A Year and a Half with a Truck Camper: Sharing What I've Learned

I spent nearly six months building out my own truck camper and have been on the road for about a year and a half, so I'd say I qualify as a seasoned truck camper owner. A lot of people ask how to avoid going wrong when buying a truck camper, so here are my thoughts.

First off, I still believe a truck camper is the best choice — good ground clearance, easy parking, and safe to drive.

Layout and Sleeping Space

For the interior layout of a truck camper, a transverse bed looks better than a longitudinal one — it makes the space feel bigger and less cramped. The bed absolutely must be a permanent fixed bed. When you're traveling long-term, having to fold down seats and make the bed every night, then pack it all up again the next morning, really kills the joy of truck camper travel. Of course, if the vehicle is mainly for daily commuting with the occasional weekend trip, that's a different story. My camper came with a large fixed cabover bed — 2000 x 1780mm — more than enough for two people, and skipping the daily bed setup and takedown has been a huge quality-of-life improvement.

A lot of people consider how many beds a truck camper has and how many people it can sleep. As a seasoned owner, let me tell you: truck camper travel is best for one person or a couple, plus maybe one kid. Think about it — a 150-square-foot bedroom at home, how many people can it sleep? Sure, you could cram five or six in there, but how bad would it smell? Now imagine an even smaller truck camper. So one bed is plenty. If you have an extra person occasionally, throw an air mattress in the cab.

Electrical and Water Systems Are the Core

A truck camper is a mobile home, and water and electricity are essential. A lot of truck campers on the market come with only a 400AH battery and a 90-liter water tank — nowhere near enough. Between the fridge, water pump, lights, electronics, water heater, rice cooker, and electric kettle, there are a lot of things drawing power. You need a big enough battery to sustain your trip without scrambling to find a place to charge all day. My previous battery was 400AH, which wasn't enough, so later I bought battery cells online and built my own 280AH auxiliary pack — combined, that gave me 680AH total, and that's been sufficient.

A 90-liter water tank is honestly too small, so you'll often see this: owners hauling water in all sorts of containers strapped to the outside of the truck for daily use — inconvenient, ugly, and it eats up precious storage space inside. My truck is a Ford F-250, and I fit two fresh water tanks — one large, one small — under the spare tire position and below the side door, totaling over 160 liters. With a big enough battery and water tank, you'll find that your travel freedom increases dramatically. When buying, make sure to choose the right configuration for your travel habits — some campers offer DIY, BASE, and PRO trim levels, so pick what fits your needs and you won't regret it.

Materials and Water Quality

Manufacturers will often tell you their water tank is stainless steel, but whether it's actually stainless steel is something you need to verify. I met a fellow truck camper owner at a campground in Colorado who said the water from her tank always had a metallic taste. How can you use water like that for daily life, let alone drinking? My water tank was custom-made by a local stainless steel shop — 2mm 304 stainless steel — the shop was honest and reliable, and I personally inspected it before buying.

The water in my truck camper goes through several stages of treatment. First, there's a pre-filter at the fill port to catch large particles. Inside the tank, I use water purification tablets to kill microorganisms and prevent the water from going bad, as well as to keep bacteria and algae from growing in the tank. There's another filter before the water pump. Water that passes through all of this is used for washing vegetables and showering. After the pump, there's a dual-cartridge water filter for cooking, making soup, and drinking — so I never buy bottled water. I trust the water I treat myself more than bottled water in terms of quality.

Space Trade-offs: Subtract Before You Add

A truck camper is a mobile home, and ideally you'd want everything you have at home all set up to make life on the road more comfortable. But truck camper space is limited — that's an unavoidable reality — so you have to make trade-offs within that limited space: do the things you truly need well and thoroughly, and cut out the things that are nice-to-have. That's how you improve your quality of life on the road.

My truck camper is very well-equipped, and the usable interior space is larger than most other truck campers out there, precisely because I made deliberate trade-offs and optimizations across all the configurations.

Do You Really Need an Air Conditioner?

First, the air conditioner. Most truck campers on the market come with an RV air conditioner, but honestly, the usage rate is extremely low. People who travel in truck campers generally have plenty of time for extended trips — they don't head south in the heat of summer. Usually, you go north in summer and south in winter, or find a place with a mild year-round climate, so an air conditioner is basically unnecessary.

Some people say they use the AC not because of the heat but because it's their habit. Well, let me tell you a harsh reality: if you can't live without AC, you're not suited for life on the road — you're better off staying home. The electricity on a truck camper simply cannot support running the AC every day, unless you have a massive solar setup that far exceeds your roof area, or you're parked at a pedestal with shore power all day. And because the AC takes up so much power capacity, that's exactly why many truck campers end up with such small water tanks.

Most truck campers are equipped with a split-type household air conditioner, with the outdoor unit mounted under the chassis — taking up valuable space underneath, which is why the fresh water tank ends up being a mere 90 liters. Some truck campers use a roof-mounted AC, which eats into the roof space available for solar panels and also adds height to the camper — many places have clearance bars, making it a hassle to get through.

Rather than installing an AC you'll rarely use, you're better off saving that power for equipment you actually need. The body is filled with XPS insulation, which effectively reduces the impact of outside temperature differences and helps keep the interior warm in winter and cool in summer. Add a diesel heater for winter, and it's far more practical than an air conditioner.

The Truth About Toilets

Aside from the AC, there's one more thing on a truck camper that's both very necessary and very unnecessary — the toilet.

A toilet is pretty much standard equipment on every type of truck camper. Some manufacturers even advertise that theirs is imported, equipped with an electric macerator, and comes with all kinds of degrading agents. But no matter how fancy the toilet on a truck camper is, they all share one common trait: they stink and they're hard to clean.

In the US, many RV parks are equipped with gray water and black water dump stations — you just pull in, hook up the discharge port, and you're done. But if you're doing dispersed camping on BLM land or traveling remote routes with no dump facilities, emptying the black water tank is a real hassle. Black water is bodily waste — solids and liquids — and you have to detach the black water tank from the truck camper, carry it to a toilet, dump the waste, and then clean it out. A smaller black water tank holds about 10 liters — roughly 22 pounds of contents — while a larger one holds about 20 liters — roughly 44 pounds. Emptying the black water tank is definitely a messy chore, and over time, the inside of the camper will inevitably develop an odor.

Aside from new truck camper owners who excitedly use the indoor toilet at first, pretty much everyone who lives on the road long-term switches to a portable folding toilet. During the day, you just use public restrooms, and only at night do you use the portable one. I use a folding toilet — at night I line it with a plastic bag, and the next morning I carry the bag to a restroom or out into the bushes, toss the bag and toilet paper in the trash, fold the toilet up for driving, and it takes up no space at all. Extremely convenient.