Question:
The wife and I are in the process of picking out our first Slide-In
Camper/Pickup Truck. We have never owened either camper or truck before so
we are starting from scratch with near zero knowledge but things are
progressing, or at least were progressing until about an hour ago.
We live in a small single-story house with a small yard and little
garage. Because there is no other place to put it the camper was to be
stored in the back yard when not on the pickup. To get the Camper to the
designated space in the back yard I would have to drive the loaded camper
down an 11 foot "wide alley" with my house on one side and the neighbors
house on the other. Eleven feet being plenty wide I had no thoughts of any
problems until today when I remembered the roof eves and gutters. The width
of the "alley" between the neighbors gutter and mine is a mere 7 feet 3
inches, not enough to drive the 7 foot wide camper down without taking a big
risk of tearing up both roof gutters and camper. If this problem cannot be
solved the whole camper/pickup idea will need to be scrapped.
If there was some way to place the camper on a cart so I could unload
the camper in my front yard then push the camper on the cart down the alley
that would solve my problems. The camper will be a Sun Valley Eagle
Pop-Up SB with an empty weight of about 1300 pounds. The ground it needs to
be moved over is grassy, there are two 90 degree corners and the ground is
graded such that the camper willl list about 15 degrees in spots.
If anyone knows where a suitable cart can be purchased or how one can be
built I would appreciate it a BUNCH.
Answer:
-I don't know of any carts you can buy, but a good welding shop could
probably make you one if you designed it. Most of these type shops
don't mind doing "after hours work", so you don't have to pay the shop
rate. I would think it would be fairly simple to design. There is
always the though of just using jacks that are nopt hard mounted to the
camper and setting it on a trailer, the towing the trailer to the back yard.
- highly suggest going to the slide-in camper forum over at www.irv2.com .
One of the things I learned there was a guy get a airline baggage cart and
cut the top off it to use it for moving his camper around. These carts have
inflated wheels that would roll on grass much better than small steel
casters and they come with tow bar for attaching to a pintle hook.
My one big warning to you when shopping is to be real carefull with the
weight numbers. Your camper with the 1300 lbs dry weight will top 2000 lbs
wet with gear. You'd be hard pressed to find a 1/2 ton truck rated to carry
that camper and even some 3/4 ton trucks will be overloaded per
manufacturers ratings. Overloading trucks with campers seems to be an
acceptable practice and I don't get too excited about it usually. But
there's many guys running around that are 2000 lbs overloaded and that's
simply dangerous. So do some reading and watch those weights. Hint:
carefully read all the fine print in manufacturers brochures because those
advertised payload ratings never apply to real trucks.
