GORV - Digital Magazine Issue #4 | Page 6

ON TRAK WORDS & IMAGES: MAX TAYLOR | CUSTOM OFFROAD CARAVANS HAVE FOREVER BEEN TRAKMASTER’S SPECIALTY. NOW, IT’S SHAKING THINGS UP. When you think about offroad caravanning, which brands of offroad caravan come to mind? Dollars to doughnuts, Trakmaster is on your top five list. Since the mid 1990s, when the company was established, the company has focussed on custom manufacturing. Neither mass production nor a standardised range 6 gorv.com.au of vans were its cup of tea. But following the 2016 sale of Trakmaster to Gason, a company specialising in, among other things, agricultural equipment, times are changing. The aim is growth. But how to grow a company that only builds its niche product to order? Its obvious: develop a standard range of caravans to a proven, fixed- design format. Trakmaster hopes that this approach will significantly broaden its customer base. After all, taking the custom path isn’t for everyone. Trakmaster project manager Ron Larkin told GoRV that these standard layouts were based on some of the company’s most popular vans as well as customer feedback, and Trakmaster envisions that in six to 12 months these standard-layout vans will represent about half of all the vans it sells. By the time Trakmaster is done, there will be about 12 fixed-design offroaders available. To kick it off, Trakmaster’s Flinders range has gotten the standardised-