Bowlus Rivet Trailer Will Back Itself In—and Can Do Donuts!

• The Bowlus Rivet is the company’s most affordable luxury aluminum travel trailer, starting at $148,500. More upscale Bowlus models can sticker around $300,000.

• The Rivet is light, weighing in at 2800 pounds, Bowlus says.

• It’s loaded with technology, from its efficient hydronic heating system to the 8 kWh lithium-iron-phosphate battery charged by solar panels on the roof.

Bowlus was making sleek aluminum camping trailers in the 1930s, before some company called Airstream was even founded. A guy named William Hawley Bowlus had been building sleek sailplanes out of duraluminum, a blend of copper and aluminum known for its hardness. Bowlus added lightweight duraluminum camping trailers to his product line around 1934 and made 80 of them before the Great Depression did him in.

Fast forward 90 years and the Long family, flush with cash from the sale of their computer company, decided they’d like a Bowlus trailer for themselves. Not only did they build one, they started a company to build more.

Since then, the Longs have built “hundreds” of their aerodynamically pure, bright silver ultra-luxury, ultra-high-tech camping tubes. In recent years the prices for those luxury glamping haulers has skyrocketed from just over a hundred grand to up around $300k. That took it out of the range of most buyers.

But now, behold, Bowlus brings you the relatively low-priced Rivet. While the top-of-the-line Volterra and Terra Firma models bump up around the $300,000 mark, the shiny new Rivet is only $148,500, after the Federal tax credit for the rig’s solar panels.

The Rivet is about two feet shorter than the more upscale models, but it is about 400 pounds lighter in GVWR, which is 3500 pounds with a “base weight” listed at 2800 pounds. You could parse the difference in features between the three models but really, the coolest thing about the Rivet, that neither the Terra Firma nor the Volterra have, is a feature called AeroMove.

One thing keeping people from dealing with trailer life is the fear of backing it up. Some people can back trailers up, most cannot, at least not straight. There’s nothing worse in an RVer’s day than pulling into the trailer park and having all the locals set up their lawn chairs to watch the tinhorn try and back his rig into the spot. For those reverse-handicappers, there is the Bowlus AeroMove.

AeroMove is a self-propelled, self-powered, remote-controlled electric drive, “enabling you to access virtually any campsite easily while traversing up to a 25% grade,” says Bowlus.

It’s remarkably simple. Forward of each of the trailer’s wheels are electric motors. Those engage a grooved aluminum wheel that pushes against the trailer tire and spins it, like that motor on your Whizzer bicycle back in the 1950s on Lido Isle.

The electric motors operate independently and are controlled by a handheld remote. You disconnect the trailer from the tow vehicle, crank down the trailer hitch wheel, and voila, you’re doing donuts in the RV park while the slackers in their lawn chairs cheer. Afterwards they buy you beers and send dessert trays over to your Rivet.

The only problem is that it’s a $10,000 option. Could be well worth it, or you could just spend a couple weeks practicing backing up before leaving on your Good Sam tour of the USA.

The rest of the Rivet is equipped with the typical Bowlus technology:

• An 8-kWh lithium-iron-phosphate battery

• A 400-watt solar system on the roof (with accommodation for up to 660 watts with two additional solar panels)

• Air conditioning that’ll run 8 hours in over-100 degree F heat, or 16 hours if it’s only 85 degrees

• Hydronic heating that pumps warmed glycol through tubes in the floor to heat the cabin

• Induction stove

• LED lighting throughout

• And, it’s StarLink ready as a dealer option so you can blog your TrailerLife blog.

The Rivet is fairly well-equipped even as a base model. There’s nothing missing that would make you ask, “Hey, where’s the…?” The upper-model Terra Firma and Volterra get things standard that aren’t available on the Rivet, like an outdoor sofa/table, outdoor kitchen ready, emergency EV charging, mobile router, heated floors, GPS tracking, remote temp monitor (if you leave your dogs inside with the AC running), and a few other things.

How does it compare to the obvious competitor, Airstream? Airstream offers a wider variety of aluminum trailers, from the four-sleeper Basecamp for $46,900 all the way up to the 31-foot-5-inch Classic starting at $191,500. The Airstream Flying Cloud is close to the Bowlus at just under 24 feet long, 96 inches wide and with an interior headroom of 6’ 6.5”. That one costs less than $100,000. It’s also two and a half feet wider, so you have more room inside to stretch out. But it weighs 5000 pounds.

You could also just buy a used Coleman trailer that has a flappy fiberglass exterior and a lot of wood construction and doesn’t look like it just landed from Mars for around $6000, more or less. But who knows what’s living in the shag carpeting in that thing?

You could go on the road in one of these for an extended time. Rent your house out to responsible adults and discover America, just like you always said you would. It’s possible. Anything’s possible in a Bowlus!