The Evolution of the Ultimate Cooking Trailer

The pig cooking trailer, the ultimate man machine.  A trailer that is symbolic of BBQ, tailgating, and great memories.  I remember seeing someone pulling a pig cooker, as we refer to them in NC, for the first time and thinking, ‘that looks awesome’.  For some people, they wake up one day and decide they are no longer going to be outdone by the guy tailgating next to them, and so they buy one.  For me, it’s been an evolution 20 years in the making.

The love for cooking can be traced back as far as I remember, and I believe that was my first homemade apple pie with my mother at age five, she may be able to correct me on that one.  Since then, this skill and interest has been nurtured and developed in many different arenas.  Being at summer camp, I wanted to be the master of the iron skillet making our chicken ranch burrito’s while camping along the Neuse River, and then into college…

I remember one of my specific goals in college: to master a charcoal grill.  Some people aspire to make great grades and get into grad school.  Me – I figured I’d focus my efforts on a specific area of my social life, the back deck.  My Aunt had given me the old school Weber, and everyone knows exactly what grill I’m referring too, for my 20^th birthday.  It was the fall of my sophomore year at UNC-Wilmington and my roommate and I had just moved into our first apartment and we now had one of the essential tools for survival – the charcoal grill.  After messing around with lighter fluid for too long, I discovered the chimney which took all the guesswork out of the most difficult part about cooking with charcoal, lighting it.  From there, my back deck on the second floor, (where we weren't allowed to have grills), became the focal point of that apartment.  I tried grilling about anything we could, all the usual’s and just about anything else shy of a PB&J found its way onto that old Weber.  On one instance, that Weber took the place of the back seat of my Jeep Wrangler where we and a big cooler of beer made the trek from Wilmington to Philadelphia for the Army/Navy Football game.  I’m sure in the 12 hour span it took to get to Philadelphia, there was probably another grill available to use, but that would have been way too easy. 

Then onto smoking – after college and feeling pretty confident on the skills handling charcoal, it was time to expand my knowledge of the ‘low and slow’.  The natural place to start was the gas smoker.  They guy I was working with at the time decided it would be a good investment for our company to have a smoker.  We went with the traditional vertical direct smoker, (where there is a water/chip pan of sorts between the flame and the meat smoking above.)  This was a great introduction to smoking for its ease of use and we were able to get a lot of the smoke flavor from our variety of liquid choices put into the water tray. 

At this point, I’m in my mid 20’s and decide it’s time – time for my first whole hog.  By this time, I was hounding Craigslist for a good deal on pig cooker.  This would become my guilty pleasure at work for the next few years whenever I needed a 10 minute breather.  Considering I was living in the middle of Uptown Charlotte, putting a pig cooker in my gated parking deck spot unfortunately did not make a lot of sense.  You could already point out very easily which balcony was ours.  Some would have a cute table and a candle while others might have a few wicker chairs – well ours consisted of a turkey fryer, an old piece of plywood which doubled as an oyster shelling station in the winter, a few coolers and a big outdoor heater that found its way to my porch after the closing of a nearby restaurant.  So we opted to rent a cooker for the weekend to enter into the greatest circle of smokers, cooking a hog!  It was a great event.  We even went as far as to make t-shirts to commemorate such an occasion.  On a side note – everyone at this event was under the impression I’d done this multiple times, I guess the cat’s outta the bag with this story.  We get up at around six the next morning to start the day of waiting and anticipation all while a bit nervous as to whether or not my BBQ is going to live up to all the hype.  So by man law, when you start cooking, you crack open a beer.  Nothing like the taste of an ice cold Natty Light to perk your senses before the sun comes up!  Over the course of the next 12 hours, many more beverages were consumed, the corn hole boards were worn out, and the level of anticipation reached an all-time high.  And then it hit me – the reason people go crazy over pulled pork is after smelling the hearing the fat soak through the meat and onto the bottom of the cooker all day, they’re so hungry it doesn't matter what they eat.  For all they care, they've been waiting around wafting the smell of pork for last six hours; it probably could have been a piece of cardboard and tasted great.  Nonetheless, the pig was amazing, and the first official whole hog was a success. 

