small/midsize camper in full size truck

I own a 2003 Dodge Ram 1500 quad cab short bed. It is 2wd manual tranny with 4.7 V8 and 4.10 rear end.

I carried a starcraft popup camper made for a midsize pickup in it with no problems. Fully loaded with 15 gallons of water and enough food and clothing for a week it weighed 1350 pounds. I had to build a 6" platform for it to sit on to clear the cab.

I added e-rated tires and air bags plus a set of hellwig overload springs and the truck drove great.

The camper did not have a bathroom or hot water heater or a lot of space inside but it was way better than a tent and quite comfortable for me and my wife.



In the pic the air bags are not inflated to adjust for uneven ground and I hadn't added the overload springs yet.

I used searchtempest.com to quickly scan all the craiglist postings within a given radius of my house for campers. It worked very well for me.

I used a hard side Six-Pac camper for many years on Toyota mini-trucks and it went everywhere. This was with little 4-banger engines to handle the load and 4-speed transmissions. Most people tend to greatly underestimate the load carrying ability of "small" trucks and many think that unless you have a F-450 you are going to have problems.

Try to find the load rating for your truck's rear axle and wheel bearings as that is the one variable that you cannot change. Tires and wheels and leaf springs are not too difficult to upgrade to handle heavier loads.

As mentioned the popup campers are going to be a lot lighter than the hard side models though it is much much harder to find a used one as there are far fewer being manufactured. Easy to find one that unloaded weighs under 1,000 lbs.

If you do find one for sale have the cash ready to go immediately to try to buy it. With fewer on the market they are likely to sell quickly. The good news is that popup campers on full size trucks are very popular in the southwest where they are great for trail running. Look for ones for sale in Las Vegas area as well as southern California and don't limit yourself to the immediate area.

With a used camper you can easily save 50% of what you will pay for a new one.

urbex wrote:
My current tow rig is a '05 Ram 1500 Quad cab, 2WD, Hemi 5.7, 3.92 gear running on stock 33" tires and factory tow package with class IV hitch. At the time of buying it, it was largely an impulse buy due to impending doom of the then current DD, and didn't really account for what I may get into in the future.

The current - I'd really like to add a camper of some sort to the stable, as I'm not all that excited about a tent on the ground, or an air mattress in the bed of the truck any more.

The problem - the capacity of the 1/2 ton truck, seeing as how there will also be a Jeep or rock buggy on a trailer behind the truck along with the camper. Replacing the truck with a larger model isn't currently an option, as I don't have the cash to buy what I'd want outright, and I don't want to take on another loan as I'm also looking at buying a house within the next year (largely that I don't want the loan on the credit report, not an issue with the payments/cost)

I've been looking at a few of the slide in truck campers, and in the mindset of keeping weight as low as possible, I've also been looking at some of the stripped down campers meant for small to midsize trucks, such as the Four Wheeler pop up models. I wouldn't be buying new, as they would be cost prohibitive right now, but using that as an example.

Running the numbers on weight, I would still be overloaded by a few hundred pounds, but I'm thinking I'd be OK with the weight distributing hitch setup and some air bag helper springs.

I wouldn't be looking at extravagent models..really I'd be happy with something with a normal bed, a small A/C unit, stove and regular refridgerator as opposed to an ice box.

That said, would there be issues with running a small truck camper in a full size truck bed? I figured they likely wouldn't be tall enough to clear the roof on the truck, but that could be easily solved with a spacer in the bed of the truck.

Here's my numbers to give you an idea... I have the smallest TC Lance makes on a 2500.

Northstar hs 3 hard sided smaller campers that can work on a 150/1500


they are 7feet wide


liberty,laredo,adventurer

As you've discovered, even the smallest of the smallest compact truck campers is going to be too heavy for your truck no matter what numbers you go by, and that's if you like to camp alone, naked, cold, and hungry.

I have been in your shoes, and it kept me out of a truck camper for about 3 years, until I finally decided to buy a bigger truck. There was no way it was going to work without major modifications to my current truck at the time, and then it would all be a compromise.

