based company recycles, reuses or rehomes as many components and materials as possible, salvaging everything they can from old trailers, which they either reuse in their “upfit” projects or keep for others to reuse.

“Light fixtures, plumbing and power locks, different switches, they can be of use to somebody. Anything that is not garbage is recycled and put it into another trailer,” Pynoo says.

Like any home, the trailers need to be refreshed. Clerihew is in charge of the design process, choosing colours, fixtures and fittings to boost tired vehicles. Pynoo works on the infrastructure, making sure each unit is still roadworthy and ensuring plumbing, air conditioning, roofing and flooring are up to scratch.

Their five-acre lot is open year-round, and winter is the busiest time, when they get clients booking in for renovations. They currently have three remodelled trailers ready to be sold and are working on around 15 more in their workshop. They’ve refurbished everything from 10-foot trailers to RVs the size of Greyhound buses.

Clerihew, who considers herself an environmentalist, says the Manitoba climate is tough on the vehicles.

“These RVs are made in the Midwest, southern States and are ideally designed for there,” she explains. “Over here they have a short usable life; I don’t know if they are destined for more than eight years of use. You see all these trailers piled up in scrapyards because people don’t know what to do with them. I think we live in a world of waste so we do everything we can to keep them off the landfill; we haven’t come across one yet which you can say goodbye to.”

As well as sourcing trailers destined for the scrapyard, they also accept client commissions. One of their most ambitious projects was sourcing and transforming a 2004 Sunnybrook Titan trailer into a full-time residence for two professionals who also work from home.

“We had to create working spaces and living spaces. We had to remodel the bedroom to fit in a large bed, we put in two separate workspaces and a micro-wood burning stove. It was the most expensive refurb we have done; they spent around $50,000 on the reno and supplied a lot of the stuff in the trailer.”

Their least expensive refurb was a mere $11,000 to refresh a small trailer.

While both are keen proponents of recycling, they say the waste reduction aspect of their jobs didn’t really occur to them until they started work on their first project.

“Our mindset was to make the trailer better and in the process we realized just how much unnecessary waste there was. It’s one of the things we are most proud of; keeping old, water damaged, outdated RVs from ending up in our local landfills,” Clerihew says.

The company is hosting a huge parts sale from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday at 1480 Springfield Rd. to mark Earth Day. They will be giving 100 per cent of the proceeds to Winnipeg Pet Rescue. Visitors will also be able to tour the three renovated RVs that are on sale.

av.kitching@winnipegfreepress.com