rruff
Explorer
Have they posted anything online about the rig and their trips?
Thoughts on the Truckhouse Tacoma expedition camper...
- Thread starter rruff
- Start date
Have they posted anything online about the rig and their trips?
waveslider
Outdoorsman
#huntquietly #overlandquietly #lifequietly
Woot
Woot
Victorian
Approved Vendor : Total Composites
rruff
Explorer
Apparently everybody who has bought one is very private. I can't find anyone sharing anything about them. Not even showing up at a gathering or show, or someone posting a random sighting. I think the media people looking for something to post would be all over this...? That seems a little odd considering the demographic that this would appeal to... risk takers, lots of money, thinks Tacomas are cool, probably fairly young, etc. Surely owning one of these is a status symbol to some degree?
It would also be very beneficial to the company to post favorable owner feedback, or get one of these reviewed... but maybe they already have more business than they can handle.
Victorian
Approved Vendor : Total Composites
We (and our partners across North America) have several VIP customers. It's VERY important for us and hopefully other business owners, to keep things confidential. If you have ever "exposed" yourself on Insta or FB you probably know first hand how rude, selfentiteld and opinionated some people are. Therefore I do not blame anyone for not sharing anything publicly, no matter how much "people" are asking for real world pictures etc. The fact that Truckhouse is still in business should be enough to proof that they are doing something right.
I don't find it surprising at all.....
Provan's been making Tigers for years, and you really can't find much info about them at all on social media, youtube, here (like actual user experiences).
Granted Provan appears to do no marketing, no social media, and does brisk sales of 35-50 (?) units a year to baby boomers, so apples to oranges.....
But, most people don't really want to splash all over the internet all the time, maybe like 5 out of 100.
Once they have a few more vehicles rolling around there will be a critical mass of folks who like doing things for the gram.
rruff
Explorer
They've certainly exceeded what my expectations were in the beginning, by producing a camper that looks nice and has had many favorable reviews from people who've checked it out while parked... but there are no reviews from anyone actually driving it or using it. That's odd because I thought they were letting people test drive them if they were interested in buying, but maybe I'm wrong about that.
The fact that they are still taking orders should not give anyone a warm feeling... not with $50k non-refundable deposits. Many companies in this market have gone bankrupt when they were much farther along and seemed quite successful.
I bet Provan didn't start with anything like the media blitz that Truckhouse did... the company is certainly not shy about publicity.
I'll admit I haven't read all 20 pages of this thread, but I was curious what the background of the Truckhouse guys is? They are doing some high-tech stuff in Sparks, NV that we've only seen out of a few well established companies, most notably Earthroamer and Tiger are doing.
At first I thought maybe they had been previous employees of another Overland-Type company.
One thing I thought was interesting is that Bahn Camperworks went SOL right around the same time Truckhouse got started. They were based in Oregon, though. ATX4x4 (also in Oregon) also built two Tacoma based hard sided camper conversions that look very similar to Truckhouse, but with fancier construction methods of the shell. Could these companies be associated with Truckhouse?
Here's some BIO information I found on the owners:
"Nico Monforte, 26, and Matt Linder, 29.. Monforte and Linder met about six years ago while working at a water skiing school in Lake Tahoe. Monforte was an instructor and Linder, who grew up working in his father’s shipyard in California, was a marine mechanic.
They clicked over their passion for the outdoors. A couple of years later, Linder showed Monforte a project he had just completed, the Toyota Sunrader. It was unlike anything Monforte had seen, and he fell in love with the vehicle. “He’s like, ‘Man, we gotta build another one of those,” Linder said.
But Linder said he wasn’t interested in customizing another older vehicle.
Later, when Monforte was an MBA student at UNR, a professor challenged their students to pick a passion they could follow through the rest of their lives, Monforte said.
Thinking back to the camper project, Monforte asked Linder if he could write a business plan for a hypothetical updated version of the Sunrader.
He entered the project in the Sontag Entrepreneurship Competition at UNR’s College of Business.
To his surprise, it kept advancing, eventually winning the $50,000 prize in April 2019.
Eventually, Monforte and Linder decided to go all in on TruckHouse, quitting their day jobs.
A third partner, an expert in marketing, later joined the team, and TruckHouse recently added two more people. The company has plans to bring on more employees as the company grows."
- Creating the vacuum infusion composite shells is straight up boat building stuff. I know guys who could do that, but they build boats for a living. They'd also need a huge amount of space and equipment to do so. Sounds like maybe they had some experience with that...
