Hi there
B^2, Total Composites camper owner here. I'm one of the people who "sold my mass produced 4-season truck camper" (after 14 years of ownership) and decided to go with Total Composites. 🤪 My previous truck camper was an Alpenlite Saratoga 935. It was designed for a short-box 1-ton truck, had a 9 foot floor, and a single curb-side slide. Like you, I have two kids and our family of four has traveled the entire country in a truck camper. We even took 'em out of school and traveled in the camper for a full year (If you're interested you can read about that adventure
HERE). Since you said that your primary cold weather use will be ski trips to Tahoe, IMO you can easily get away with a truck camper with a slide... a cold winter in Tahoe is not the same as cold winter in the Yukon. However, you should expect to use a lot of propane and/or electricity; slides are quite draft-ey. FWIW I never experienced any mechanical or structural issues with the slide.
With regard to your question about hierarchy; I'm not qualified to list the brands/models in any kid of logical order, but there are a handful of exceptional quality 4-season truck campers you might consider. Any of these would do just fine at Tahoe:
Northern Lite,
Wolf Creek,
Northstar,
Adventurer,
Bigfoot, etc. I do think that Lance makes nice campers too.
Now, having had the Total Composites box for a little more than one year, I'm in agreement with
IdaSHO;
What's best for your family depends on your use case and your personal wants & needs. Due to their small internal volume, all these hard side habitats are relatively easy to heat in a typical winter environment... ya' know, the kind most of us in the continental US would choose to camp in. I had no problem keeping the truck camper warm using the propane furnace at 10ºF outside temps, and it's been the same with the Total Composites with a ~6800BTU diesel furnace. Both of them get condensation on the inside, this is due to the many openings that are cut through the wall and ceiling panels for window, hatches, water & power ports, etc... and the simple fact that we cook inside the camper and are continuously exhaling water vapor.
In my case I biased my build toward camping at the beach and in the desert. I chose to have a very large rear door; it's an
insulated marine door but in sub-freezing temperatures moisture can condense on it's frame exactly the same as it does on my windows & hatches The thing is, I wanted this feature and is just so spectacular when open that I wouldn't trade it for anything! Importantly, this hasn't reduced our snow camping one bit.
It's unfortunate that other folks here have hijacked your post just to talk ********** about their competition. If you want additional factual information about Total Composites campers please feel free to DM me or create a new forum post on that subject.
Cheers!
-Mark
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