Original & Reproduction Ben Hur Trailer Parts
The Mifflinburg Story
In the mid 1800’s Mifflinburg, Penn. was home to over a dozen coach manufacturers. In 1897 three of the leading manufacturers formed The Mifflinburg Buggy Company. With the age of the automobile came the Mifflinburg Body & Gear Company.
During the era of the Model T the two companies merged and built commercial, delivery and bus bodies or coachwork for early trucks. In 1932 the company built over a thousand delivery bodies for the United States Post Office.
Through the latter 1930’s revenue shrank and the company nearly went under. War contracts, first for the British Army and then for the US Army kept the company going. One of those contracts was for a little over one thousand G518 trailers. One of 28 manufacturers the Mifflinburg contract was one of the smaller ones. Troubled finances continued to plague the company and 1952 was the end of the Mifflinburg name. Until 2020.
Our Story
We are both WW2 Living History reenactors and G518 owners. When we bought our trailers we quickly realized two shortcomings in the Ben Hur community.
The first is a lack of any reproduction parts and scant original parts. We began reading the parts catalog line by line and obtaining original parts to measure and reproduce. As production comes online look to our store for these.
The second was a lack of information on these trailers. There is a lot of knowledge on the internet that is dispensed as gospel but without sources. As living historians we are acutely aware of the need to verify and authenticate whenever possible. Our research project on the G518 trailers includes the trailer registry and type study. These are constantly expanding databases that provide trailer owners insight into their vehicles. With 28 manufacturers over 6 years producing hundreds of thousands of trailers it’s hard to identify a trailer with a missing data plate. It’s our goal to change that.
Meet the team
Rob Riley
Co-Founder
Matthew Picciotto
Co-Founder