Raven Industries

Camper Trailer Rundown

August 27, 2020

Intro

Alright so there are lots of things people think when they hear “camping”, and Im just gonna get this outta the way because I know theres some lightweight backpacker or the guy who drives around with a tripod, cast iron and tent in his accords trunk just waiting to tell me all this is unnecessary.

I subscribe to the philosophy of “Rolling Heavy.” Doesnt sound like a philosophy you’ve ever heard of? Thats fine because I made it up a few years back and by the honest clay of Red River Gorge I figured the concept would have tunneled its way backwards in time to become part of the annuls of camping history. Stuff has a way of doing that and I cant be bothered to determine the providence of every idea.

Anyway the point is that civilization can be thought of as a series of capabilities, ie: some knowledge/tech/process/entrapped&beholdendemon that lets you convert X into Y within some time T via some energy E. And given I have a preference on the “purpose” of civilization, a camping trailer is a set of infrastructural capabilities that let me go places and easily engage in “The Good Life” which goes friends food drink music sleep shower coffee repeat. All good pursuits of the cult of dyonisis, sans sex, which has been quietly scrubbed from modern American life (except for its stronghold in queer society) by banks and advertisers, but thats for another post.

Systems

Foundational

Infra

Life Support

Living

Selection Considerations

rv-types

RV vs Trailer

This was already chosen for me, as I needed to buy a truck in the first place. But if you want, there are 3 classes of RVs, from small Dodge Sprinter vans (Class B) to the mega tour buses (Class A). Class C is actually inbetween because fuck your logic.

Some people are concerned about hauling trailers, about manuvering and reversing and the difficulty of such things. I grew up on a farm, listening to stories riding in the truck of a man who was on the road for 72 years. I am not one of those people. Also I wouldn’t put it past pops to haunt me if I shied away from parking a trailer so thats that.

Build vs Buy

Some people build their own trailers. Bless them, but I don’t have the experience to go greenfield. Most don’t, there are a lot of systems involved here. I’ve chosen to buy one and learn to operate and repair the systems as they break over time, essentially pacing myself to learn the maintenance knowledge needed as I think its a good intro to working on habitation systems. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed which way the winds blows but we’re on a schedule.

Overall Size

All this has to fit into a space that can be pulled on American roads, which gives us a wonderful constraint of about 8ft wide by 14ft? tall. This means our only modifer is length, and as length increases weight increases.

A Toyota Tacoma with a 4.0L engine and tow package has a max towing capacity of 7600lbs. Wanting to go up mountains like the Rockies, I want to pad that number with as much excess capacity as I can for wind loads, extra equipment, and fuel efficiency.

The cheat sheet is that a single axel can hold about 4000lbs, double axels are needed above that. For almost all double axels, you want a 3/4 ton truck, which means like a Ford F150 or Toyota Tundra, not a 1/2 ton like a Toyota Tacoma or a Ford Ranger or Chevy Colorado.

Ended up, this means that almost nothing goes above around 20ft on a single axel. This works out, as a lot of limits for campgrounds and such things are at 20ft.

Enclosed Shower/Toliet

outdoor-shower The item that seemed to delinate choices for us was whether to have a toliet/shower inside the camper. For warm weather weekend camping, this doesn’t matter. Its nicer in summer to have a side mounted shower. For potentially working (office style work) as we drive across the country in say October to celebrate Samhain in the frost, this matters a lot. Or for backup temporary housing in case you’re displaced.

Given the price difference we decided buying a 1 season camper wasn’t economical. My partner is a big fan of Alton Browns hatred of unitaskers. Buy-it-for-life says be able to use something at every stage if its life, as you run it into the ground. So we decided indoor plumbing and insulation was a must. This also rules out the popup campers and hybrids, as they aren’t all weather. Also I’ve heard you need space for such things as you can’t roll em up wet or they mildew.

Queen Bed

dog-prowl The medium sized dog will sleep where she sleeps, inbetween us two not-very-small people. This means no convertable minibeds. And before you say thats ridiculous, make the dog sleep elsewhere, realize there are very few people we wouldn’t murder and bury in the garden in trade for that dog. Shes a very good dog.

