This is a refurbished Boles Aero XL travel trailer from 1972, with a gleaming aluminum shell and an interior fit-out that’s period correct for the era in which it was made.
Inside you’ll find everything you need from a home-on-wheels, including sleeping space for up to four, a bathroom with a toilet and shower, a fully-equipped kitchenette, and a dinette with seating space for four.
Fast Facts: A 1972 Boles Aero XL
- Boles Manufacturing was founded in Burbank, California, in 1946 by Don and Jeanette Boles. Don’s aircraft-industry experience at Lockheed shaped the company’s riveted aluminum construction methods. Inspired by the quick sale of the family’s wartime trailer, he built his first model in a one-car garage and soon began commercial production.
- The company grew from compact “canned-ham” trailers into a range of increasingly large models, later adding fifth-wheel designs. It also produced mobile laboratories and medical clinics. Don remained involved in industry associations, and when the couple retired in 1980, Boles Manufacturing closed after reportedly building more than 18,000 trailers.
- The 1972 Boles Aero XL shown here measures 29 feet 1 inch overall and has a professionally polished, aircraft-style riveted aluminum shell. It retains much of its original, period-correct interior, with sleeping space for four, a dinette, a bathroom, a four-burner stove, an oven, and a refrigerator with a separate freezer.
- Its equipment includes tandem axles, four-wheel electric brakes, a forced-air furnace, air conditioning, fresh and waste water tanks, and independent 12-volt and 110-volt electrical systems. Recent updates include PEX plumbing, new mattresses, an electric tongue jack, and a reversing camera. It’s listed for sale in Fresno, California, for $25,000 USD.
History Speedrun: Boles Aero
Boles Manufacturing was founded in Burbank, California, in 1946 – the company built a popular line of aluminum travel trailers for 34 years, and it had all started out with a single trailer built in a one-car garage. The Boles Aero never reached Airstream’s national popularity, but their polished aluminum trailers developed a cult following all their own.
Boles Manufacturing was founded in Burbank, California, in 1946 – the company built a popular line of aluminum travel trailers for 34 years, and it had all started out with a single trailer built in a one-car garage. Image courtesy of Boles Aero.
The company was founded by Don and Jeanette Boles, and their built their trailers using methods Don had learned making aircraft.
Lockheed + The U.S. Navy
In 1939, Don Boles was one of the first 37 candidates picked for a new four-year tool and die apprenticeship. The US Department of Labor had set it up as part of the Roosevelt administration’s plan to pull the country out of the Great Depression. It was an interesting time in world history, WWII kicked off that same year across the Atlantic, and two years later the United States would join the conflict after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Boles served it at Lockheed’s aircraft plant in Burbank, learning aircraft design and construction methods, and he went on to win several awards for tools he designed to improve the way aluminum parts were made. He graduated as a journeyman tool and die maker in 1943, right in the midst of WWII when men with his skillset were in huge demand.
After a short assignment with General Electric in Cleveland, Ohio, Boles enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was posted to a base at Norman, Oklahoma. No housing could be found there for his wife, Jeanette, and their three children, so he bought a used 27 foot trailer, and the family lived in it for the rest of his military service. The couple had met at Burbank High School and married a month after she graduated, when she was 16 and he was 18.
Released from service after V-J Day, Boles towed the family’s small trailer home to California on a family vacation, parked it in the driveway and put a “For Sale” sign on it. It sold later that same day, and at a profit too. More would-be buyers kept turning up after it had gone, and Boles quickly realized there was significant pent-up postwar demand for good travel trailers.
From B & R To Boles Manufacturing
Back at his civilian job, Boles designed an all-riveted, all-aluminum travel trailer around what he’d learned building planes at Lockheed. He built the first one in his single-car garage with money from his father, the garage set the maximum size, and as a result the earliest trailers were just nine and a half feet long.
The early trailers built by Boles belong to what collectors later named the “canned-ham” era, with polished aluminum exteriors and wood-paneled interiors, generally in birch. Image courtesy of Boles Aero.
A friend soon joined the venture, and the pair formed B & R Manufacturing to sell the design as the “Roadrunner” while construction began on a small factory, which would allow them to build trailers over 10 feet long.
The first garage-built trailer was parked on the street outside the unfinished factory, next to the mason’s sand and bricks, with an asking price of $675 USD. The first person to look at it paid it. A neighbor’s father then ordered 10 trailers for his business, but he wanted them 12 feet long, too big for the garage, so the order waited on the factory.
The strain of building a factory and a business at once, and the money trouble that came with it all, soon drove the partner out. Boles took full control and renamed the company Boles Manufacturing and he named the trailer the “Boles Aero.”
