Leading RV Magazine Celebrates 60th Anniversary

Trailer Life, America’s best-known and best-read monthly magazine for RV enthusiasts, is
celebrating its 60th anniversary with its July 2001 issue, due out on newsstands June 19.
Trailer Life began as Western Trailer Life, a small regional publication in California. It
sold for 10 cents on the newsstand and subscribers paid $1 for a year’s subscription.
Throughout WWII, travel trailers were used as temporary housing for U.S. government
employees and their families. But when the war was over, the fledgling magazine extolled
the exciting and inexpensive vacation trips that families could take in such articles as
“Trailering for 2-1/2 Cents a Mile.” In 1958, the magazine was acquired by an advertising
executive named Art Rouse, who turned Trailer Life into a national consumer publication
devoted to the wide world of RV travel. Rouse’s personal enthusiasm for the topic led to
his acquisition of the Good Sam Club (currently with one million members) 10 years later
and the eventual launching of other publications serving the RV community. In the six
decades since its humble beginnings in 1941, Trailer Life has chronicled the evolution of
these vehicles from the temporary housing of the 1940s to Recreation Vehicles (RVs). RVs
today come in many shapes and sizes — from modest tent trailers towed behind cars or
trucks to self-propelled motorhomes and bus conversions that can cost $750,000 or more!
Today, there are more than nine million RVs currently owned in the United States. Each
issue of Trailer Life offers a host of informative vehicle tests, technical articles,
product evaluations and do-it-yourself projects, as well as features covering travel
destinations, special events, lifestyle tips and unusual RV people. Today’s Trailer Life is
more than a monthly magazine serving the growing millions of RV owners in North America.
It’s the expert resource for those who are eager to travel their way — without the hassles
of hotels, airlines and tour buses. And Trailer Life is ready to continue to explore the
exciting world of RV travel in the 21st century.