Loading with a flatbed and service body

I had my Fleetwood on UB for short time.
Not only UB floor was 8" thick, but I had to add 4x4 to clear side boxes.
As the result my AC was scratching 13-6 height.
That was HD UB design for crane attachment, so maybe other UB will have different dimensions.
No problem with loading.

Great info. Thanks guys.

A thread I did awhile back.. Pic's were on photobucket, but still show up on my end. If they don't for others, I'll work on it again. Let me know...

Link to thread on loading on flatbed

We use angle iron on the deck, and have added angle to the camper. Steel on steel, slide right in.

I have a Ram 5500 with an 11' Douglass body. It replaced an F450 w/pickup bed. Loading/unloading is not a problem. I installed a backup camera above the truck's rear window, painted a white stripe down the middle of the bed, and installed some red tape up the middle of the front of the camper; makes it easy to line up. Also, Douglass installs guides at the rear of the bed to help align the camper.

There is a potential issue with tie downs. My Host Mammoth is the same width as the Douglass body; Host requires the use of springloaded turnbuckles, which I use. The Host mounting brackets are recessed a few inches from the outside of the truck body; the tie down brackets extend past the side of the truck body; in order to attach the turnbuckles to the tie downs and not hit the truck body, I had to make some extensions to attach to the Host tie down brackets to allow the Fastguns to attach to the frame mounted tie downs. If I had it to do over again, I would ask the folks at Douglass to engineer that set-up differently. Douglass is a great company to work with, so they likely would design something. Douglass' standard tie down method was to bolt some brackets to the top of the truck body, line them up with the camper tie down brackets, and secure the camper with 1/2" bolts. The only problem with that (other than Host's "suspension mounting" requirement), is that if you are on uneven terrain and use your jacks to level your rig, you have to unbolt the Douglass brackets to allow the camper to level separately from the truck. It's difficult to re-align the camper/truck body brackets.

If you need any more information, send me a PM.

Kewl,
I have a 5500 Cab/Chassis and had a flatbed , straight flat, no cabinets, put on to carry a RZR when camper is off loaded.
I luv it even while I don't have the RZR any more. I luv it for the storage on the sides and in the front. I'm only a 2.5 years full timer.

I did have to have Torklift reinforce the front part of the bed, they put triangle steal support underneath and I Tie down to the Bed's rings.

Loading is not too much of a problem, I don't do it that much so it's just a matter of getting used to it. I put painter's tape on the side, use the mat for an outline and eventually get it on correctly.

I'm Solo, so having another body to guide it in would help, heheh, assuming you have the signals down pat.... LOL

It works great, no problems.

One thing to just keep in mind, if you want to do "Solar" to allow space for the extra batteries etc... I have the two normal ones inside the camper battery box, but have to run the rest out side onto the camper bed, Black boxes.

Other than that, I'd certainly do it again with the flat bed, works great and not a problem loading/unloading other then Jack heights which I use the little square plastic blocks for uneven campsites. They work fine although it has been close at times.

Hope that helps???

If you can sort through the other pics, you can see the various things..
Various Confi pics