Best Truck for New Camper?

[Jimster]

I need help choosing a truck for a new camper. My wife and I have narrowed our selection of a camper down to one with a wet weight of 4368 lbs or another with a wet weight of 4774 lbs. We want a 4x4 truck with a crew cab and would prefer SRW, and recently rented a Ford SuperDuty F350 with the lighter camper in Canada and it worked great for traveling the Demptser Highway and some pretty gnarly B.C. forest roads. Unfortunately, the Ford’s payload rating is 3800 lbs, suggesting that the truck we rented was overloaded with our camper.

Chevrolet’s 4x4 Silverado HD 3500 diesel’s payload is 4080 lbs, and Dodge’s Ram 3500 diesel’s payload is 4350 lbs.

How important is a truck’s GRVW and payload rating and what recommendation would you give us for a truck to haul the camper we want to buy and use boondocking and traveling the US and Canada? Should we look at DRWs rather than SRWs?

Thanks for your good advice to a newbie!

[jimh406]

That Montana clay is pretty bad stuff. I didn't have my camper when I hit it. Hard to say if it would have been an issue or not. I was happy to have my Hankook DH-01s on my SRW.

[Jimster]

Thanks SoCalDesertRider. I'm a little concerned about the gumbo I've run into on Montana's backroads after a rain storm, but there are lots of places to go when the roads are really bad, or we can park it and enjoy some peace and quiet. I don't see us doing much in soft sand. Any problems with float on snow-packed roads? I've had a few people tell me to avoid DRWs because of their float on snow-packed roads, but then I had a DRW ranch-truck pull my rental 4X4 out of a snowbank on the side of Bannock Pass a few winters ago. He had to put on chains to get me out of the snow, but he had gotten up to the top of the pass without any problem. Nice truck, too!

[Jimster]

Thanks deserteagle56: spend any time in the Black Rock Desert? That's one of the planned stops on our bucket list with our new rig, along with the Trout Creek and Pueblo Mountains.

[SoCalDesertRid1]

You made the right decision going with the Dually.

You can get plenty of places in a dually as you can in a single rear wheel. The place a dually doesn't shine, is deep blow sand, and deep clay mud. Single rear wheels with typical size/tread tires don't do much better there either though, so don't fret it.

The exception is Jefe's truck, with extra giant super singles, which he spent alot of time and effort acquiring. He's got the true off road truck camper vehicle of anyone here on the forum, and has taken it EVERYWHERE. If you want to know anything about true 4-bying with a truck camper, look him up. 😛

[deserteagle56]

I had a camper on an F350 SRW for a while. Even though it was only 8' long - it all fit in the bed of the truck - the top-heavy feel and lean scared the dickens out of me whenever I got on some off-camber two-track. Couple times there I was sure we were going over! Now I've got a bigger camper on a dually and the added stability of those two extra tires acting as outriggers out there just amazes me. I drive those same roads as before and never feel like I'm going to roll it. It took only a few trips to convince me a dually was the way to go with a cabover. Sure, you have to be a bit more careful because of the extra width but the extra stability is well worth it!

[Vinsil]

I value my SRW for a daily driver and we camp remote. Our last trip had us 20 miles up a single lane logging road. I could have had a drw up there easily and that is as hardcore offroad as I get with my TC...just know your uses.

[jimh406]

I've been over many logging roads over the Northwest with my 9 1/2 double slide in both my previous SRW and the DRW. I think it just depends on how you drive. Sure, it's not going to be an offroad vehicle, but at a slower speed hasn't been a problem for us, YMMV.

[Jimster]

Jimh425: We liked the Hallmark Cuchara, but it just didn't work. Its dry weight is 1893 lbs, which means that we'd get up close to 3,000 lbs wet, optioned and loaded. Nice truck camper, however, and Bill was very helpful.

[jimh406]

Those smaller lighter popups aren't very light unless you are talking about the stripped Four Wheel Campers. Shorter yes. 🙂

[Jimster]

Steve: We started out looking at Outfitters and Hallmarks, but they don't offer enough space over the bed for my wife to do her back exercises each morning; she needs to be able to lay on her back and extend her legs out a bit. Without these exercises, she's toast all day with pain and tightness in her back (moral here: don't blow out your back if you can help it!!). We just about popped for a large Outfitter or Hallmark after touring their factories, but were surprised when we found that we enjoyed the space of a small slide-out that was also capable of getting up the Dempster and back into some of northern BC's logging and mining roads. I still like the idea of a pop-up TC for getting into the wilds, but that won't work for the two of us.
We also looked at Northern Lites, which are attractive for their weight, craftsmanship and good resale value, but they also don't offer the headroom above the bed that we need.

