DIY Flatbed Truck Camper Idea
I've seen very few builds online where people built their own camper on a flatbed pickup truck - most of the DIY truck campers are of the type that slide into the box - to me this seems silly, because...
Forum Discussion
You can certainly build out of wood. Truck campers had wood frames for many years. I do like welding steel though. It is so fast and pretty easy to learn. No glue to dry, parts are ready to roll as soon as they cool off and you can climb on your frame without worrying about cracking anything.
The final roof material we settled on turned out to be probably the best. Continuous aluminum roof coil in 0.040 thickness. No seams to worry about, no caulking, just unroll it over your frame/plywood roof and hammer it down around the sides with a block of wood and mallet. I would build it exactly the same way again except I would try to do it in the middle of summer so the aluminum had expanded. We were doing it when the garage was 40 degrees F and it does bubble a bit in the hot summer sun (but goes back flat when it cools off). By letting the roof float and only attaching it at the edges, the bubbles don't seem to hurt anything. The aluminum sides don't bubble, so I guess the fish scaling idea did the trick.
I am not sure if painted plywood would hold up for many seasons exposed to the weather.
The final roof material we settled on turned out to be probably the best. Continuous aluminum roof coil in 0.040 thickness. No seams to worry about, no caulking, just unroll it over your frame/plywood roof and hammer it down around the sides with a block of wood and mallet. I would build it exactly the same way again except I would try to do it in the middle of summer so the aluminum had expanded. We were doing it when the garage was 40 degrees F and it does bubble a bit in the hot summer sun (but goes back flat when it cools off). By letting the roof float and only attaching it at the edges, the bubbles don't seem to hurt anything. The aluminum sides don't bubble, so I guess the fish scaling idea did the trick.
I am not sure if painted plywood would hold up for many seasons exposed to the weather.
