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Show Life On Wheels Lures Millions Of Americans By John O'Conor Executive Director, Trailer Coach Association Editor's Note: This is the first of four authoritative articles on a subject of increasing public pub-lic interest the use of trailers for homes or vacation purposes.) pur-poses.) A new way of living is seizing seiz-ing the fancy of millions of Americans. Some 3,500,000 persons including in-cluding about 1,000,000 westerners west-erners now live in mobile homes or use travel trailers for vacations. By 196G, some 6,000,000 westerners will be numbered among these trailer enthusiasts, enthusi-asts, according to a Stanford Research Institute survey. What are they like these homes on wheels that are attracting at-tracting so much public interest? inter-est? Basically, they're of two kinds. The shorter, lightweight models hich can be towed easily by a car are called travel trailers or vacation trailers. Mostly eight feet wide or less, they run in length from 12-footers priced around $850 to 27 or 30-footers priced generally gen-erally between $3500 and $5700. These larger vacation trailers trail-ers are so completely outfitted that they can be and often are used as regular dwellings. However, most trailers that are used as year-round homes are larger than these vacationers vacation-ers and are called mobile homes. Regular models of these units run anywhere from 30 to 60 feet in length. They may be eight or 10 feet wide the trend being to the 10-wide, now that restrictions on their movement over the highway has been eased. Trices of mobile homes range from about $3500 to $9000. As in the case of vacation trailers, the price includes all appliances appli-ances and furniture. Some interesting experimental experi-mental developments have recently re-cently been made in the design of trailers and mobile homes. There are trailers which can be converted into houseboats simply by retracting the wheels and mounting an outboard motor. mo-tor. Mobile homes of two or three levels are also available. There are also expandable trailers and mobile homes, with a three-sided, roofed section w hich nests into the main body of the unit in transit. When the unit is to be used, the tel-cscojwl tel-cscojwl section is expanded by means of nn electrical hydraulic hydrau-lic system or manually, thus providing almost twice the living liv-ing space of the uncxpanded unit |