RV industry historian Al Hesselbart later said that output was more than 300 trailers by the end of 1946, and that was only the first year. By then Boles had quit his day job, and Jeanette had come onboard to serve as vice president.
Boles Manufacturing Construction + Models
The early trailers built by Boles belong to what collectors later named the “canned-ham” era, with polished aluminum exteriors and wood-paneled interiors, generally in birch. The Boles trailer range kept growing, a 28 foot Estrellita was in production by 1953, and the 1954 and 1955 lines included the 19 foot Mira Mar, the Montecito, and the larger 24 foot Ensenada.
Later Boles trailers added gold-anodized aluminum panels and chrome trim, the 1966 line included the 20 foot 5 inch M-200E Deluxe and the 35 foot 6 inch M-350K Nonpareil, and by this time, every listed model was at least 8 feet wide. By 1980 the standard models ran from 27 to 35 feet in length, from 1974 the company also built fifth-wheel trailers at 30, 33, and 34 feet, plus custom 40 footers.
Boles Manufacturing eventually grew to three locations, including a plant in Sun Valley, where Boles designed and built his own deep-sea fishing boat on the back lot. Image courtesy of Boles Aero.
Beyond The Travel Trailer
During the Vietnam War, Boles designed and built mobile photo laboratories for the U.S. Air Force, they were flown to the Far East in large cargo aircraft and used to develop aerial surveillance film.
The company also built mobile medical and dental clinics for civilian use in developing countries. In the late 1960s, as motorhomes on truck chassis were starting to catch on, Boles worked with a German maker of small diesel chassis on a compact front-wheel-drive Type C motorhome.
Boles spent more than 30 years on the board of the Los Angeles-based Trailer Coach Association, he was also a charter member of the American Institute of Travel Trailers, the first association specifically for RV manufacturers and a predecessor of today’s RV Industry Association.
The RV/MH Hall of Fame inducted him in 2005 – it credits him as one of the first manufacturers to provide a service facility at the factory, and one of the first RV makers to advertise in general-interest publications rather than only the specialized travel trailer press.
The End Of The Road
Boles Manufacturing eventually grew to three locations, including a plant in Sun Valley, where Boles designed and built his own deep-sea fishing boat on the back lot. The Boleses retired in 1980, and the company closed down. Remarkably, its total output is believed to have been more than 18,000 trailers.
This is a refurbished Boles Aero XL travel trailer from 1972, with a gleaming aluminum shell and an interior fit-out that’s period correct for the era in which it was made.
In retirement the couple attended gatherings of Boles Aero owners and signed the interiors of some of the trailers they had built. Don Boles died in 2009, at the ripe old age of 91, and Jeanette died a couple of years later in 2011, aged 90.
Thousands of their trailers are believed to still be on the road, touring from coast to coast, and accommodating young families just as that small trailer had housed the Boles family back during WWII.
The 1972 Boles Aero XL Travel Trailer Shown Here
This is a 1972 Boles Aero, it’s a vintage travel trailer with a riveted aluminum body that’s been professionally polished. It remains largely original, keeping many of its period fixtures and fittings – it measures in at 29 feet 1 inch (8.86 meters) overall, with a body length of 25 feet 8 inches (7.82 meters), an exterior width of 8 feet (2.44 meters), and an interior height of 6 feet 7 inches (2.01 meters).
The Boles Aero XL has a heavy-duty three-rail chassis, wide-track tandem axles, shock absorbers, four-wheel electric brakes, and an aircraft-style riveted aluminum shell. Interior equipment includes cork flooring, a four-burner range with an eye-level oven, a 9.8 cubic foot refrigerator with a separate freezer, twin stainless steel sinks, and a bathroom with a marine toilet and ceiling fan.
Additional equipment includes a forced-air furnace, a 13,000 BTU air conditioner, a 10 gallon gas water heater, a 40 gallon fresh water tank, a 30 gallon black water tank, and twin polished seven-gallon propane tanks. More recent improvements include updated PEX plumbing, new twin mattresses, an electric A-frame tongue jack, and a reversing camera with a four-inch monitor.
Inside you’ll find everything you need from a home-on-wheels, including sleeping space for up to four, a bathroom with a toilet and shower, a fully-equipped kitchenette, and a dinette with seating space for four.
The trailer also keeps its original 12 volt porch light and has four stabilizer jacks, independent 12-volt and 110-volt electrical systems, and a systems control panel with an amperage gauge.
It’s now being offered for sale out of Fresno, California on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $25,000 USD. If you’d like to read more or make them an offer, you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of B&B Vintage Race T-Shirt Shop
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