Which Approach to Camping Makes Most Sense for You?

what's the best way to camp in a pickup truck in this video we're going to take a look at several different ways you can camp using a pickup truck as your platform and talk about the pros and cons of each if you don't want to watch the whole thing just hover over the navigation bar down along the bottom of the video and you can jump to whichever section interests you also at the end of the video i'll do a quick summary of the pros and cons of each of the camping approaches that we look at over the course of the video and you can also jump straight to that summary if you'd like alright this is going to be a long one let's get right to it this is one way to camp with a pickup truck throw your stuff all in the back assuming you have a tent sleeping bag stove and a cooler you're ready to roll obviously this leaves your gear unsecured and unprotected from rain or dust but it's doable i crossed paths with this couple doing just that on a five-day overland trek in this old ford still if you're going to use your truck to haul your camp gear some kind of bed cover is probably optimal many are lockable and will protect your cargo from the rain note however that dust can get sucked in through the spaces around the tailgate so if you travel dusty roads some kind of sealing kit for your truck model is certainly a worthy investment and i'm not super fond of how i have to have everything just sort of thrown in i mean maybe with some time working just out of a truck bed i could get some sort of organization figured out but it feels a little random to me it is nice that you don't necessarily have to sleep right where you park you can set up your tent wherever makes the most sense perhaps where the ground is more level or closer to a view you want to enjoy these get referred to by a lot of different names such as canopy or camper shell or topper or truck cap but basically we're talking about an enclosure that sits upon the truck bed rails to create a protected space fiberglass canopies that match the height of the truck cab are by far the most common and if you have a truck with a standard six foot or eight foot bed it's often easy to pick one of these up used for a very good price they can also get expensive buying one new depending on the options you select but if you're out shopping for a used truck it's not uncommon to find a truck that already has a paint-matched fiberglass canopy on it a canopy creates an entirely usable space you can sleep in instead of pitching a tent even with the most basic diy skills you can build out a practical setup configured in whatever way makes the most sense for you browsing through the trek bed living instagram page underscores the countless possibilities for making use of this space for camping while the headroom can be limited in a cab height canopy you can find or order high-rise fiberglass canopies or you could have a tall aluminum contractor canopy built as i did the topper lift system is another option which raises your canopy up with tent walls to create a much more usable interior space so this is dan and this is dan's truck dan is a contractor and he uses his truck for work but he also is working on using it for camping so the key to the whole system for me is that it's modular it has to do multiple things 99 of the time it's set up for work for work and so what does that mean what what is in here when you're working so i kind of have a full set of tool boxes uh all of my power tools saw horses all the hand tools all of that stuff fits on this side of the truck okay and it slides out and gives me great access to the tool boxes kind of right where you're standing they're all right here and then this side is kind of the miscellaneous things that you would have maybe you throw a ladder in there or lips a few materials but then the design was also driven by a bed on one side most everything pulls out so i'm not climbing in the truck all the time oh yeah yeah so then when it's time to set up for camping it's fairly easy to roll this out just grab all my tool boxes set them aside and now put the camping gear in the final piece up front is kind of okay that's my personal stuff you know suitcase duffel bag whatever because it's in a good position when it slids forward i'm right there by my bunk i can get to my stuff easily there the other thing that i did with this system rather than then spend the money on regular drawer slides full extension slides i realized i think i can just make all of that out of wood and so i used some nice three-quarter inch cabinet grade plywood designed everything ahead of time in sketchup in practice now it's worked really well so i can have all of my tools which are extremely heavy and yet they slide right out just fine an added bonus that i hadn't really considered originally is that the tailgate takes some of the weight so really i can pull that further out than i even thought i could because it's sitting here oh yeah some of the weight sitting there and so very little of it has to stay in the truck to maintain that balance and then in the camping configuration this is great to make the bed uh i don't think i've ever seen bring it out yeah that's the first time i've ever seen anything like that uh and that that works really convenient for me this the sides here of course there's a little bit of room with the fender wells that makes a nice platform next to the bed to just lay your stuff almost like a nightstand yeah yeah what i also like about this compared to a lot of canopy truck beds that i've seen is that your bed is is all the way down there and you've maximized your head space i see so many people build truck campers you know using a canopy shell and they make a platform all the way across here right and so then they've got the storage underneath it but then they've got like this much space to yeah to move around in