trimming chars

I'm using the trim function on a char field (getting rid of trailing whitespaces), and it usually works unless the text is more than 255 characters since the object returned to me is a varchar. Does anyone know of a way to get trim trailing whitespaces for strings longer than 255 chars? Unless I'm missing something (which I usually do) it's silly that varchars can only be 255 chars long. -ronnie