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Need Extra Storage? They’ll Build You A Custom Shelter
If you can describe it, Northeast Shelters can build it. Owner Charles Vincent, a 4th generation carpenter, got into manufacturing customized shelters the easy way - people requested them.
“A golf course wanted some heavy-duty shelters, and we left stickers on them with our H.H. Vincent & Sons business name and address,” recalls Vincent. “Soon members of the course were asking us to do awnings and shelters for cars, RVs and boats.”
Over the past 30 years, Northeast Shelters has built its reputation around durable, high quality, American made shelters. He says with pride that 90 percent of what he uses is American made, even the steel.
“We have to buy things here to keep our economy growing,” says Vincent. “Our ropes are made by a company in South Carolina, and we saw the wood for pallets with our own American made sawmill from Hud-Son Forest Equipment.”
Most of what Northeast Shelters does is structures under 38 ft. in length. He notes that costs climb rapidly over that. Although most are sold on the East Coast, he has shipped as far west as Colorado.
While Northeast Shelters’ crews will travel to erect a shelter, the company designs them for do-it-yourselfers. Most structures ship on 12 to 14-ft. pallets.
“We use longer structural pieces for greater strength. Imports tend to come in 4-ft. sections that weaken the structure,” says Vincent. “We also color code all the parts so it is easy to put the structure together. It speeds the construction.”
Customizing a shelter for the customer starts with identifying those needs. “We ask a prospect where the structure will be going, as potential snow loads in Maine require a different design than sunny Florida,” says Vincent. “What height is needed? What should the door configuration be? Will machinery be going in and out?
“We have different configurations, different anchoring systems and different insulation packages, if needed,” he says.
In one case, that meant building a screen-house cabin on a floating dock. The owner was an author who slept on the dock and wrote there, recalls Vincent.
“We had a local man hit the lotto and buy some land in the mountains of Colorado,” he says. “He wanted a shelter on a 15-ft. high platform with stairs on a pulley system. He asked us to go out there and put it up. We camped on the site. While frying bacon for breakfast, we saw why he needed a high platform. There were bears in a stream below us looking up when they smelled the bacon.”
Northeast Shelters operates its own sewing division. Tarp material varies from 5-year to 30-year tarp. Fabric can be UV treated and is available in 10-oz. to 24-oz. vinyl or can be special ordered up to 30-oz. vinyl.
“We do everything from duck blinds to covers for tractors and RVs,” says Vincent. “Our frames last pretty much forever, and while we try to sell long life covers, if they are damaged, we can take them back, cut the bad spot out and use the rest for ground covers. We repurpose and upcycle everything we can. We even recover other manufacturers’ shelters.”
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Northeast Shelters Inc., 325 State Route 28, Kingston, N.Y. 12401 (ph 845-338-8823; neshelters@gmail.com; www.northeastsheltersinc.com). 


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2021 - Volume #45, Issue #4