and sleep i realize that wouldn't work for me that seems very can't crawl through that i can't even imagine uh it's a little bit like that coffin feeling yeah yeah in my case yeah i have a lower canopy it's just roof height of the truck and yet because of being down at this bed level it's it's generous it was important to me as i slept in the back of a truck to have a place i could stand up and change if i wanted to oh yeah and so this is super quick pop-up privacy tent yeah it really makes a nice little camp a nice little camp set up there it's compact and nimble but you've really got everything you need slide-in campers are generally fully self-contained units that sit in the bed of the truck they are completely enclosed with their own walls and floor and usually include some kind of small kitchen and seating areas that convert to extra beds they come in all shapes and sizes and while the typical configuration with a bed space that extends over the cab doesn't seem very practical to me for backcountry and off-road use there are many models with pop-tops that pack down much smaller such as eric's hallmark we'll be looking at in a moment even used a decent slide in camper doesn't come cheap and new they can get very pricey they can also get pretty heavy and you may end up facing the additional expense of needing suspension upgrades on the plus side you've got a really functional space that you can usually stand up in with an integrated kitchen that means less gear to think about packing and no worries about cooking outside on a cold rainy night this is eric and this is his 1994 hallmark on his first gen tundra we look for years and they're so expensive yeah and then this one popped up on craigslist you said 1994. that's relatively it's pretty old vintage it's a vintage one yeah exactly yeah but that i suppose that made it more affordable exactly yeah the newer fancier ones are nice and they cost some of them cost much as a truck it seems like oh yeah yeah we bought it we went camping i think that weekend so oh yeah it's easy nice i think it's about a thousand pounds okay plus or minus right in there so and so you you you ran this truck before for quite a while before you had the camera yep were you able to perceive like a mpg difference when you put this on about a mile and a half a mile and a half it's not bad so it's not too bad one thing i've been curious about these is like when it's windy do you do you get a lot of wind noise does it flap around a little bit or too bad it looks like it's pretty tight so it works pretty well yeah okay and then so when you're out on a day like today when it's raining and it gets all wet and you have to pack up in the morning and it's all wet so then you go home so you then have to pretty much have to open it up and i like to get a chance to open it up when we get home one day later or something yeah so it drives make sure no moisture gets stuck in there exactly are you are you able to fit it in your garage or this still looks pretty tall it's still fairly tall i don't think it would fit in there anyway you'd have to have a like one of the if you had like a nine foot door or something like that'd be fine does this live on your truck all the time it does it's not worth taking on or i just like to spur the moment yeah we could come out here tonight yeah it's not like oh we gotta plan ahead and get back home and get it it's easy just hop on and go yeah okay and i've been in construction this is huge in here this is an amazing space if you're confident in your diy skills you can simply build your own topper or sliding camper from sleek and lightweight to well not so sleek and lightweight you're truly limited only by your imagination and budget wood construction is probably the most common approach as it's relatively easy to work with though a sturdy wood build can get heavy another diy option is the foamy build using easily workable rigid foam insulation as the structure my buddy george of southwest idaho overlanding has dragged his foamy trailer countless miles on countless trips and it stands up remarkably well to the abuse george actually has a dedicated channel for foamy building with information that can be applied to building a trailer or a truck camper i'll put a link in the description below depending on how much time you can devote to such a project each week building your own topper or camper can easily require months of weekends and evenings and will take up a chunk of space in your garage in the process if you're comfortable working with metal that opens up some intriguing additional options so this is gerund who you may know as the youtube channel pnw explorer he's also on instagram pnw explorer and he makes some nice videos out around central oregon and you've heard me talk about the camper that he built on the back of his truck this is a huge project and it's beautiful by the way it's really amazing and you can't even tell you know in the video how really really nicely made this is and not amateurish at all to me this seems like a really ambitious diy project yeah no i mean there's no doubt about it it was it was really ambitious to kind of understand why i built it like take a step back to when i got the truck it had a canopy on it and i started out with one of those rooftop tents the bag you throw over the top basically and you have to zip the cover on and all that stuff so i used one of those for a long time and then um it was kind of evolution from there like trying to get something easier to set up faster to set up so i went to like a wedge style just hard shell rooftop tent and something like a gfc was something i wanted for a super long time and having the canopy on the truck without windows it was just a total pain for like when you have two people like when me and my wife would go on a trip have all the stuff in here you're playing like tetris with totes and stuff like