How Kaufman Trailers Got Started

Hello! My name is Robb Kaufman. I backed into trailer business in May of 1987 as a 26 year-old with a growing family, trying to make some extra money to supplement my full time job in a furniture factory at Thomasville, NC.

As a teenager, my family lived for several years next door to a brick mason who had a welding shop behind his house where he did all kinds of welding as a second job. My first real job, at 16 years of age, was mixing “mud” and carrying brick for this brick-layer. He also taught me the fundamentals of welding as I “hung-out” in his shop at night.

My first utility trailer built to sell, a 16’ tandem, was welded together with a Lincoln “buzz box” stick welder that I had purchased for $130. I had no shop for this effort. My work area was the side yard of the mobile home park where I lived. An electric power cord with a breaker on the end was run through the mobile home screen door and plugged into the power panel in place of the clothes dryer breaker. The land-lord quickly tired of this and operations were moved to my dad’s back yard for the next two years where the same power cable was run to the woodshed. Sales averaged around two trailers a month for those first two years.

I took a second shift job at another furniture factory for the next three years, which gave me mornings and early afternoons to build trailers. The place we were now living at had a 13’x16’ metal building. I added 8’ to the front, making it 13’x24’. I bought a used gasoline powered welder for $1,000 and ran the exhaust pipe through a hole in the wall of the “new shop”. Sales averaged almost two trailers a week for that three-year period.

In May of 1992, I quit the furniture factory to go full time in trailer business. I had purchased about two acres at Lexington, North Carolina on North Silver Street (one of our current locations) and begun clearing trees and building a new 22’x24’ shop a little at a time over the last year or so. My brother-in-law, Jarry Oldaker, joined me that spring. I well remember building the first Kaufman wedge car trailer with him. Only the back half of the trailer fit in the shop, with the rest of the trailer being built out the front of the building. That winter another welder joined us. By the spring of 1993, there were several of us working out of that 22’x24’ shop and a bigger one was under construction. Over the years, we have built all the buildings at our North Carolina facility ourselves, except for one of the smaller shops and our new paint facility with our own people and the expert assistance of our long-term employee builder, Dave Smith. In 2005, we added a new 26,000 square feet facility in Nebraska. In 2009, we built a 49,000 square feet addition.

In 2008, we acquired a 165,000 sq. ft. facility in Bennettsville, SC and started building detachable gooseneck trailers. This has turned into a major division of the Kaufman brand. In 2009, we acquired a 140,000 sq. ft. facility, also in Bennettsville, SC, and set up a dump trailers plant. In 2018, we set up a dedicated plant in Denton, NC building enclosed trailers. In 2020, we moved our growing parts sales to a dedicated facility south of Thomasville, NC and added service work to parts sales. Kaufman Trailers Parts & Service now employees about 16 people at this facility. All told, the Kaufman brand has 5 dedicated trailer production plants, plus the Parts & Service location.

In 2022, Tuckahoe Holdings, out of Richmond, VA, completed an initial buy of Kaufman Trailers. As I update this article in December 2024, at 64 years of age, Tuckahoe now owns the controlling interest of The Kaufman Trailers Organization. They will acquire the remaining interest over the next 10 years. There are 10 years left on my employment agreement. It was my choice, at the time of the initial sale, to work for 12 years for the new owners. The good Lord willing, I will be 74 years old when I complete my final work day at Kaufman at the end of December, 2034. By the way, I get along great with my new bosses, Stuart and Peter Farrell (they say they are not my bosses – that we are business partners!)

I am blessed to live in America, the greatest country in the world. Along the way, I have also been blessed in being joined by the right people who have made Kaufman Trailers what it is today. Alan Honeycutt joined the company in April of 1990 as a welder. He is still with us, 34 years later and runs our small parts fabrication division at our Lexington, NC plant. Tim Carter joined Kaufman Trailers in the year 2000 and is still with us as the head of sales at Parts and Service. Most of the current management team and many of the people involved in the production of Kaufman products have been with the company long-term. Kaufman Trailers is proof that the American Dream is still possible with perseverance and hard work. It exists for one reason: to give you, our valued customer, a high-quality trailer at the lowest possible delivered cost. We never forget that without you, none of us have a job. Your business with us is never taken for granted and we thank you for it!

I leave you with a link to my favorite song, which also describes my view of life and the world. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaCSuzR4DwM

God has been good to me.

Robb Kaufman