Nomadic Shares

To the relief of their socialite constituents the city councilmen of Palm Beach last week thumbed down a proposed town trailer camp, decreed that the presence of more than one automobile trailer on a private lot constituted a public nuisance. In another rebuff to tin-can tourists the Palm Beach councilmen limited the parking of trailers on streets or highways to one hour, prohibited cooking in them during that period.

What was a nuisance to swank Palm Beach is a boon to the rest of Florida, which this winter is outdoing itself to make northern nomads happy. Opened near Sarasota last week was the "National Winter Trailer Show" with all important manufacturers exhibiting at the 600-acre Samoset trailer town. Scheduled for the annual Florida Orange Festival at Winter Haven next week is a "Trailer Parade," with an even 1,000 mobile homes competing for fancy prizes. Estimates of the number of trailers already in Florida ran as high as 26,000, the increase over last year as high as 200%. By official count trailers were rolling into the State at the rate of 25 per hour. Noted was a phenomenal increase in the number of trailers bearing magazine salesmen and itinerant pitch men.

In Washington the biggest factor in the fastest-growing U. S. industry last week filed a registration statement with the Securities & Exchange Commission for the first public offering of trailer stock. The registrant was Covered Wagon Co., the little Mt. Clemens, Mich, concern which was founded in 1930 by Arthur Georg Sherman (TIME, June 15). Exasperate by the faults and failures of a trailer he bought, Trailerman Sherman built one fc himself, was besieged on the road by s many "trailer tappers" (curious callers that he decided to make his model commercially.

At the Detroit Automobile Show in 1930 Mr. Sherman got a batch of orders, reached a production of 189 trailers by 1933. That year his sales were $56,000 By 1935 he sold 1,100 trailers for $500,000. Last year, working night & day. Cox ered Wagon turned out 6,000 trailers worth some $3,000,000. With added facilties provided out of the new financing, Covered Wagon hopes to hit the 20,000 mark in 1936. Total U. S. trailer production was an estimated 35,000 in 1936.

Still small are even Covered Wagon profits--$4.889 in 1934. about $10,000 in 1935 and $86,000 for the first nine month of last year. Only preferred stock (30,000 shares) will be sold to the public in the proposed financing. All common stock (295,000 shares) is owned by Founder Sherman. But each preferred share will be convertible into two shares of common stock, giving the public its first chance in the U. S. trailer's future.

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