that so that was one thing i really didn't like about the old setup and really one of the main driving factors to wanting to build this was being able to have all of the access to my stuff super easily and then having somewhere inside for me to like stand up so i stumbled upon um jim he goes by ripcord on instagram and youtube i stumbled upon his plans for this okay and um since he had laid it out all pretty nicely with all the parts i was basically like how hard can it be and there were so many posts of other people building them it looked pretty easy and that's really what drove me to attempt this myself is that somebody kind of blazed that trail first and uh i had a plan to follow um so to me it felt fairly attainable and uh it ended up being fairly difficult in some spots uh the selling specifically was really difficult but it it it was a really good project yeah if you guys want to see how he built this he's got a whole video that walks through his entire process beginning to end and he's got a really nice walk through video of the finished camper so we won't go into too too much detail this is a this is a really comfortable looking yeah and versatile setup there's lots of room for your gear in here totally and you can still get up there and stand up and you still have that huge bed right at the end of the day maybe about 40 less than buying a gfc even with the materials and yeah i had my old tent in the canopy to kind of sell to fund it so for me it was like it wasn't much of a leap it was more so a real big investment in time and space you know i had the garage space to do it yeah the wife had to sacrifice the garage for a few weeks so i finished it up so so i'd work a normal day job and so i basically all the hours i had available to me at the end of the day and then weekends most days uh was just spent building this so from when i started to when i finished was 10 weeks and if i had to estimate it was i'm looking at like 200 and something hours that i spent on this over those 10 weeks any regrets about having done this or any of the ways you did it or things that you would have done differently now that you've lived with a little bit uh you know some of the some of what i would change maybe just the hinges um maybe a continuous hinge something more waterproof you know when the doors are closed stuff tends to settle on top of the seals which is kind of something that it irks me a little bit it's not the end of the world something else i've thought about doing is like i learned to sew on this and so i've thought about redoing the sewing portion and like making just a new fabric portion and kind of modifying it because the curved zippers were the one of the most difficult parts of it um and it's such a big piece of fabric that you're trying to like work it through the sewing machine so that was that was really frustrating other than that maybe have the frame powder coated instead of rattle canning it for maybe more durability but i i like the rattle cam because i can touch it you can touch it up yeah yeah that makes sense to me and so you built the framework the underlying framework out of steel yep yeah yeah but the upper the sort of tent portion is made out of aluminum yeah so this is all um 80 20 which is you know pretty standard stuff like modular yeah machine shops use this to build like i mean you just can build it's like a erector set yeah yeah and so where the aluminum meets the steel i always hear people talk about you can't put aluminum with steel or whatever right and so what's is there some sort of buffer between those how does that work there's a cork gasket oh cork interesting i haven't spent any nights um in really windy conditions yet i know it's probably going to be noisy because it's a fabric to end stuff rain yes i spent the night and rain did perfectly fine no no issues with water this material is you know they build outdoor furniture cushions and stuff out of it so it's water it's actually pvc packed on the inside okay so it's waterproof very watertight the zippers are waterproof um so no i was i was surprised at um how you know there was nothing that got in there as smooth sailing on the first go and before this you were camping in a rooftop tent anyway yeah so you i mean you're accustomed to that yeah experience i had a roof nest sparrow before this so same clamshell style yeah so i have a good feeling of what this is probably going to be like in the wind yeah it's going to be better than you know your full on fold-out style right rooftop tent um but it's still gonna be something with fabric exposed to the wind so what about just overall camping experience in this versus your camping experience when you were in the roof nest yeah it's it's night and day oh yeah it's it's such a game changer being able to like have a space inside that's like away from the elements um have a spot to you know change or take off your shoes like that's one of the pains of having a rooftop tent on the top that's a a clamshell style is there's not a ton of room there's no overhang where you can like leave stuff on the ground there's no like um you know the little uh annex portion that some people have so like space was always a premium in there so you're trying to like shove your shoes on the the rack and stuff like that so having that space um having the the first night i camped actually in this it was terrible weather i didn't have an awning yet so i had nowhere to sit outside oh yeah so i hunkered down inside with the the top folded up and i cooked my food in there and just like chilled in there for the evening because it was freezing rain outside so yeah major game changer the speed of setup is i mean that's that's the other thing is i can leave i can leave my sleeping bag pillows all of my bedding in here the mattress inflated and it's all ready to go so it's like literally just pull it down close it up and move on and