I have this truck now and although it needs a lot of little attentions, it’s capable of doing the job I need it to do for the next year or two.
At the point where I start thinking about grafting a bedroom and office onto it, there are issues.
The cheapest quickest thing would be put some old four-thousand dollar pop-up camper on it, but the damn things are quite heavy, and don’t provide much actual space anyway.
Spending three or four times as much on a nice light modern extendable pop-up is what I would love to do best, but the lead times on these beautiful spendy units range from seven months to a year, which means I couldn’t get started on nomadics for real until summer or even next winter.
So in recent days I’m leaning very heavily toward towing something instead.
Towing is an interim solution, because the ultimate dream is to have one truck that contains its own bed and can take it up any road at all. Dragging your house behind solves most any payload problem, but there are even paved roads I love and need that would be nightmarish with forty feet of rig (a 20-foot truck and a 20-foot trailer). But even so, towing is where I’m headed to get things going quickly.
Is there such a thing as a True HALF TON TOWABLE Toy Hauler? Yes! The 20′ ATC Game Changer Pro
Most modern ‘toy haulers’ are trailers with a minimal living quarters in the front half and a wide open space aft. This is ideal for me, although I wouldn’t be hauling snowmobiles or ATVs, but a well-appointed open floor plan office. ATC seems to be the premier company for building them. New ATCs are ungodly expensive, and used ones seem to be quite rare, but even so, the ancient toy-H approach is one possibility, to get started.
The second possibility is an enclosed cargo trailer. This seems the most practical, because even though rigging one out to live in would be a ton of work, the basic shell can be had for under 10 or 11 thousand new, even in maximum sizes. And used ones for less, of course.
The third route is plain old travel trailers, which generally speaking are cheaply made and cheap to buy too. The issue with these is the opposite of the blank space of a cargo trailer–they’ve done the work of things like electrical and plumbing already–but the question is how well that was done, and what to do when it breaks.
So maybe I’ll find a travel trailer and rip some stuff out. Maybe I’ll find a cargo trailer and build up from scratch. Maybe I’ll find a perfectly valid cheaper T-hauler for cheap. Or maybe I’ll stumble across some half-finished project that is a hybrid of any of these
https://westslope.craigslist.org/tro/d/durango-tool-trailer/7426408975.html … CT, lacking in width
https://lascruces.craigslist.org/tro/d/santa-clara-travel-trailer/7427391189.html … TT, many unknowns
https://prescott.craigslist.org/tro/d/prescott-valley-1996-haulmark-6×10/7428211884.html … CT, lacking in width
https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/tro/d/phoenix-trailer/7429096742.html… CT, lacking in width
https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/tro/d/phoenix-travel-trailer/7420277756.html … TT, unfinished
https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/tro/d/buckeye-2022-cargo-mate/7417922750.html … CT, just wide enough but possibly a dealer lowballing
https://phoenix.craigslist.org/nph/tro/d/peoria-1999-tahoe-toy-hauler/7417447525.html … T-H, though very old and potential structural problems due to water damage
https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/tro/d/wickenburg-2012-kz-sportsmen-classic/7427080933.html … TT and maybe the best value in tonight’s batch, see also https://www.rvguide.com/specs/kz/travel-trailer/2012/sportsmen-classic/14rb.html
This is my brain life in the first days of 22.