Sasquatch XC Manufactures Rugged Camp Trailers in Farmington

Campers and outdoor enthusiasts from the Four Corners and beyond are flocking to Farmington to purchase rugged pull-behind camp trailers from Sasquatch XC. Initially based in Colorado, the company now makes the trailers right here in Farmington. You're watching "The Local News Network," brought to you by San Juan Regional Medical Center and M&R Plumbing. I'm your host, Ryan Simonovich. Sasquatch XC was founded in 2020 and was based in Silverton until 2024. Weather, access to facilities, materials, and labor were all factors in the move.

Wintertimes were tough getting over Red Mountain Pass to pick up a trailer. A lot of times it was closed when people wanted to come pick it up. The other thing too is access to facilities. We grew the business to a point where we needed a bigger facility, and those weren't available to us in Silverton, as well as the workforce we were trying to hire, trying to grow the company, and there just weren't enough people to support it. So we came down to Farmington, talked with business leaders down there, and found a place here in Farmington triple the size of our facility, and were able to hire the workers that we needed.

The idea to manufacture back country trailers emerged during the first summer of the Covid Pandemic, when Kramer was camping in the mountains.

But one thing I noticed, we were camping out right across from the main like entrance to the trail network, and that evening we were cooking dinner, and I noticed everybody we talked to just funneled out of the mountains and we were the only ones actually out camping. So we thought that there must be like a product that we can design that can enable people to have that full back country experience where they can actually camp out, have the campfire, sleep under the stars, wake up, cook breakfast in the morning out in the mountains, but still give people the RV amenities that they would want. So that was the birth of the idea of the back country camper.

A seven person team builds the back country trailers at Sasquatch's facility on the San Juan College campus. Sasquatch offers two models. The Smuggler is a smaller unit meant for cargo, and the Highland 60 has a bed cab in addition to storage space.

It's hand-built. We have a very small team of really talented people putting them together. It's all aluminum construction, so it's super lightweight, so it can be towed by smaller vehicles. As you can see, it's got really high ground clearance, really great suspension design, so it really can go anywhere you want to take it off grid. It does fine in a campground, but you really get the best use of it by finding a little two track dirt road and getting way lost in the wilderness, or not the wilderness, but the back country.

Several of the company's suppliers are based in Farmington, which contributes to a more efficient manufacturing process.

Some of the benefits right off the bat was a lot of our vendors that we use for powder coating, bed lining, just in general were already in Farmington, so we were having to drive down with the trailer to pick up parts. So it turned a two and a half hour trip to an eight minute trip.

The company makes about 15 trailers per year and hopes to ramp up production now that it's in a larger facility.

I think that the next four or five years, our goals are really just to grow the business. We are still kind of breaking into the space a little bit, and I think there's a much bigger market than we're addressing currently for these products for our trailers.

To learn more about this and other local news stories, visit farmingtonlocal.Nnws. Thank you for watching this edition of "The Local News Network." I'm Ryan Simonovich.