then set it back up in 30 seconds and be like done you know with the setup of the camping experience jaren has a number of videos documenting his camper build as well as other useful diy stuff i'll put a link to his channel below adding a bed rack and mounting a rooftop tent seems to become the most common approach to camping with a pickup truck and probably for good reason there are a lot of products out there ready to go if you've got the budget you can put a setup together very quickly and be out adventuring in no time it still permits a huge amount of flexibility to personalize your setup from the size and style of tent to how you configure the rest of your gear in your truck so this is dustin and this is his tundra and he runs a rooftop tent set up on it so this is a cvt tent uh what model is it the shasta shasta okay and that's actually it's pretty spacious yeah it's great um it fits myself my wife and our five-year-old boy oh yeah with our stuff and you can sit up in there oh yeah i can move freely in here oh yeah without uh feeling confined and i have room for everyone else that's up here you know one of the reasons why we're probably going to stay with this style versus a hard shell for a while is just the sheer size yeah the hard shells are nice because they're even more convenient yeah but you can't get this kind of space no you can't are you able to keep the bedding inside of here do you have to move the bedding up into it oh yeah when we're using it for multiple days at a time we actually leave the uh sleeping bags in there and fold it all up as well that way we only set up their sleeping setup once this most recent trip was the first one we've done where we got rained and snowed on heavily oh yeah uh a couple times and i mean the thing does great putting it away wet made me a little nervous because we couldn't dry it out for a few days but i had zero issues got back into town sun was out popped it open dried out maybe an hour and a half two hours oh yeah okay we usually have about five to six totes slid in here with the rest of our gear like chainsaw camp stove variety of other things some of the stuff you can see in here our clothing bags and whatnot we'll go on the cab with us okay this becomes our camp cook station most things just stay in with the vehicle so there's not much in terms of uh setup after we do the tent like we have a camp uh table and our chairs that's the only thing that sets up outside of here everything else is we need this slide the toad out pop it grab it put it back we wanted to get up off the ground you know obviously there's a convenience factor with having it just always on the vehicle yeah since we started doing the whole more primitive camping and overland scene um get my family up off the ground away from i'm not saying there's tons of predators out there but there's always there could always be something oh yeah you know yeah so it's not a huge hit on your mpg uh i think i only saw just only with the tent and everything about two miles per gallon difference oh but i can't hear it that's one thing um i like having my back window open often when you're driving anywhere no matter the speed you can hear more wind on the freeway you can hear it i think that the benefits of having it far outweigh anything that i've experienced yet in terms of a disadvantage or some a quark that i don't like one detail that strikes me is how much usable cargo space remains available this is almost like a canopy it really is pretty so the pack up time compared to say like an elaborate ground tent or you know decent sized ground tent a decent ground tent uh is gonna be i i feel like might be a bit quicker you can use your truck to tow some kind of a trailer camper trailers come in a huge variety of flavors from very compact and lightweight to rolling palaces for backcountry or off-road use smaller trailers with larger tires and beefed up suspension are obviously preferable these can range from a basic trailer frame with a rooftop tent to a teardrop with an integrated galley to something like this teton featuring a roomy sleeping space with pop-top head room and pull-out kitchen elements hauling a trailer obviously can pose some challenges in the backcountry especially if you need to turn around on a tight trail but a lot of people prefer this approach it offers the huge advantage of allowing you to leave your camp set up and still use your truck to go out and explore during the day it also allows your truck to remain a usable daily driver pickup during the week but the trailer is always there ready to go when you get the urge to get out and camp for the sake of completeness i'm just going to quickly mention a couple of sort of hybrid approaches without going into as much detail there are an assortment of truck bed tents available which are very much like a ground tent but designed to be pitched on a truck bed to get you off the ground on the surface this appears to be a clever solution and gets you off the ground although in practice it seems to me like it comes with all the disadvantages of a ground tent only they're even more complicated to set up you have to unload all your other gear out of the bed of the truck in order to set up the tent plus it eliminates using the tailgate as a cooking surface so you're obligated to also carry and set up a table the other hybrid which costs a lot more but also looks infinitely more practical and comfortable is the factory built pop-up canopy camper such as the gfc or the alu cab gerund's diy build we saw earlier is based on the same concept it sits on the bed rails like a topper but has a pop-up feature to create a bed space like a slide-in pop-top camper if you've got the budget to me this looks like the ideal solution for backcountry camping due to geography and complicated schedules i wasn't able to meet up with harley and his value cab in time for this video but