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TxTiger's avatar
TxTiger
Explorer
Aug 21, 2013

Pop-up Truck Campers?

As I look into what I can comfortably put on my truck (figuring about 2,700 lbs ready to camp), the pop-ups appear to have the least weight. I like the Palamino B1250 SB better than most I've looked into, as it has a shower and built in toilet, and other necessities like air conditioning. The camper weighs in at just less than 1,700 lbs dry. It comes well equiped for a pop-up at around $10K. The primary negative is no grey water tank, although it has a 7 gal black water tank.

I have had no experience in/with TC's and would appreciate some feed back from those that have or have had pop-ups. The pro's and con's, so to speak of pop-ups vrs hard sided. Being in Texas, I'm a little concerned about the ability to cool a pop-up with a couple of feet of canvass at the top. This unit has an 11,200 btu unit.

My plan is to use this for extended weekends and trailer the motorcycles when I wouldn't want to hook up the toy hauler. The price on the pop-up is appealing due to my intended use, but if I find this works really well for me I would probably sell the toy hauler and use the TC for all trips. Which brings up the other concern, if I like this mode of camping I will want as much TC and with as many amenities as my truck will carry. On another thread I got good recommendations on light weight hard sided units, like the Travel Lite 890 sbrx. I really like this unit, it weighs in dry at 2,000 lbs, but is quite a bit more expensive equally equipped than the pop-up. The dry weight on the Travel Lite is also probably without air conditioning, so I will pushing my GVWR with a hard side.

I'm sure this just sounds like a lot of "thinking out load", but any advice is appreciated.

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