Truck Camper Dolly by Rieco

Just built a dolly for my Outfitter Apex 9.5 which weighs about 2500# all up. For $100 dollars worth of materials it works as good as the Rieco dolly that goes for about $720 plus shipping and applicable tax. My casters came from eBay for $44.95. Lumber and hardware from Home Depot for about $50. For a heavier camper add another $44.95 worth of casters and it should work fine. Assembly takes about an hour if you have a chop saw and a drill driver.

I am also interested in any replies you receive on this one.

I had looked at the Rieco-Titan dolly, but after thinking about it, I believe I will build my own when I get my 1st truck camper this spring.

Here is the one that I like, from an earlier post on this forum: http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/18622123.cfm

I'm thinking of getting 1250# weight limit heavy duty casters - 2 fixed position ones for one end of the dolly, and two swivel casters for the other end. I've also been thinking of carpeting the top of the dolly.

John

I'd recommend all swivel casters, and no need for balloon type wheels unless you're rolling over gravel. Of course, the more, the bigger and higher capacity casters the better.. There's no need for carpet on the top, it would just cost a little more time and $$ and not do much.

You'll notice on the front of the Rieco cart there are two clips for mounting a tow bar to maneuver the cart. I used a Curt Tow Bars (C19745) to make it easy to start, move and stop the loaded cart with the tractor. Thinking ahead about how to stop the loaded cart, once moving, is a very important safety consideration. If you don't have a tractor, you can easily rotate a caster and lock it in place, using a small hydraulic jack to take some of the weight off to make turning easier.



Having all four swivel casters on a cart makes directional control very difficult. Typically for very heavy loads on a cart, the front two are fixed and the rear two are swivel to maintain tracking. A good compromise is to select casters with a four position swivel lock.

I used 8" dia, 2" wide, Polyurethane on Steel casters with the swivel locks.



I lock the fronts to steer the camper into place and then rotate all the casters, 90 degrees and lock all of them to push the camper against the wall. I didn't order the caster brakes and just made chocks.

To aid in pulling it away from the wall I also installed 1/2 inch Eye Nuts on the sides, in the corners, and rig a line to them.



I didn't attach carpeting to the cart, as the empty cart makes a great work / project surface in the garage.

I tip the cart up against the back wall of the garage, when not in use, using the boom pole on the tractor attached to the Eye nuts.

jimh425 wrote:
I confess that I didn't know a truck camper dolly like this existed commercially. I'm looking in anticipation of possibly storing mine on one in the future. Anyway, pretty cool and not that pricey.

In this video, he moves a Host Everest at 4425 dry! Oh, looking at the Rieco site, they are just over $700.

You got me thinking, making one would be pretty easy with some extremely heavy duty casters, some angle iron, chop saw and a little time with Mr. Lincoln (my welder-yes, mine's red, not blue).

These are swivel casters rated at 2,200lbs each--on sale for $37ea
Swivel casters

bb_94401 wrote:
You'll notice on the front of the Rieco cart there are two clips for mounting a tow bar to maneuver the cart. I used a Curt Tow Bars (C19745) to make it easy to start, move and stop the loaded cart with the tractor. Thinking ahead about how to stop the loaded cart, once moving, is a very important safety consideration. If you don't have a tractor, you can easily rotate a caster and lock it in place, using a small hydraulic jack to take some of the weight off to make turning easier.



Having all four swivel casters on a cart makes directional control very difficult. Typically for very heavy loads on a cart, the front two are fixed and the rear two are swivel to maintain tracking. A good compromise is to select casters with a four position swivel lock.

I used 8" dia, 2" wide, Polyurethane on Steel casters with the swivel locks.



I lock the fronts to steer the camper into place and then rotate all the casters, 90 degrees and lock all of them to push the camper against the wall. I didn't order the caster brakes and just made chocks.

To aid in pulling it away from the wall I also installed 1/2 inch Eye Nuts on the sides, in the corners, and rig a line to them.



I didn't attach carpeting to the cart, as the empty cart makes a great work / project surface in the garage.

I tip the cart up against the back wall of the garage, when not in use, using the boom pole on the tractor attached to the Eye nuts.

Thank you for the detailed response. This gives me more to think about.

One question I have though is how hard is it to push your dolly by hand? Do you think with good casters, on a level cement floor, should I be able to push a 4000# camper by hand (I'm pretty strong, relatively speaking.)?

I live in PA during the winter (MT in the summer) and National Caster is located only about 30 miles away. I think I'll go there to discuss the best casters for camper dolly applications. There are so many different ones to choose from.

I like using all swivel casters because I parallel park my camper in a tight space in my barn. It's almost impossible to do this with fixed casters, especially when you're positioning the camper by hand. I didn't mount a tow bar and there's no room for a tractor where I park the camper. When I need to move in a direction greatly different from the way the casters are pointed, I just use the camper jacks to take a load off the dolly, re-position the casters by hand, raise the jacks and roll. Another advantage to all swivel casters is that as many as necessary can be used. eBay has a set of four 1000# casters for about $45. Eight of these would cost less than four of the $37 swivel casters mentioned above and carry significantly more load.

I bought a 2000 pound 12 volt winch and bolted it to the floor in my shop. The camper would come off outside on asphalt and I would pull it into the concrete inside floor. Once on concrete it was no problem. I had four full swivel locking casters on mine.

Artum Snowbird wrote:
I bought a 2000 pound 12 volt winch and bolted it to the floor in my shop. The camper would come off outside on asphalt and I would pull it into the concrete inside floor. Once on concrete it was no problem. I had four full swivel locking casters on mine.

Watching the OP's quoted U'tube vid, i was thinking the same thing as you have done.. use a winch! If i had a dolly to move mine, i would need a winch just to get it into the garage, but once it was in there, nothing else would go in it!

I have an aluminum tube framed dolly for my 2000 pound Northern Lite which is very useful in moving it around without having to load it. However, it isn't the easiest thing to move on your own. If you are on a polished concrete floor I would say no problem. But, if you're outside on concrete (mine is a broom finished concrete) with ANY debris, sand, really anything, that gets in the way of the castors it will be difficult. Its amazing how small of a pebble will stop it in its tracks. Plus, if the concrete is sloped that is another issue.

I mounted a tow-bar on the front to help move it most of the way when I'm just going straight out and back.

I use mine primarily to shuffle spots between by fifth wheel and camper. My storage area is deep buy only one lane wide.