gilliganphantom
New member
My family and I have spent the last 2 years living in a 40 foot school bus conversion pictured below. Now that our daughter is starting kindergarten and we're back home we no longer need a full time home on wheels 
.
Given that I have no daily driver and I'd like us to still have a camper for school breaks and summers I've established the following criteria for a DD/camper:
15MPG when loaded (ambitious but I'd like to come close)
Crew Cab (need 6 seats)
8 foot bed for a large camper (currently partial to a late 90's Lance slide in truck camper) https://www.lancecamper.com/docs/Lance_1998_brochure.pdf
All in budget is about $30-40K. $15-20K for the truck and improvements, $5-10K for the camper, $5-10K for improvements.
I've narrowed it down to the following vehicles and I'm hoping for opinions if you've got them and vehicles if you've got them. We're in the Southeast and would prefer to Southeast but I'll go West as far as Texas for the right vehicle.
3rd gen Dodge Ram 3500 (Mostly for the Cummins 5.9 which looks like my best odds for reliability and fuel economy)
OBS or Superduty Ford F350 (With the 7.3 Powerstroke)
Mitsubishi Fuso Crew Cab (this would probably be my first choice but it will be a trickier build and a 4x4 Crew Cab seems exceedingly rare)
Let me know your thoughts if you've got them and if you want to know more about our rig/travels we have a youtube channel: youtube.com/gilliganphantom
Thanks!
.Given that I have no daily driver and I'd like us to still have a camper for school breaks and summers I've established the following criteria for a DD/camper:
15MPG when loaded (ambitious but I'd like to come close)
Crew Cab (need 6 seats)
8 foot bed for a large camper (currently partial to a late 90's Lance slide in truck camper) https://www.lancecamper.com/docs/Lance_1998_brochure.pdf
All in budget is about $30-40K. $15-20K for the truck and improvements, $5-10K for the camper, $5-10K for improvements.
I've narrowed it down to the following vehicles and I'm hoping for opinions if you've got them and vehicles if you've got them. We're in the Southeast and would prefer to Southeast but I'll go West as far as Texas for the right vehicle.
3rd gen Dodge Ram 3500 (Mostly for the Cummins 5.9 which looks like my best odds for reliability and fuel economy)
OBS or Superduty Ford F350 (With the 7.3 Powerstroke)
Mitsubishi Fuso Crew Cab (this would probably be my first choice but it will be a trickier build and a 4x4 Crew Cab seems exceedingly rare)
Let me know your thoughts if you've got them and if you want to know more about our rig/travels we have a youtube channel: youtube.com/gilliganphantom
Thanks!
