Like most shed builders, Travis Bunch was a busy man this spring.
But he was probably busier than others this year.
That’s because he and his crew from Wilderness Cabins spent 10 days in early June relocating the business to a new facility in Barbourville, Kentucky.
But there’s much more that keeps Bunch and his crew busy at Wilderness Cabins. That’s because it’s more than a business; it’s a mission.
I had the chance to speak with Bunch about the move, the business, and the mission—the true focus—of Wilderness Cabins.
So, tell us about this move you just completed. Why did you move from your previous location?
When we started, we rented a place from a guy who goes to our church. He owned a sawmill, and he had pretty much closed part of it down. So, we rented one of his back buildings and had been there for about five years. It had a big planer in there for the lumber, and it started out that he was going to sell the planer to an Amish guy who had a sawmill here pretty close. When he came in and looked at the equipment and saw that part of the sawmill shut down, he decided to just lease part of it, which meant that we had to switch to a different building.
We worked there for probably a month or a month and a half, and then the Amish guy decided he wanted that part of the sawmill, too, so we had to relocate completely.
It’s turned out good. I think this new spot’s going to be really good for it. It’s probably about 15 minutes away from the sawmill spot, but the sawmill was about 20 minutes from where we all lived. Now, we’re right in our backyard, about five minutes from work.
It took us about 10 days to move. It’s starting the busy season, and we had 10 days of downtime where we were just falling further behind, but I think we’ll be able to catch up.
Tell us about some of the details of this new location.
We’ve got about I’d say, probably 80 by 100 feet, maybe 120. We had to kind of retrofit this place to work. We had to put a hole in the side of the building and make a door so we could get our buildings out. It had a garage door, but it wasn’t anywhere near big enough for what we needed.
Thankfully, the ceilings and stuff were big enough to where we could work.
It’s kind of hard to find somewhere you can you can build a 52-foot building with 20-foot ceilings in it. Our biggest is the two-story ones that we build. The 16 wides, I think the rafters are 18 feet from the floor. They fold up for transport, but it’s kind of hard to get the metal and stuff on whenever you’re limited on space like that, but this one worked out pretty well.
We have a lot better ventilation and stuff in this building, so I think it’s going to wind up being really good.
Thanks for telling us a little about what’s going on today. Now, take us back to the beginning and share the story about how Wilderness Cabins got started.
Our company started about six years ago. It was started by our church, North Main Community Church. We have a men’s rehab (Redemption Road, which opened in 2019) and a women’s rehab (Hope City, which opened around 2016) that are run by our church and were started by our preacher, Scott Phipps. He has twin boys who run different parts of the men’s rehab. We’ve got a 30-day facility, and then they transition over to the six-month facility. This all got started from there.
Scott wanted somewhere for these guys, once they finished the program, to be able to go in and work and not have to go back to where they’re from, not go back to what they’ve always done. We started out down at the six-month facility building out of a barn down there, and we were just building small sheds and just trying to get something to teach these guys a skill.
It progressed from there, and it just kept building. Finally, it got to the point where Scott said it was just too much, and he kind of handed it off to a couple of us and let us take off with it.
Everybody who works here now is a member of our church, and most have gone through the program. I think there are two people here now who didn’t go through the program, but they’re still members of our church.
And since then, Scott has also started a pizza restaurant in downtown in Barbourville, and he started a coffee shop. Actually, one of the guys who works here with us, his wife is the one who runs the coffee shop. She went through the women’s program. Scott’s also started a pay lake that’s got a couple of the guys from the rehab working it.
We’re always looking for something else to just give people an opportunity to have somewhere to work where they can stay connected to our church.
How did you get involved with the business?
Before I came to Corbin, Kentucky, I spent a lot of time locked up. I’ve been to prison, I don’t know how many times, and then I’d get out, and things would go well. Then I’d fall right back into the old way of doing things, and there I’d be in prison again.
The last time I was locked up, the Lord just saved me. I mean, I can’t put it any other way. He saved me, and I knew I had to change everything about the way I was living. I spent the next few years while I was locked up reading my Bible, praying, just trying to live for the Lord. When I got out, I didn’t really have anywhere to go, and my son had moved over here to Corbin. He’d married a girl and moved over here, and one of Scott’s sons is married to my wife’s cousin. She had told me that this place had just opened up. It was a rehab, and of course, I’d been locked up and serving the Lord for a couple of years, so I didn’t need a drug rehab, but I needed somewhere to go. By the grace of God, they told me about this place. I came here and went through the program.
While I was still in the program, Scott started building the sheds. I think it started at the end of 2019, and I got here in the first part of 2020. It was brand new when I got here. Where we’re living is a very rural community, and so things here didn’t get as crazy as they did in the big cities and stuff because of COVID. I think it was more normal here than it was anywhere else.
