My (our) Ultimate Truck Camper Body Build

Let me start by saying that I wouldn’t have built this without my wife’s blessings.
This is something I’ve wanted to build for a few years, and she was on board with it from the start of the thoughts and designs.
We had a 2008 3500 DRW Cummins and 2008 AF 1140 which we’ve had since new.

We’re avid travelers and had put over 125,000 enjoyable miles of fun with the truck and TC. The truck handled it fine but we wanted something with more capacity and piece of mind.
We had upgraded our TC with the same exact AF 1140, only 11 years newer, so
with the larger tanks and new do-dads the new TC had, the longer trips, and more toys we wanted to bring with us, we felt we should start the process for a bigger truck and body.

Now, I looked at flatbeds, flat beds with boxes, aluminum body’s, service body’s, etc.
I called Douglass Truck Body as we liked that style TC bed, as well as two other builders for a cost on what we were looking for, but they were going to need the truck and camper for a minimum of two months.
That was not going to be an option as we live on the east coast and they’re on the west coast, and she was NOT going to have the new truck and new camper out of her sight for that long.

I brought the subject up with a recently “early retired” certified submarine welder friend of ours who wanted something to do so I asked him if he was willing to work with some designs and ideas I had put down on paper, cad, and pictures.
He was on board with the welding and fabing part, now, to make it happen.

I special ordered a RAM 5500, C&C, 60”CA, 4WD, Cummins, Aisin, 19,500 GVW Laramie with all the fixins....Figured this will be the last truck (hopefully) for quite some time so after 9 weeks this is what showed up:






As soon as the truck was in my hands I started ordering all the “stuff” I had in planning.
I found a company from Alabama that would custom make any box, doors, handles, and metal gauges I was looking for.
I needed 16” boxes as I wanted the body width to stay narrower for the camper “wings” in the rear and not interfere with tie-downs.
Started with 1x3 oak, 2x4x1/4 wall on the chassis, and 3” channel for the cross members.




I incorporated the bed and camper tie-downs to the chassis.
I also put recessed pocket tie-downs in the bed for hold downs when I’m using the truck
for things other than traveling with the TC.













Curb and road sides coming together.





More to come...