Truck campers are a popular vehicle option for camping and nomadic living.
Pop-up truck campers
Slide-in truck campers
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Camper shells
Camper shells or toppers create an enclosed space over the cargo area of a pickup truck. This enclosed space offers a great space for camping or nomadic living for those who don't mind the inconvenience of a high step into the truck bed, the low ceiling height, and the small living area.
Camper shells can be very expensive when new, but tend to be much cheaper used. If the shell needs repair, the gas struts on the rear top gate and keys are usually easy to replace; glass can be tougher. Shells with a raised "hump" area will provide more headroom.
(To get a good deal, make note of what camper tops fit similar vehicles to yours, and widen your searches to include those vehicles. For example, if you have a 1999 Ram with a 6' bed but notice that campers that fit yours also tend to fit a 2000-2008 Chevy 1500 with a 6ft bed, then also search for camper ads that mention the Chevy.)
If you don't want to build a freestanding bed platform, you can leverage built-in features of the pickup bed to build a platform. Pickups usually have recesses in the truck bed sidewalls to allow boards to be placed across the bed; this is to allow the truck owner to carry large flat items like sheet rock and plywood flat over the wheel wells. You can place your own plywood across these boards to make a raised platform with storage underneath (the "basement"). Plastic tote containers designed to store for under-bed storage are particularly useful here. One advantage of sleeping on a platform rather than a built bed is you can sleep on the diagonal in shorter beds.
One of the downsides of having a topper is you cannot reach over the bed to get stuff out. A grabber pole makes topper life much easier: attach a hook or L-brace with a hose clamp or screws to the end of a length of a PVC pipe or dowel. With practice, you will be able to push and pull items all the way at the front of the bed. The pole can rest on the inside ledge of the camper shell over the bedrail when not in use.
Racks
For lighter items, rack rails can be bolted through the topper. Example: Thule
For heavier loads external racks that go around the topper might be useful. This type of rack can extend over the cab area for even more storage/mounting options. Example: Campway 3000
Browse Pickup trucks (1)
This is a list of Pickup trucks on this wiki.
Channel featuring Pickup trucks
This channel may have more information about Pickup trucks:
(More channels may be found listed under specific vehicle pages.)
Videos
Truck campers gallery
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See more in the Truck campers category. For image credits, open image and click More Details.
Resources
| Resource | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Homemade truck camper projects | Private Facebook group with 67k members. "This is a page for sharing ideas of building truck campers" | |
| TruckCamper.Life | Facebook group with 27k members. "We have created this group to interact with truck camper owners and those who are interested in becoming truck camper owners." | |
| Ford Truck Campers forum | A sub-forum of the Ford Truck Enthusiasts forum. | |
| Truck Campers Group | Subforum of GoodSam Community | |
| Mini Truck Camping | Subreddit with 1.5k subscribers | |
| Wikipedia | Wikipedia article on this topic. | |
| Search forums and groups | Search van life discussion groups for "truck campers" | |
| Search related sites | Search van life sites for "truck campers" | |
| Search NomadLife.wiki | Search other pages on this wiki for "truck campers" |
Some content on this page was originally sourced from doku.php?id=rv:pickup on RVWiki.