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Handcrafting Campers

By Beacon Staff

Doug Sieler remembers when and where he earned his first paycheck. It came from his father Elmer in 1984 when Doug was a freshman at Flathead High School. Almost 30 years later, Doug remembers when and where both his son and daughter earned their first paychecks. They’re still earning them today right where Doug did.

The Sieler family business is S & S Campers on U.S. Highway 93 south of Kalispell. With Doug as its president and the rest of his family working in a variety of positions, the company builds slide-on truck campers, the kind that sit on top of a pickup truck as opposed to being pulled behind like a trailer.

The manufacturing company is approaching 10,000 units sold, an impressive milestone for a local family owned and operated business that started in Sieler’s childhood garage more than 40 years ago and has survived through a difficult economy.

Doug, who took over almost 15 years ago for his father, used to have as many as 30 employees working inside the 60,000-square-foot manufacturing shop. Then the economy fell apart and the manufacturing industry as a whole took a considerable hit across the country.

“There’s just a few people that build truck campers,” Doug said, “and there’s less now than there has been.”

Today, S & S endures, and it’s thanks in large part to the Sieler family work ethic. Doug has his uncle, son, daughter and wife working alongside him at one of the more trusted and innovative camper manufacturing sites in the northwest.

“It can be as big as a whole new floor plan or as small as changing the way a door is mounted, but they’re innovating everyday,” wrote Truck Camper Magazine in an article about S & S.

Kalispell resident Larry Hanson bought a camper from S & S before he and his wife toured Alaska for two-and-a-half months.

“Everything worked great. And that’s a pretty good test,” Hanson said. “They’re exceptionally well-made. We’ve had some trouble with prior campers and they just weren’t put together right. We’ve found the S & S to be very, very high quality. As good as anybody’s. And they’re from Kalispell.”

Along with building recreational campers from the ground up using local wood products and insulation, the company provides service and repair for all types of motor homes.

Recently S & S has evolved its specialty into the commercial sector.

“With the way the economy is, a guy’s got to think outside the box,” Doug said.

As a buyer-direct operation, S & S has become a supplier of specialty-made models that can be built around specific needs. The U.S. Geological Survey has commissioned five campers that can be used in the field. Another company up in Canada has ordered 10 custom-made models that act as an EMT station on wheels.

The roots of the company date back to 1969 when Elmer started building canopies for trucks inside his garage. Pretty soon the canopies were selling by the thousands — more than 14,000, in fact — and Elmer was expanding into a broader camping manufacturer on Willow Glen Road. By the mid-1970s, Elmer had opened S & S, and his son Doug was helping out. The business started shipping campers across the country from Alaska to New York to Florida. Following his father’s lead, Doug learned the trade, which, when it comes to building campers, means being a jack-of-all-trades.

Doug went on to take over the family business and now finds himself working alongside his son and daughter the same way he did with his father at their age.

“I like them to do something they like to do, and I think they both like working down here,” Doug said.

Working with family provides a trust and pride that carries over to S & S’s final product, Doug said. And as a bonus that goes beyond the paycheck, he gets to spend more time with his family.

“It makes for a nice work environment,” he said.