So, I started building the sheds out there. I’ve just been with them ever since. When Scott got out of it, like I said, he just kind of handed everything off over to me, but I don’t really consider it as being the owner. I’m just kind of here trying to direct everything. I guess I’m the one responsible when something goes wrong, but other than that, we’ve got a really good group of guys here. It’s good to have that accountability to each other, too, because if you see somebody slacking off on going to church or doing something they shouldn’t be doing, then we can go to them as a group and try to reel them back in.
This is a full-life commitment. This is really a service. This is really a mission.
I tell all the guys when they start here that our main priority is not building these buildings. I mean, we’ve got to make money to keep it going, but if there’s something going on, like there’ve been countless times when somebody knew someone who needed to go to the rehab or somebody needed to be picked up, taken to the rehab, then we’re the first ones to volunteer to go do that. And any time, say we’re at lunch, and somebody gets to talking to somebody, witnessing to about the Lord or something, that takes precedence over showing back up here to build these buildings. If we don’t keep the Lord first, then it’s all going to crumble. Any time somebody’s doing something like that, like they’re doing the Lord’s work, then it’s not going to affect their pay. It’s not going to affect what time they get off or anything else like a normal job would. As long as we’re keeping Him first, then everything else falls into place.
Let’s talk a little about the overall business and the buildings you provide. It sounds like you focus more on the cabins.
We started out building small sheds, 8 by 10s and 10 by 12s, but quickly moved to larger models. We build mainly mini-cabins now, ranging from 12 by 32, one story, to 16 by 52 two-story mobile cabins (with a folding roof) and everything in between.
But we do whatever gets ordered. I mean, we just got finished up a whole bunch of 8 by 10 sheds for Samaritan’s Purse. I think there may have been 75 of those that we did. They kind of hit at just the right time because it was the end of last summer and all through the winter. So, we would do some of those as we would get a cabin done. We’d knock up three or four of those and then do another cabin. It kept us busy for sure.
But I’d say mainly we’re doing the cabins. We basically just do the shell. We’ll do the outside. Occasionally, we’ll build walls on the inside, and in the two-story ones, we’ll do loft areas in those, but that’s basically it. We just provide the shell, and then all the finishing and interior work is up to the customer once they get it.
We usually can get one of the large cabins completed in five to six days.
Most of our cabins have log siding on them, but we have done them in vinyl, T1-11, and some with faux rock. We are always open to new ideas and will always work with the customer to fit their needs.
I would say we’re doing probably 40 to 45 cabins a year and then maybe 50 of the smaller sheds.
We currently employ 10 people, and most are graduates from Redemption Road. All members of our crew are members of our church, and we are a very tight-knit group of guys.
How do customers find you and order/purchase your buildings?
Mike, who sells the buildings for us with another guy, also goes to our church. They sell other people’s buildings, too. He’s got a big lot over in Corbin, about 20 minutes from where we are now. He’s got a lot of displays over there, and he does a lot of stuff online. I’d say the majority of his leads come from online and word of mouth, because I don’t know that there’s really anybody else doing the two-story buildings anymore. I could be wrong, but I know in this area there’s really not. I think there are some Amish people who do some, but I don’t think they’re anywhere close to where we are.
For the most part, Mike deals with just about all of the customers. Most of the time, we’ll get an order with a set of plans, and that’s about all we get. We’ve always got a name, knowing who the building goes to. And every time we send a building out of here, we go get a Bible and get the customer’s name engraved on it and we leave it in the cabin. That’s our little way of getting the word of God in their hands.
Speaking about sending buildings out, what’s your delivery setup?
There’s actually another guy at our church, Perry, who does the deliveries. He delivers for other people, too. But it’s not like a shed delivery. These you’ve got to raise the roof and put the trim on and the ridge cap, and all that once you get the roof set. He started out down here building with us, and then he’s just kind of moved over to the delivery side of things and that keeps him pretty busy now.
Perry, along with three other guys who help him, all went through the program and go to our church. Whenever they go to deliver the cabin, they’ll get that Bible and talk to them about the Lord. We know that when they order our cabin, the guy there is supposed to be talking to them about the Lord. We try to build the cabin like we’re building it for the Lord, and then whenever it gets delivered, the same thing.
Every interaction that a customer has with us should be a positive experience and should hopefully be a lot of talk about the Lord and the Bible. That’s just the way that we do things.
From the first contact with the customer until the building is delivered, we try to show the customer what the Lord has done in each of our lives.
Thanks for telling your story. Is there anything else that you’d like to share?
I just say all glory to God. Without Him, it’s hard to say where any of us would be who are working down here, if He weren’t in charge. We’re just very thankful for that.