Market Considerations

Its important to realize the camper market in America is a capitalist hellscape where 80% of all campers are sold by just two massive, investor controlled companies. The hundreds of brands are just the illusion of choice. Its basically the same as the jokes told about how little innovation there was due to Soviet Russia’s central control of manufacturing, but in Indiana and with more money wasted on marketing and salesmen.

  1. Thor Industries
  2. Forest River (owned by Berkshire Hathaway)

Meanwhile most all the parts and appliances are made by:

  1. Dometic
  2. Airxcel

The pattern seems to be that independent brands spin off, make a customer base, get bought by one of the behemoths, then year after year are instructed to increase earnings. Since the market most years is pretty fixed, this means year after year the brand has to cut corners until they lose workers and customers and eventually dissapear.

camper-brands

Something to note, I tried to buy used originally, setting up Craigslist automatic notifications and reading a ton of RVTrader. Come to find out most of these campers dont last that long (surprise!) and the ones that do people dont get rid of as they depreciate quickly, and end up being useful even if they dont travel as well later in life. Also older campers end up heavier than I wanted.

Possibilities

Failed Contender 1: Fiberglass boys

https://escapetrailer.com/the-21-escape/

https://www.scamptrailers.com/showroom/19-standard-trailers

https://casitatraveltrailers.com/

Super lightweight, but unfortunately not the best for hauling large weights. These are also houses on wheels with not that many made, which means expensive. And the scamp is a 5th wheel which is no good on a shortbed truck.

Failed Contender 2: Heavy Boys

https://www.pacificcoachworks.com/

https://outdoorsrvmfg.com/creek-side/

https://www.winnebago.com/models/product/towables/travel-trailer/micro-minnie-1

All of these seemed to have pretty decent building, marginal on the Winnebago, but all are just too damn heavy.

Final Contestents

holiday-house We started discussing buying a camper roughly 6 months before we actually did. We ended up going to the Chicago RV show in 2019 just to walk around before doing any research, just to goggle and gawk and go jee whillikers to get a feel for things. Had a nice conversation with this fellow who realized the most effective way to sell these windowed campers was just have people take a seat. Probably one of the incarnations of the sacred salesman of salvation.

But thing is it was a big amount of research for the money. It came down to the biggest teardrop trailers made, something on an odd edge between classes of campers.

1. littleguymax

https://golittleguy.com/lg-max/

Runner up for best design, a lot of time was taken to make sure everything here works well. Biggest fridge, best kitchen, fans in the right places, windows in the right places. The teardrop takes away some space though and makes a bit of a dragging tail without the suspension lift.

2. tab400

https://nucamprv.com/tab400-camper/

Best design. You can tell someone starts putting serious thought into how stuff really works with humans when they start having to bend manufacturing processes to what they want to do. Most things are custom here, and with that, cost goes up and maintainability goes down. I would feel bad taking a sawzall to this. This is the Apple of campers (I despise Apple but credit where credit is due.)

3. solhorizon

https://www.intechrv.com/models/sol/horizon/

So these guys are more akin to the mainline manufacturers, but the all-aluminum build and one-guy-one-task doing the work ends up with decent quality. This was the biggest of the three, and from their smaller Flyer trailers, they do everything in heavy plywood expecting modification by the enduser. The aluminum frame brings it down to 3400lbs dry, though with one axel theres only 600lbs left before the limit. We have plans to reinforce it if needed.

The other big thing is this camper was big enough to have an outdoor slide-out kitchen. And from what I mentioned about The Good Life, it involves lots of cooking. Having two kitchen spaces lets us fulfill the roles of both support vehicle and summer festival trailer. More on that later. The windshield is nice to avoid the feeling of being trapped inside a box.

This is the one we picked, and I ended up contacting every salesman I could from Pennsyltucky to Colorado. Whats $500 in fuel if you save $4000? One fellow gave us a deal expecting COVID-19 to freeze peoples buying habits, as this was around the time people were hoarding tolietpaper. Two months later when we showed up to seal the deal and buy it, he winced as apparently a pandemic sent US RV sales into an all time record high. Sometimes I love how fucking awful this country is.

God Bless America,

Abbot Dobbs III

PS: Did you know the Australian camper trailer market is fckn lit ? Everything they do puts us to shame. Must be something about an entire continent trying to kill you to provide relevant motivation. I’m jingoist enough, I’m sure we’ll catch up.