Forum Discussion

johnhealey1776's avatar
Sep 11, 2014

Camper fall down. Nothing but pride hurt. And jacks.

This all happened on a Wednesday before my first camping trip.

Well, I put a flat bed on my pickup. Before the flat bed, the camper just barely went higher then the truck. After, I needed about 3 inches.

I had the idea that all I had to do was put some 4x4's under the feet and it'll work out fine (Had done this with a smaller camper I had).

Wrong, the back leg kicked and over it went. Luckily I had the truck under the front for support, which kept it from toppling even worse, and even more luckily I had just rebuilt the read portion this spring, adding full 2x6 framing in the rear floor.



No damage to the camper framing. Some light aluminum bending, but otherwise just destroyed my jack plates and three jacks.

I put the last picture up on facebook, and a buddy stopped by. We used boat jacks and a floor jack to raise the camper. When done with that, he helped me put some galvy pipe into the jacks and extended the jacks high enough to load onto the truck. This is something I should have done first... I had done the same thing for my last camper and I knew better.



Thankfully I had some steel angle thick enough to act as a jack plate, and my friend Dion had just given me some old camper jacks he had lying around. By Friday afternoon, I was on the beach!



Its been a great summer on the beach, even if I am very leery about loading the damned camper now.


  • Sorry for your misfortune, glad you made it all work out. Just like when we were kids, fall scrape your knee, brush it off and get back to it. Love that new bed, I've thought of doing the same.
  • RoyB's avatar
    RoyB
    Explorer II
    I would really like the idea of using the flat truck bed. This sure looks like you can gain some precious storage area. I always thought I would get a Truck Camper but storage space was always a killer for me. I would definitely be pulling a utility trailer behind the truck camper.

    I'm guessing you were not able to use the standard TC side jacks - perhaps the flat bed gets in the way... These would allow you to just back under it with the truck bed and then let down the jacks????

    Would have been a piece of cake using these four TC jacks like shown in these two google photo...





    Roy Ken
  • Ouch.

    I was worried about exactly the same thing when I bought my camper - at least one leg stuck out at an undesirable angle. First thing I did was build a frame out of re-bar with sockets at each corner for the jack legs to slot into preventing them from kicking out.

    I like your flat bed - very nice.

    Steve.
  • Yikes!! I'm glad you got it back up with minimal damage! Also that you were still able to get to the beach for fun! That's the way to do it! Just keep truckin'! :)

    Dak