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TCM kicks off its reporting from the annual RV industry trade show in Louisville, Kentucky. We start with a new jack, a triple-slide, and a surprise. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
The first day at Louisville is always a whirlwind. Angela and I walk into the Kentucky Expo Center with a plan and schedule for our reporting and it goes right out the window as soon as we’re on the Expo floor.
This year, day one was particularly maddening. I had planned to cover certain manufacturers in a particular order with specific photographs in our typical buttoned down by the book style. Reality had another playbook in mind, one that was missing people we needed to see and had campers jam packed with dealers. This experience is so common at Louisville that I have a name for it, the Louisville shuffle (also known as the Louisville wait, the Louisville drain, and the Louisville @#$%). You get the idea.
On balance, it’s good to see the truck camper manufacturer booths busy with dealers considering to add truck campers to their lots. Attendance at Louisville seems to have taken a hit this year, but the dealers who are here are showing a renewed interest in truck campers. This is good news for all of us.
Getting back to the Louisville whirlwind, it’s time for plan B. This year I’m going to write what we have, as we have it. No worries though, we’re under control. We know what we’re doing. We’re professionals. We can handle it.
Rieco-Titan Products
Above: Doug Bakker, Rieco-Titan's Product Manager, Angela White, TCM's Editor, and Bob McCarthy, President of Rieco-Titan
Thank goodness for Bob McCarthy, President of Rieco-Titan, and Doug Bakker, Rieco-Titan’s Product Manager. Their booth is always easy to find and they couldn’t be more friendly and fun to talk to. Even better, they brought a brand new four corner mechanical truck camper jack to share.
At first blush, the new jack looks exactly like Rieco-Titan’s existing four-corner mechanical jack. It’s the same height, with the same diameter tube, and even has exactly the same round base and top cover. Wait a minute...
Above: The new Rieco-Titan four-corner mechanical jack. Looks familiar, eh?
Is Rieco-Titan trying to pull a fast one? This supposedly new jack even has the same Rieco-Titan decal as the other jack. What’s going on here?
It turns out the changes are almost entirely under the hood. Doug removed the top cover on the new jack and revealed the big news. The new mechanical jack has an identical gear receiver as Rieco-Titan’s remote electric camper jacks (see left photo below).
Bob explained that this change will allow for much simpler and easier upgrade should the owner of the new mechanical jack want to upgrade to remote electric jacks. Where the existing Rieco-Titan mechanical jacks need a gear conversion collar to accept the remote electric jack head, the new mechanical jacks can accept the remote electric jack head directly, no collar necessary (see right photo above).
The next step for the new mechanical jack is for the industry to come see it at Louisville and give Bob and Doug their feedback. You see, it’s not only the consumers who have high expectations for what goes into their campers. The manufacturers can be tough cookies too. Based on what I saw, I think the new jack is a winner.
Eagle Cap
Above: Greg Tucknies, National Sales Manager for Adventurer Manufacturing, and the 2012 Eagle Cap 1165
Next up on our what-we-have-ready-to-run-so-far Louisville 2011 coverage is Eagle Cap. And do we ever have an Eagle Cap. Greg Tucknies, National Sales Manager for Adventurer Manufacturing, brought out the big gun, the big kahuna, and the biggest truck camper at Louisville. I’m talking about the all-new 2012 Eagle Cap 1165 triple-slide. It’s a beauty!
Did you catch when I said, “all-new”? I have to admit this all-new-ness caught me by surprise. Since the old Eagle Cap never really had their triple-slide completely dialed-in (they only built a hand full), Dave Frampton, Product Development Manager for Adventurer Manufacturing, and the Eagle Cap team brought some fresh ideas to the floor plan, starting with a center island, kind of.
You see, the center island in the new 2012 Eagle Cap 1165 is technically a peninsula as it’s attached to a mid-camper wall. The world’s first peninsula camper? I think so.
For our Louisville coverage all I can offer is a handful of photographs but I photographed the camper from stem to stern for a future First Look review. For now what I can tell you is that the 2012 Eagle Cap 1165 is a very impressive camper and the buzz at the show is strong. This big bird is ready to fly.
As a side note, it was fun listening to dealers and other industry show attendees walk by the 1165 and say, “What is that?” and, “Is that a truck camper?” Yes ladies and gentleman, this is a truck camper. And if you properly match truck and camper, one that will gather similar comments everywhere it goes. Nice work Eagle Cap.
CampLite by LivinLite
Above: Scott Tuttle, President of LivinLite, and Rick Barna, National Sales Manager
CampLite by LivinLite showed up at Louisville with two new 2012 truck campers; the CLTC6.8 and the CLTC10. The CLTC10 had debuted earlier this year, but this was the first we had seen the camper. The CLTC6.8 is all-new and making its first appearance at Louisville 2011. CampLite was also showing an updated version of their CLTC8.5.
To be honest, what caught my attention first in the CampLite booth was the exterior colors. CampLite had a charcoal black truck camper (CLTC10), a champaign brown truck camper (CLTC8.5), and a silver grey truck camper (CLTC6.8). Up close these colors look fantastic and it’s fun to see truck campers that aren’t white, on white, with more white.
Above: Angela White, TCM's Editor, grills Scott Tuttle for details on their new campers. The fish tank demonstrates the water resistant properties of LivinLite's aluminum and Azdel construction. I wonder what they did with the fish.
Speaking of the CLTC10, Angela talked to Scott Tuttle, President of LivinLite, and got some additional details. The CLTC10 features Rieco-Titan remote electric jacks, a compartment to hold a Honda eu2000i generator, two twenty-pound propane tanks, and diamond plate on the skirts and underneath the camper. Another interesting detail is the fact that the CLTC10 (and the other CampLite truck campers) do not feature bumpers, but have retractable rear steps.
The CLTC6.8 was the real show stopper. Here we have a fully self-contained, hard side, short bed truck camper with a reported dry weight of 1,600 pounds. The CLTC6.8 is designed to have no overhang and comes standard with Rieco-Titan’s four corner mechanical jacks. Some interesting features of the CLTC6.8 include an outside storage area that CampLite calls a garage and a floor plan that works the refrigerator into the overcab. We first saw this arrangement with the refrigerator in the over cab in the Six-Pac D650 so the idea isn’t new, but it’s certainly interesting.
New for 2012, CampLite is offering Azdel composite interior panels which give the look of a wood interior with a water-proof composite material. Since introducing their campers at Louisville 2010, CampLite has been working on improving the warmth of their interiors without sacrificing their “no wood” design goal. At Louisville 2011, the CLTC10 featured the new Azdel wood-look interior and the camper is aesthetically much warmer inside.
Scott also said that he’s worked to design the campers to better fit the trucks and lower the center of gravity. Of course he couldn’t help but remind us of LivinLite’s unique all-aluminum construction with vacuum-bond laminated walls and roof. That’s their bag and they’re sticking to it.
Once again, we photographed the new CampLite campers from nose to bumper, inside and out, and will share our photography and impressions of these new campers after the show. For now, we need to get back to the whirlwind of the Kentucky Expo Center to take more photographs, gather more information, and do the Louisville shuffle.
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