- The rest is stuff that can be handled via drafting/design software and mechanical expertise, something it seems like they already had.
I don't think these guys had much if any experience in the Overland world when they started Truckhouse. I think they were just incredibly intelligent dudes with a ********-ton of relevant skills and some really good familial expertise to lean on.
At first I thought maybe they had been previous employees of another Overland-Type company.
One thing I thought was interesting is that Bahn Camperworks went SOL right around the same time Truckhouse got started. They were based in Oregon, though. ATX4x4 (also in Oregon) also built two Tacoma based hard sided camper conversions that look very similar to Truckhouse, but with fancier construction methods of the shell. Could these companies be associated with Truckhouse?
Here's some BIO information I found on the owners:
"Nico Monforte, 26, and Matt Linder, 29.. Monforte and Linder met about six years ago while working at a water skiing school in Lake Tahoe. Monforte was an instructor and Linder, who grew up working in his father’s shipyard in California, was a marine mechanic.
They clicked over their passion for the outdoors. A couple of years later, Linder showed Monforte a project he had just completed, the Toyota Sunrader. It was unlike anything Monforte had seen, and he fell in love with the vehicle. “He’s like, ‘Man, we gotta build another one of those,” Linder said.
But Linder said he wasn’t interested in customizing another older vehicle.
Later, when Monforte was an MBA student at UNR, a professor challenged their students to pick a passion they could follow through the rest of their lives, Monforte said.
Thinking back to the camper project, Monforte asked Linder if he could write a business plan for a hypothetical updated version of the Sunrader.
He entered the project in the Sontag Entrepreneurship Competition at UNR’s College of Business.
To his surprise, it kept advancing, eventually winning the $50,000 prize in April 2019.
Eventually, Monforte and Linder decided to go all in on TruckHouse, quitting their day jobs.
A third partner, an expert in marketing, later joined the team, and TruckHouse recently added two more people. The company has plans to bring on more employees as the company grows."
- Creating the vacuum infusion composite shells is straight up boat building stuff. I know guys who could do that, but they build boats for a living. They'd also need a huge amount of space and equipment to do so. Sounds like maybe they had some experience with that...
- The rest is stuff that can be handled via drafting/design software and mechanical expertise, something it seems like they already had.
I don't think these guys had much if any experience in the Overland world when they started Truckhouse. I think they were just incredibly intelligent dudes with a ********-ton of relevant skills and some really good familial expertise to lean on.
Todd n Natalie
OverCamper
Whistlin' Diesel will get one and trash it over the course of 2 months to get likes and views.
rruff
Explorer
Or owning and running a company. That's why I thought the media overload, and asking for $50k non-refundable deposits ... without a prototype or anything to show... was a scam. Even for someone who can afford a $350-400k rig, that's a lot of faith with very little basis.
msiminoff
Active member
With regard to privacy; everybody has their personal needs/tolerance. I can certainly understand why the couple of TruckHouse owners out there haven't be sharing their experiences online... They are most likely retired and enjoying their fancy new rig, or still busy working to pay for it.
I also have another very close friend who owns TWO EarthRoamers (and one of them is an XV-HD which there are fewer of than there are TruckHouses!!). He doesn't even know that Expedition Portal exists and he's modest so he never shares photos of his ER's on his very active social media accounts.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. I also think we're very fortunate to have so many great members who are willing to share information about their rigs, equip', & adventures!
-Mark
I also have another very close friend who owns TWO EarthRoamers (and one of them is an XV-HD which there are fewer of than there are TruckHouses!!). He doesn't even know that Expedition Portal exists and he's modest so he never shares photos of his ER's on his very active social media accounts.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. I also think we're very fortunate to have so many great members who are willing to share information about their rigs, equip', & adventures!
-Mark
rruff
Explorer
I'm curious because I have friends who are still in the market for something in that price class. They got a ride in a Terranova at the factory, but it was a leisurely cruise on a dirt road that didn't show anything. Not such a big deal since it's on a standard 1ton chassis and under payload. TH says you can test drive after "executing a purchase agreement" which probably entails parting with the $50k deposit. Suspension and mounting performance on and offroad is kinda important, especially with the TH being so heavily modded. Even then you'll have to trust that all the mods are durable.
The wealth that people have to throw down on one of these must be immense. My thought was that the owners of the company already had prospective clients in their social circles and it's not a typical business relationship.