Off the rodeo route · For everywhere else
Most of what people picture when they think of Healin' Wheels is the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo — and the trail rides into Memorial Park each February. That's the flagship. But once the first wagon is off the shop floor, the workshop will travel for other Texas events too. This page is for those events. The county fair you organize. The parade your veterans' post puts on. The wedding where the bride uses a chair and wants to ride in a wagon to the altar. We'll come.
The workshop is one wagon in, with two more on the drafting table. Capacity is the limit. We'll pick a small handful of events a year and do them well, rather than a long calendar of half-attended dates.
Madisonville, Huntsville, Centerville, Bryan, Navasota. If your town has a Saturday morning parade down Main Street, a Healin' Wheels wagon belongs in it. We'll bring the wagon, the team, and a handler. The wagon can carry a wheelchair-using grand marshal if you've never had one in that seat before — that's our favorite version of the booking.
Especially weddings where one of the people getting married, or a parent walking somebody down the aisle, uses a wheelchair. The wagon has carried elders, brides, and grooms in the same breath. We're not a wedding rental business; we won't quote you against one. But for the right wedding, the wagon shows up dressed.
Texas has a strong veteran-led trail-ride tradition, and a lot of Vietnam- and post-9/11-era vets who use a chair. We'd like a long-running calendar of veterans' rides — Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Wounded Warrior days, post anniversaries. Tie-downs are included. So is the route plan.
Ranch-day rides for big extended families. Birthday rides for somebody who hasn't been on a wagon in forty years. Multi-generational reunion rides, slow loop around the property, gold-hour finish. We'll need a flat-ish route and somewhere to park the trailer.
Heritage-trades days, accessibility-week events, FFA chapters, 4-H, Scouts. The wagon is also a working piece of woodworking; we'll talk about how it's made for the kids who want to know. About forty minutes is the right length for a school visit before the wagon becomes a jungle gym.
Here's what a successful event ask looks like on our end. Most of it is common sense, but it's the kind of common sense that's easier to put on a page than to remember in a phone call.
We don't charge for the wagon. We're a non-profit and the wagon is the point. But it costs real money to move horses and a wagon to your event, and somebody has to keep the lights on in the shop. So here's the model, plain.
Kelly's time on the day — driving the team, loading wheelchair riders, walking the route — is donated. The wagon's wear is on us. The insurance is on us. Any photography that ends up on our site is on us.
Host families and event organizers regularly ask if they can make a separate gift to the workshop on top of covering travel. The answer is: of course, and thank you. See Sponsor a Buildfor the actual channel. But it isn't the price of the day.
Hauling a wagon and a team is real work, and the further we go from the shop the more of a host's budget gets eaten by diesel instead of the cause. So the workshop runs concentric circles outward from Midway.
Bring the wagon
Pick up the phone. Tell Kelly the town, the date, and the kind of day you have in mind. He'll tell you straight whether the workshop can be there.