we will connect at some point this year and i'll be showing you guys his amazing truck build in the meantime you'll find a link in the description below to harley's channel where he has some videos about his camper and yes subaru friends this is the guy who built what is arguably the most famous forester ever fuzz roamer here is a quick summary of all the truck camping approaches we've looked at just throwing some camping gear in the back of your truck is super fast and easy if you have a truck and you have camping gear you're ready to go i bought my french here on a friday afternoon and the next morning i threw some gear in the back and got out on a little camping adventure low cost a bed cover adds some expense but still less than most other options and with a little luck you might find one used your truck is still a truck remove your camp gear when you get home and you still have a practical daily driver ready to haul whatever you need to haul and it retains its good looking pickup truck profile not limited to camping where you park you can pitch your tent in the spot that's most appealing rather than sleeping where your truck is parked you can leave your camp set up but then still go out and explore without pecking everything away or losing your campsite everything has to be loaded in then unpacked at camp then packed back up when you break camp and unloaded when you get home feels a little chaotic to me all the gear has to be arrayed within this low flat area i found myself shifting stuff around constantly trying to access one thing or another though i'm sure with some practice one could come up with a reliable system unless you go to some length such as a tonneau cover and tailgate ceiling kit your gear may be susceptible to theft rain dust and the wind of highway speeds canopies are readily available many of you probably already have one on your truck it creates a sleeping space that is protected from the elements it's a blank slate for building a diy setup configured however makes sense for you they can get expensive if you don't already have one headroom is limited in the most common canopy models though solutions are available your truck may be less usable for other hauling depending on how you build it out sliding campers usually provide a more roomy livable space where you can stand up move around and cook built-in kitchen and beds means less handling and setup of gear at camp and back home multiple beds make it more family friendly when you bring the kids sliding campers can get pretty expensive they're heavy usually being tall and wide these seem less conducive to exploring backcountry trails at least in the pacific northwest where trails can get tight and off camber building your own camper can result in potentially huge cost savings over purchasing a factory built canopy or camper you can build it exactly how it makes sense for your uses it's simply fun if you enjoy extensive diy projects no way around it it's going to take a lot of time you need ample work space for the duration of the construction weatherizing many diy materials can pose some challenges a rooftop tent offers a practical setup that's always adventure ready and deploys reasonably quickly when you get to camp it offers a roomy comfortable sleeping space off the ground and away from critters depending on the rack height your truck can remain very usable as a truck and also retains significant hauling capacity for camp gear bikes or other toys while there are some budget models in general a good rooftop tent plus a bed rack to mount it on is going to add up it still has many of the disadvantages of a ground tent wind noise at night wet fabric that needs to be reopened and dried at home and they can be a hassle to pack up depending on the style of tent going up and down the ladder can be impractical if you camp with a dog as well as those middle of the night calls of nature once you've got camp set up you won't be driving anywhere without completely breaking camp and packing it all back up towing a trailer your truck remains a usable daily driver truck for other uses when you're not camping you can leave your trailer set up at camp and go out exploring during the day without all the tear down trailers are usually very self-contained and ready to go just hook it up and head out for the weekend trailers tend to range from expensive to really expensive they're far less nimble on the trail towing that weight may impact your driving experience and gas mileage so what's the best way to camp with a pickup truck really there's no single right answer to that it's going to be different for everyone but hopefully this video may help you identify a direction that makes sense for your needs and budget and if you already have a truck camping setup that you're happy with and you like the way it's working leave a comment below because your comments can be helpful to other people who are trying to decide what to do and they'll be happy to read what you have to say as well alright thanks for watching i did finally get a new vendor set up for t-shirts you can order them by going to softroadingthewest.com and clicking on store [Music] subscribe support me on patreon watch these videos [Music] you

Channel: softroadingthewest

Views: 520,129

Keywords: truck, pickup, camping, camp, camper, how to, backcountry, wilderness, canopy, slide in, GFC, go fast, alu-cab, hallmark, popup, pop up, pop top, shell, topper, truck cap, fiberglass, aluminum, aluminium, tent, gear, truck bed, tonneau cover, Leer, ARE, four wheel, 4 wheel, toyota, tacoma, tundra, nissan, frontier, chevy, chevrolet, colorado, ZR2, duramax, offroad, ford, ranger, f150, f250, silverado, GMC, truck tent, napier, trailer, teardrop, teton, wild, dispersed, off road, RTT, roof top tent, DIY, dodge, dakota, ram

Id: MPGcV85eSCs

Length: 31min 2sec (1862 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021