Flatbed with slides??

[LovinPSDs]

I've only seen a few options for flatbed campers, but does anyone make a flatbed camper with slides? I can't get over the lost space of the wheel wells, also seems like a slide in a flatbed would make for full height slides.

I haven't seen one with some quick searches on the internet, anyone else know of anything?

 

[trackhead]

Kind of ridiculous, but.......Powerhouse Coach

Australian.

 

[deminimis]

Actually, and others are welcome to disagree, but a standard truck camper might be the ticket. You can have boxes built to fill the voids under the camper wings. That's a lot of storage (approx 8'x20"x24" worth of storage x 2). One hassle is removing and/or moving everything that is below the camper to the rear to clear the flatbed. Bigfoots are nice and flat on the bottom, so you may look at them (pre-closure 3000 series slides (3000 series no longer built, sadly)).

 

[goodtimes]

Actually, and others are welcome to disagree, but a standard truck camper might be the ticket.

The challenge with the typical truck camper is that you have very limited floor space. Campers that sit on flat beds gain a ton of usable space by removing that 50" width limitation created by the wheel wells. By the time you get cabinets on one side & a seating area of some sort on the other (pretty typical set up), you have a pretty narrow isle. It's OK if everyone gets in and doesn't move around much - but if you have one person cooking dinner and another going in and out, it's tight.

Flat beds open the possibility of a side entrance. This moves the traffic aisle to the side, rather than strait down the middle, which is a significant improvement. It also paves the way to a rear dinette, rather than a front dinette. That puts the light weight stuff out back & frees up room for the heavier stuff (water tank, pumps, heaters, etc) up front, resulting in a much better balanced vehicle. The overall increase in floor space also makes even small campers "feel" much larger. The Tacoma sized flat bed camper that Four-wheel campers builds feels as big as my Grandby even though it is significantly smaller.

Even if you build boxes under the wings of a standard slide in & put it on a flat bed & move some of the auxillary equipment out there, you are still limited to that 50" wide strip of floor right down the middle.

 

[deminimis]

I guess I should have qualified that as truck campers with basements. I have always opted for a camper with a basement, and thus the floor width is a non-issue. If a non-basement model, then yup, I agree your position is spot-on.

 

[IdaSHO]

I think a flatbed in itself allows for such an open floor plan that a slide would be "over kill" and just add complexity and weight.


I might be biased though.... (still not quite finished)

 

[deminimis]

Phoenix could probably make you what you need.

 

[Maninga]

Try Host campers. They do a slide-out version for the Fuso and normal hard sided with slides, sure it wouldn't be a stretch for them to make a flatbed hardsided.

Images of their Fuso based camper are on
http://www.hostcampers.com/graphics/Outback/outback_exterior_mp.html

 

[escadventure]

Flatbed / standard slide-in / storage boxes

There are ups and downs to every setup. Regarding the standard slide in combined with storage boxes on a flatbed, here is ours. It all works well together. I realize you 'hard-side' guys aren't so concerned about size, but our goal was to have as compact a vehicle as possible and still have enough storage space. We have all the storage we need with this.

 

[workerdrone]

^ great lookin' rig. You could fit even more storage boxes and if they were totally custom, maybe even improve the aero a bit

 

[LovinPSDs]

Sorry guys, been tied up with work, but thanks for the info.

I've seen the powerhouse coach.. that thing is ridiculous. I guess part of me didn't really realize most all of the campers had basements and had the bigger footprint on the floor. I was just thinking about full height slides to make the space even more open. Do you guys store alot in the the basement/is it good useable space?

Another thing I was shooting for was lowest possible mounting height, but then you start running into issues of cab clearance, and room in the bed over the cab.

 

[deminimis]

One of the things to consider about basements is the tanks are down there instead of on the living floor, thus more room on the living floor. Our former Bigfoot had a lot of usable storage in the basement (although very height restrictive (always had to remove the lid from our Weber Q grill to fit it in there, for example)). Our Okanagan has a fair amount too, with a large-ish side storage compartment (stores grill without removing the lid, plus some, a Porter Cable pancake compressor, etc) and the low North-South compartment (very low) stores things like kiteboards, camp chairs, etc).

 

[Coby65]

http://www.northstarcampers.com/online-catalog.php?view=item&parentId=15&catId=19&numId=53

No slide but made for flatbed.

 

[thethePete]

http://www.fourwh.com/

FourWheel Campers makes ones specifically desgined for flatdeck applications.

 

[MJinCO]

One problem is where to put the tanks although a black tank can easily be put above a raised toilet, the grey tank could be long and linear beneath the kitchen with the bathroom on the same side in line which leaves room for a slide on the other side although you have to have some space for the l\slide mechanism also. It could easily be done on a special order basis, I agree Host would be the best bet in the US.