maveric
Crawler Collecter
- Location
- In The Middle Of No-Where
Started out with a ground tent. Waking up in the middle of the night with water running in the tent sucked. Moved to a tent on the flatbed trailer. Better, but hated setting it up (old school tent, not one of these fancy self-setup jobs). Moved away from tents into travel traileror toy hauler. Super comfortable, but very limited on use. 2 years ago, wife wanted a RTT. Built a rack for the back of the Tacoma, just high enough to clear the fridge, and bought a used SB Gen 1. Have spent a lot of time in it the last 2 summers. I do like having the ability to just go check out some random road to see where it goes, and just being able to set up camp anywhere I want. We have woke up many mornings to the truck being surrounded by cows. Thankful to not be sleeping on the ground. I had to upgrade the sleeping pad because Im old and need a little more padding. We have a very short bed, same as OP, so space is a premium. We keep a dry box prepped at all times. Bed has the fridge, a cooler, food box, grille, 5 gal fuel, and 5 gal water pretty much all summer. I take it off during the winter months, store it on a shelf in the garage.
It is a PITA to have to tear it down to go somewhere, but we don't usually stay in one place for more than a night anyways, so that isn;t usually an issue for us. The weight up high is not really as noticable as I expected. Makes the truck handle differently, but not enough to say its a deterant.
Having to use a ladder for access is a pain, and not being able to stand up to get dressed sucks, but those are really the only two drawbacks that I have. I tried to minimize the weight and height by building the rack as low as I could. The top of the RTT stowed is just about even with the top of the cab.
I think any option you choose will work, but like stated above, they all have their advantages/disadvantages. I think in the end, use what you have, or can easily acquire, and get out and use it. If its not ideal, try something different. I completely hated the idea of putting a tent and fridge on my truck, but now that I've done it, I think I may become a closet overlan....Vehicle Based Adventurer. @notajeep would be proud
It is a PITA to have to tear it down to go somewhere, but we don't usually stay in one place for more than a night anyways, so that isn;t usually an issue for us. The weight up high is not really as noticable as I expected. Makes the truck handle differently, but not enough to say its a deterant.
Having to use a ladder for access is a pain, and not being able to stand up to get dressed sucks, but those are really the only two drawbacks that I have. I tried to minimize the weight and height by building the rack as low as I could. The top of the RTT stowed is just about even with the top of the cab.
I think any option you choose will work, but like stated above, they all have their advantages/disadvantages. I think in the end, use what you have, or can easily acquire, and get out and use it. If its not ideal, try something different. I completely hated the idea of putting a tent and fridge on my truck, but now that I've done it, I think I may become a closet overlan....Vehicle Based Adventurer. @notajeep would be proud