[Bedlam]

Jimster wrote:
Bedlam: Thanks for your build ticket: I spent some time on the Dodge Web site building a 3500, and your posting is very helpful.

This was build for my Ram:

DP0L93 2015 5500 CREW 4X4 60" CA
29A PREFERRED CUSTOMER PACKAGE
ETK 6.7L I6 CUMMINS
XXJ B20 COMPATIBILITY
DF2 AISIN HD 6-SPEED AS69RC
DMK 4.44 RATIO
PEP WESTERN BROWN
*V9 CLOTH 40/20/40 BENCH
-X8 BLACK/DIESEL GRAY
TUY 225/70R19.5G ALL POSITION TIRES
WP4 ALUMINUM WHEELS
XF7 DUAL ALTERNATORS 440A
ADE COLD WEATHER GROUP
MRT CHROME TUBULAR SIDE STEPS
TBB FULL SIZE SPARE
XHC TRAILER BRAKE CONTROLLER
AZB HEAVY DUTY FRONT SUSPENSION
XEF TRANSFER CASE SKID
RH1 SINGLE REMOTE CD

[Steve_in_29]

Jimster wrote:
Steve: The truck camper will live on our truck; we have daily drivers as well as a Jeep for non-camping back-country use. Our TC will be used for prolonged trips -- AK, N. Canada, month-long trips across the US as well as long weekends in remote back-country sites as well as an occasional RV park when we're on the road to visit kids, etc. We used to climb, kayak and backpack together, but our bodies no longer allow us to enjoy tent-camping. We tend to get as far out as we can when confronted with an interesting side road off of a USFS or BLM road, which has its good and bad consequences! Our backyard will be the Cascades, Olympics, Canadian Coast Mountains and Rockies, with forays down into the Sierra, NM and elsewhere. We are just retired, so we have a big bucket list! My wife needs to drive much of the time to protect her back, which has had several surgeries, so we want a truck that is comfortable for her as well as providing a sense of security when things get steep or gnarly. We like to get into 4X4 drive places, though we won't do any off-roading.
As I see it, the DRW will cover the weight with no problems, and give me an option of adding a heavy bull-bar in the front to protect us from elk and deer on the roads in Montana and elsewhere. We will spend a lot of time on highways getting to our destinations, and a lot of our travel will be on our typical USFS road or roads such as that going into the Centennial Valley in MT or up Hart Mountain in SE Oregon. We have a lot of desert travel to cover, as well as the Dalton Highway and the road into Yellowknife and the Great Slave Lake.

With as much off the beaten path travels you have listed have you given any thoughts to a smaller, lighter setup such as an Outfitter?

My 2007 F350 SRW carries my very well equipped Outfitter Apex 9.5 camper without ANY suspension mods and it allows us to go places NO dually is ever going to fit. While making on road travel and parking much easier as well. While you can't tell in the picture, the truck still sits slightly tail high when fully loaded for a trip.

[Jimster]

Bedlam: Thanks for your build ticket: I spent some time on the Dodge Web site building a 3500, and your posting is very helpful.

[Jimster]

Steve: The truck camper will live on our truck; we have daily drivers as well as a Jeep for non-camping back-country use. Our TC will be used for prolonged trips -- AK, N. Canada, month-long trips across the US as well as long weekends in remote back-country sites as well as an occasional RV park when we're on the road to visit kids, etc. We used to climb, kayak and backpack together, but our bodies no longer allow us to enjoy tent-camping. We tend to get as far out as we can when confronted with an interesting side road off of a USFS or BLM road, which has its good and bad consequences! Our backyard will be the Cascades, Olympics, Canadian Coast Mountains and Rockies, with forays down into the Sierra, NM and elsewhere. We are just retired, so we have a big bucket list! My wife needs to drive much of the time to protect her back, which has had several surgeries, so we want a truck that is comfortable for her as well as providing a sense of security when things get steep or gnarly. We like to get into 4X4 drive places, though we won't do any off-roading.
As I see it, the DRW will cover the weight with no problems, and give me an option of adding a heavy bull-bar in the front to protect us from elk and deer on the roads in Montana and elsewhere. We will spend a lot of time on highways getting to our destinations, and a lot of our travel will be on our typical USFS road or roads such as that going into the Centennial Valley in MT or up Hart Mountain in SE Oregon. We have a lot of desert travel to cover, as well as the Dalton Highway and the road into Yellowknife and the Great Slave Lake.

[Bedlam]

I typically configure my trucks with simpler trim but then add the extras I want. Bellow is the configuration off my 2005 Ford and my 2015 Ram is not much different: