mkirsch wrote:
If you want more than a basic bed cap/topper with an air mattress, you are going to *HAVE* to buy a bigger truck.
This is the bottom line. Posts above have explained how little payload this pickup actually has. A cab full of passengers would put it overweight. Just because a truck has a bed doesn't mean you can fill it without overloading the truck.
Back to other comments, it is a ridiculous proposition to say that you didn't want to buy a "monster truck" to have to drive unloaded. If the goal was to haul a decently sized camper with a small host vehicle, the solution is not a truck camper--it is a towable camper. ALL trucks, no matter what size, can tow much more than they can carry. While I don't think it's a good idea to tow any trailer of significant weight with a compact pickup, it's far safer--and far easier on the vehicle itself--to tow a small, 16-19' travel trailer than it is to carry any truck camper on such a vehicle.
Truck campers are a versatile, useful little camper, but if there's one thing that they aren't, it's light. They cannot be purchased as an afterthought for an inadequate truck. The resulting combination will never be safe. Therein lies the problem with this entire idea--thinking that a compact pickup that was just "a little overloaded" would be prepared for a task for which it was never designed.