People have done exactly what you're proposing and have been successful. It's entirely up to you if you want to take on the challenge and work through modifying the truck with a better axle and stiffer springs.

Others have gotten in over their heads. Those are the people you're likely to be buying your first used camper from, because they were so unhappy with how things worked on the first few trips that they unloaded the camper and it's been sitting in the back yard ever since.

Right truck for the load gives you best chance for success, and the best chance to be happy with your first camping experiences, so you keep going.

I towed my jeep/buggy on a trailer behind my 2004 F150 with my Four Wheel Camper. I never actually had it weighed, but the truck pulled everything good, even thru the AZ mountains. I have replaced that truck with a RAM 2500 Cummins and still have the camper and jeep.

From the rough numbers I was running last night, after accounting for tongue weight of the trailer, I was left with roughly 650lbs of available payload capacity. I've got it all scribbled down on some napkins here at work, and was going to get a nice spreadsheet set up soon to organize it all. Some of the new slide ins I were looking at were an advertised dry weight of roughly 700lbs.

Figure 20 gallons of fresh water, propane, food stuffs, other gear...500lbs additional? I could potentially move some stuff into/onto the trailer as well, freeing up some weight that way.

I also did pull the specs for the rear axle in the truck, a Chrysler Corporate 9.25", which has a weight capacity of 3900lbs. Someone else on another forum said there is 1800lbs in an empty truck over the rear end, so that leaves 2100lbs capacity on the axle, assuming some overload helpers in some form.

I have also upgraded to 275/70R17 BFG A/Ts Load Range E tires from the stock 20" C range tires about a year ago, and found it made a night and day difference in towing stability. At a rated 3195lbs per tire, I'd say they can handle more than the truck will :D

From what I've been reading, at least in 2005, there was minimal differences between the 1500 and 2500 frames, with the majority of the differences in the axles and suspension. So I'm thinking I may be able to pick up a D60 or D70 rear end to swap out my current rear end, and get a bit of extra load capacity that way along with the helper springs/air bags. Obviously it wouldn't make it the same as a 2500, but I think it would be enough to handle what I'm looking at doing.

I know the easy answer here is "just sell what I have, and buy a 2500", but given what I've done to the current truck, modification wise, it would end up being far cheaper to just continue modifying what I have than to buy a different truck, plus I know this truck has been treated right since day one.

Last...for the camper, I've been seriously considering just building something from scratch. I've already rebuilt several campers over the years, so I have a basic idea of how they're constructed (one having considerable rot out, which I eventually scrapped..but it was a heck of a learning experience,lol), and I think I can actually come up with something a bit lighter than commercial offerings plus it would be set up with everything I want and nothing I don't.

Yours is the universal problem of not enough truck. If you are diligent, you'll find something that could work. Cast your net wide. My only admonition is to get the actual weight of the prospective camper very accurately, not the advertised weight or hearsay.
Once you find one, drag it on the bed; tie it down; load it up; and have the time of your life.
I have one of the lightest hard side campers I could find. 1842 pounds, WET. Of course, anything this light has small tanks. That's where the weight savings generally comes from. This was touted by Lance as one to get for a 1500 HD. In fact I bought it used from a guy that had it on a Dodge 1500 with upgrade air bags and higher rated tires. He said it worked fine the 3 times he used it.
It's all possible, but you won't be living the Luxo Life in whatever you wind up with.
Also remember that all pop-ups are not all lighter than hard sides. My bro has an OUTFITTER! whose profile looks ever so much lighter than my Lance but actually tips the scales at a few hundred pounds more. Whodathunk?
regards, as always, jefe

I bought a older 10' SunLite popup for one trip. Had stove, fridge, furnace and a port-a-pot. They made a 8' model.

You can modify these in a lot of ways. A small window AC in the back wall will have you hanging meat. I notched out the bottom front of mine to fit over the lower part a 100 gal L-shaped gas tank.

Made one trip, 13,000 miles, small light and perfect for our Alaska expedition. We named it Nabisco, our cracker box.