yes, the mattress, it was sitting on a gmc 3500 i belive, that got 8mpg , so yeah 100k is what they wanted, did not need to hear the one wall needed to be shimmed with a piece of paper to keep the wind noise down,did not need to hear if the hydralics don't work on lift that i had to be creative, propane door looked to be made of thin floppy alum and the tank was held down by a block of wood and a screw,so yeah, 100k,i don't think so
Ahh, I see. Those are valid concerns for sure, I don't disagree with you that some things could be thought through a bit more and better designed. But I think overall, it's very well built and they've been around since the 50s, so they are doing something right. I'd say that in general, you can't take into account the price of a vehicle. Every truck camper needs a truck, so the separation of prices is required. If you already own a flatbed truck, then the price is just the camper. But yes, if you are buying a relatively new truck with a new flatbed and a $40k+ camper, you are looking at $100k+. You can immediately take of $8-$12k if you do a slide in camper.
As for the hydraulics, they are very robust and very well made. From my understanding, Alaskan has only had a couple fail at which point, you leave it down and you sleep on the dinette bed for the rest of that trip (not ideal, but still functional). Most of the popup campers have some sort of lift that can fail, so I wouldn't ding them for that, they are not the only one's that can have a failure.
One thing that I did not think about when we decided to go with Alaskan was that the camper is two halves. So mitigating drafts is going to be tough, especially since they aren't using the standard popup "tent" siding. Overall, it's not a big deal, but I do wonder if there is a better way of sealing those gaps.
Do you have a camper that you like or are looking at purchasing, I'm very interested in other thoughts? We chose Alaskan because it's the only hard sided pop up, they let us fully customize it (FWC, Hallmark, and plenty of others do not allow this type of customization).
I would say the one thing I wish was different would be the outside material. I wish it was a composite form, it would handle tree branches better, hail, wouldn't need as much yearly maintenance, etc. But it would add a ton to the cost... There is no perfect camper, you have to pick and choose what's most important and then "deal" with the rest.
There are cheaper campers out there and more expensive ones. Just have to pick where you want to put your money, but again, I don't disagree with your concerns, they are concerns of mine as well.