The first pig cooker of the Woodard Family before it's modification

The Monday following the event, I’m pretty sure I spent the entire day burning up Google looking for the best, Mac-daddy pig cooker out there.  Realizing that some people spend over $10k building these machines of manliness, it was back to Craigslist.  My wife and I would even consider selling one of our cars in order to fund a rolling weekend of fun.  And then it happened…on a Monday morning when I had not quite got into full work mode, I see a Craigslist ad for not one, but TWO smokers.  I call my wife and tell her we’re going to look at them as soon as I get off work.  We take an hour ride to find the deal we've been waiting on.  We went with the intention of buying the large cooker, and went home with both.  So we get a little overzealous at times, it happens.  There was only one problem, the big cooker; a 250 gallon heating oil drum was not on a trailer.  This made backyard cookouts a breeze but wasn't quite the right fit.  So back to the drawing board we went.  We thought about selling it and putting the money towards a pig cooker on wheels, but nothing quite worked out.  And so we decided to get creative and figured it would be easier to find a trailer to mount the cooker on than vice verse.  Now this is where we really got carried away…

Prior to moving to Charlotte, I was in the boat business slinging big floating toys.  One of the irrational occurrences most boat owners have is referred to as “2 foot syndrome”.  Where they think to themselves, “If I just had a boat 2 feet bigger, I could do _______(fill in the blank)”.  This is solid justification to get a bigger boat immediately.  I experienced something similar with trailers.  Initially, I was looking at a 5’x8’, just big enough to get the big cooker on and go.  But the more research I did, I found the incremental cost on a 6’x10’ wasn't very much.  So after pursuing the 6’x10’, I realized if I had a 6’x12’, I would have enough room for the cooker, a few burners, and still have room for a good sized cooler.  So that was it, we decided a 6’x12’ was going to be the best fit for our needs, so the hunt was on.  Everyone in our area we found was quite proud of their trailers and this was a mighty popular size.  Not to be defeated, we stayed patient to find the right deal for us.  Well we ended up with a 6’4”x16’ tandem axle trailer…just a little bigger than we initially started at.  With another great deal we couldn't pass up, it was officially ‘Game On’ to turn our regular utility trailer into the testosterone breathing machine it is today.  So we have our trailer, we have our cooker, all we need now is some good ole’ redneck ingenuity.  Thankfully, we had that handy…

The trailer the day we bought it

I quickly call my father-in-law and tell him we have a project for him.  Now this man has been the president of his hunting club since he was 19.  After working all day, he typically can be found in the woods at the country house or tinkering with his latest project.  If you were to shake his hands with your eyes closed, you would swear he was wearing gloves.  After snapping and texting a couple pictures of our newly acquired trailer, the ball was rolling.  Michael Smith, (my father-in-law), had called in the other critical part of this project: Richie Cantley.  A welder by trade, and having a southern draw so thick he sometimes requires subtitles; he was described to me as having the ability to “weld a nat’s ass shut”.  That’s all the credibility I needed to feel good about the direction this project was heading.  So after getting the trailer to Bloomingvale, SC, we hashed out some ideas of what I had in mind and gave them the freedom to improvise where necessary.    They said come back in two weeks and it’ll be done.  Pulling away that weekend, I looked at my wife and asked her to wager the chances of this project actually being completed in two weeks. 

Four weeks later…

We decide these boys would benefit from a little help to increase efficiency, so we make the trip down for the weekend.  Now the community of Bloomingvale is pretty tight night, with my father-in-law at its center.  If you are there on a Saturday, depending on what season is in dictates who stops by to chat and shoot the breeze.  What we realized is the Saturday after the project started, being a typical Saturday in Bloomingvale, everyone who stopped by had to give their two cents on how it was to be built.  Can you imagine that – a whole bunch of country boys standing around trying to figure out who has the best idea, that’s never happened before?  Needles s to say, there were some constructive delays if you will, but all in good time.  And judging by the end product, this would have been worth waiting twice as long for.  The big cooker mounted with a new, bigger smoke box.  A three burner cook top and a homemade “Richie Cantley Original” custom grill built from scratch.  I now wake up every day and walk around it once before heading to work thinking about when we’ll be cooking something next. 

And so now, after years of thinking about the perfect pig cooker, it now sits in my driveway.  Whether it is a 300lb hog or a couple of burgers, this rig has become the focal point of our household.  So that only leaves me with one question:

Where’s the tailgate?

Storage side of the trailer, complete with dual 30lb propane tanks and toolbox

Rear view of the "Richie Cantley Orginal" grill and the custom serving counter made from the tailgate.  It has the flexibility of folding down or flat if needed to load the trailer

Side view of the cooking side