Hydro Aluminum North America Contributes Engineering and Fabrication to Award-Winning GO Camping Trailer
Hydro Aluminum?s Extrusion Americas unit (Linthicum, MD) teamed with SylvanSport to create the GO trailer, a mini mobile adventure camper that is one of the most highly regarded consumer products since the iPhone. The 800-pound pop-up camper sleeps four and hauls up to 800 pounds of gear, including motorcycles, bicycles, kayaks or an ATV. Yet this mighty mite can easily be managed by one person and be towed by a 4-cylinder compact vehicle. The GO trailer was most recently recognized in BusinessWeek, winning gold in its annual International Design Excellence Award competition, sponsored and judged by the Industrial Designers Society of America. The GO received one of 35 top category awards out of 1,517 total submissions.
Hydro?s engineers worked with SylvanSport from concept phase through final design and delivery, fine-tuning plans and manufacturing processes to move the trailer from prototype to viable product. What differentiates the GO trailer is the collapsible aluminum frame that provides multifunctional versatility without compromising strength.
"Hydro was instrumental in helping us make this more than just a small trailer,? said Tom Dempsey, SylvanSport?s founder. ?For example, we worked with Hydro?s metallurgists to select aluminum containing 75 percent recycled metal because it was cost-effective and because recycled content is important to us and our environmentally-conscious buyers. The aluminum structures are engineered to handle the weight of both trailer and gear, as well as the tremendous motion stress of both highway and off-road travel.?
The trailer?s aluminum components are extruded at Hydro?s plants in North Liberty, IN, and Belton, SC. The fabrication, which includes sawing, machining, bending, welding, adhesive bonding and complete assembly, occurs at the plant in Sidney, Ohio.
?Raw extrusions come in and we utilize our fabrication processes to construct the frame of the trailer, finishing it off with roughly 100 items ? from wheels to wiring harnesses ? supplied by SylvanSport,? said Matt Landis, Hydro?s commercial engineering manager in Sidney. ?When the trailer leaves Sidney, it ships directly to the retailer.?
The nod from the Industrial Designers Society is just the latest in a long list of accolades for the GO trailer. It earned the 2008 International Aluminum Extrusion Design Grand Prize from the ET Foundation for its innovative use of aluminum. The GO trailer was also dubbed ?2008 Best Adventure Gear? by National Geographic Adventure magazine and was featured prominently in The New York Times (Aug. 15, 2008).
