What makes a good camper habitat?
7 Considerations For choosing an overland camper
With so many camper options on the market, how do you decide what is the best option for your needs? In this post we’ll talk about our camper box, how we chose it, why we chose it, and 7 factors that influenced those decisions. Hopefully this will help aid your decision on what habitat best fits your needs!
We knew that preparing the truck for a camper was only part of this project. Even though we elected to completely build/rebuild parts of the truck, the camper is the star of this show! We identified 7 main factors to consider when choosing an overland camper habitat; weight/durability, DIY-ability, and cost. Beyond that, we also considered insulation, customization, ability to be repaired, and availability.
Deciding what makes a good camper habitat for you will be about compromise! Depending on your goals for the camper, timeline, ability (or desire) to DIY and location, considering these 7 factors will help narrow down what you are willing to give-and-take on.
Some useful questions to ponder yourself:
What do you plan to use the camper for — long or short term travel, extreme off road or occasional forest service road? If you live in the camper full-time or plan to off road heavily, durability and weight may be more or a concern than if you plan to use it on the weekends or stick mostly to well established roads. Are you looking for the cost savings or customization with DIY conversion or does something off-the-shelf fit your needs and budget? Where do you plan to take the camper and in what environmental conditions — do you need a true 4-season? Where are you located and what timeline are you working with? Availability of campers, parts, or kits will be a consideration (not to mention time to build, if that’s your thing!). While it’s hard to hit all your wants, with a little prioritization and compromise, you can totally get what you need (good ol’ Rolling Stones wisdom, eh?).
Commercial available camper boxes exist. There are plenty of off-the-shelf available campers— hard side, pop tops, cab over, composite, flat bed, tow behind, you name it! This option is not DIY or custom but may make sense if you want something immediately, don’t have the time or abilities to take on a large project, and cost is less of a restraint. One step closer to DIY, there are a few companies that will build and assemble a camper box for you (BlissMobil, Bison, Overlander Global, etc). These are well-made, purpose-built campers which could be a great option if you want something more custom than a commercially available camper but don’t want to take on the project of building yourself (and don’t mind the price tag). Alternatively, you can buy a new or used a truck body, such as Morgan or even an ambulance, if you want the cost savings of having a pre-built box but still want customization to build the interior yourself. Finally, buying a camper travel trailer and mounting it to the back of a truck is a totally viable option and has the benefit of being quick and easy. To be completely DIY, one could fabricate their own camper box. Most of these options combine wood, metal, and some sort of composite. Many of them are very well built, light, durable, well insulated, plus they are highly customizable. Availability will depend on where your located and what you have time for, whether looking for the right pre-built rig, sourcing a used box-truck body, or building and looking for parts.
Our decision matrix looked something like this:
We wanted the experience and cost savings of doing the build ourselves. This rules out many of the pre-made expedition truck campers. We didn’t want to convert a truck body or mount a travel trailer to the truck, we were looking for more performance and customization. Although we wanted DIY, we didn’t want to take on laminating panels or constructing a box frame and insulating. Instead of making our own panels, we opted for a flat packed body, meaning shipped in sheets and assembled by us. We wanted something specific for an expedition camper, something we could spec the dimensions that was built specifically for us. Enter: Total Composites!!
Why total composites offers the ‘total package’
We chose to go with a Total Composites camper box and ordered it through Bear Adventure Vehicles. Total Composites has been around since 2015, they are based out of North America, they have a great reputation, great customer service, and it was exactly what we were looking for. Here’s how it fits our 7 factors:
Light weight/Durable – Weight is an enemy of truck mounted campers. Light weight and high strength normally come at a price and that was true for this build, but weighing the other options Total Composites was the best bang for the buck. Our empty box weighs around 1000 pounds. While lightweight, the panels are also highly durable. We plan to have Rufus forever, so we want him to last a lifetime!
DIY – We both enjoy the process of designing and building in a hands on way. As far as building a composite box, it doesn’t get much more DIY than this. Our panels came ‘flat packed’ with a case of adhesive, extrusions, and a drawing. Once assembled the interior was a blank slate for us to cut window/door holes and build out!
Cost – Everyone’s budget is unique, what seems reasonable to us might be outrageous to you. As much as we’d like to always pick the best engineered solution, cost has to be a factor in a decision matrix. In this case, we choose the best engineered solution and it did come at a cost (it would be much cheaper to build panels yourself!). The box was the most expensive part of this build (besides the truck itself) but we determined this was an important part of the build to invest in. We wanted high quality and craftsmanship in a proven platform. Plus, being DIY assembled, we saved alot of money. Overall, we got a time-tested, high quality camper habitat that costs a fraction of what it would have in an assembled form.
Insulation – This will be a 4 season truck. We love outdoor adventures in all seasons and plan to take the truck to varying environments, from deserts to snowy mountains! We wanted good insulation from both heat and cold and minimal thermal transfer. With the Total Composite box the entire panel is structural and insulative, meaning it’s easy to heat and cool. Traveling with a pup, this also becomes important. We want to have confidence that the camper will stay warm or cool if for some reason we have to leave our adventure buddy behind for a few hours. Total Composite FAQ has a great breakdown of what makes their composite panels special & benefits of Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic (FRP) over traditional building materials.
Customizable – The foam core panels lends to easy customization. The panels can be cut to any size, so specifying our dimensions was easy. We even added extra height for the 6’4” one in the family. Since the whole panel is structural, it was easy to locate, layout, and cut our windows and doors. You can cut any size/shape opening in the panels (within reason). We were able to build the box then test our layout using cardboard and painters tape which gave us a really good idea of what it would feel like standing in the kitchen. After we were satisfied with the layout, we cut windows and doors.
Availability – Through the dealer network that Total Composite has developed we were able to work with Bear Adventure Vehicles to design an empty box for our needs. They provided engineered drawings for our review and helped with tech support as we built it out. We know if we ever need help with a repair they will be there to talk us through it. The panels were shipped to our door - it doesn’t get easier than that!
Easily repaired – While we hope to never need to repair the box, with the panels being fiberglass, it would be easy to glass over any hole or ding with minimal tools or expertise. This is a huge piece of mind, and could mean that an accident wouldn’t necessarily mean a totaled camper.
One of the things we love about these Total Composites campers is that they are offered from completely empty, to fully built-out and move-in ready, or anywhere in-between. You can work with Bear Adventure Vehicles or one of the other Total Composite dealers to build exactly what you are looking for. We decided to go with a ‘flat packed’ empty box, this means the camper shipped to us in sheets with a package of corner extrusions and a case of adhesive. We had to erect the sheets into a box before we could start building the inside. Depending on your goals, you could do something similar, or just be part of the design process but have it built for you.
As with every project, there has to be compromise, the best technical solution isn’t always the best overall solution. In this case, a Total Composite box fit all of our needs, and after having built and traveled in it, we can say that it is the total package when it comes to truck campers.
Stay tuned as we document how we brought this camper to life!
