Matt Rivard: The Redneck Express

Matt Rivard lives full time in his 1973 Kit truck camper.  He calls his rig the “Redneck Express” and writes a blog by the same name.  This is his story. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...



During the first few days of our first truck camping trip out West, we pulled off the highway into a Walmart to sleep for the night.  Just for fun, I called my Mom to tell her the news, “Mom, you’ll be so proud.  We’re sleeping in the back of a pickup truck at Walmart tonight.  We’re officially Rednecks!”.

Since that initial Walmart experience, Angela, Harley, and I have camped at more Walmarts than you can shake a Banjo at.  We even have our favorite Walmarts that we’ve stayed at more than once.  I can hear Jeff Foxworthy now, “If you’re sleeping in the back of a pickup truck at Walmart, again, you might be a Redneck...”

Matt Rivard’s blog, The Redneck Express, starts with the quote, "There's a lot more of America to find, when you leave the freeway far behind...”.  I think we would all agree with the spirit, if not the experience, of that quote.  My Walmart story is really about leaving your preconceptions behind and embracing the freedom and possibilities of the road.  Open your mind and let the trip take you.  From Matt’s quote, I know he’s on the same page.  

I say embrace your inner Redneck.  And throw in a little Pirate, a pinch of Columbus, Sacagawea, Shackleton, Cook, Cousteau, Magellan, Polo, and Armstrong while you’re at it.  If these adventurers and explorers were Rednecks, I’m in.

ABOVE: South Beach State Park, Newport, Oregon

TCM: How did you get into truck camping?

Matt: Technically, I was almost born into it.  When I was a baby, my family had a 1979 Dynacruiser truck camper.  In my younger years, we would travel and see my aunts, uncles, and cousins in Illinois.  Those were my first truck camping experiences.

I got my first pick-up truck in 2003; a 1990 Dodge half-ton.  On the back of it I setup what I called a Pullman camper, which was essentially a camper shell with a few extras added on.  It was a place to sleep and was far better than a tent.  Two years later I decided I’d had enough of the long set-up and tear down of camp, even with my little Pullman, and decided it was time to try and find an older camper that would fit on my half ton. 

Remembering the camper my parents had, I set out to find another similar era unit. I knew that they were generally lighter weight in their construction than modern campers and that I’d have a better chance of getting a fully self-contained that wouldn’t drastically overload my truck. 

For the next year and a half, I hunted around, sifted through a sea of poorly kept and rotted units, and found my first potential camper, a 1973 nine foot KIT Kamper.  I brought it home, and discovered after it sat for a couple nights that it was going to be a bigger project than I had expected and sold it to the next person who’d been vying for it on Craigslist.

Not long after that, my half ton decided it wasn’t going to have anything more to do with hauling truck campers, so I bought my current pickup truck. 

Roughly three months later, I resumed the camper hunt.  After visiting roughly 400 campers, I found the one for me, my 1974 KIT.  It was the last entry in a long list of Craigslist ads, and the only one with no pictures.  When I went to see it, I found that it had been spending its downtime in a barn out on a filbert farm.  The previous owner had bought, restored it, and used it for roughly six years before his wife decided that she wanted a toy hauler.  The KIT camper went to sleep in the barn for almost ten years.  I bought the camper for the owner’s asking price of $1,500, which is what I sold my half ton truck for.

TCM: That sounds like a great price for a thirty plus year old camper in good condition.  Was there something special about the Kit brand that appealed to you?

Matt: KIT campers were one of the lighter units on the market back in their day.  Add in the fact that in 1974 almost everything in a camper was simple in its workings, like no electronics, which makes repairs very easy.  Also, things just seemed to last longer.  Most of the appliances in the unit were factory originals; only the furnace had been replaced.

TCM: Some people prefer older 12-valve Cummins diesel truck engines because they are relatively simple to work on compared to the modern equivalents with their computers and such.  There’s something to be said for that.  Tell us about the design and features of your KIT Kamper.

Matt: My KIT Kamper was built in 1974 at the Nampa, Idaho KIT Plant.  She has a forward kitchen across the main aisle, with a full-twin size U-shaped dinette in the rear on the passenger side and a one piece fiberglass bathroom, like what you see in modern units today, in the rear on the driver’s side. 

The cabover bed has a full 60x80 queen bed in it, with room to spare at the foot of the bed, which is good given that my feet tend to hang over the edge.  Though the ceiling is not as tall as the ones in some of the massive basement model campers you see these days, it still high enough to sit up comfortably in bed to watch television.

ABOVE: Sitting on the side of Highway 97 north of Shaniko, Oregon, Eastern Oregon

TCM: That sounds about right.  In your blog you say that you live full-time in your camper.  How do you like living full time in a camper?

Matt: I’ve been enjoying living in my camper for the last three years.  Before I was living full time in my camper, I was a contractor with Intel working four nine hour days and a half-day each week.  That schedule worked well for the commute.  Then we had folks reorganized over from another campus that didn’t like the schedule our campus was using and had it changed back to the standard eight to five schedule.  Unfortunately, that meant driving in rush hour, taking the commute from an hour to two hours in the evening. 

One month of the stress and aggravation of that drive and I decided it was time to move into my camper full time.  Originally I planned to float from parking lot to parking lot during the week near work and go home on the weekends.  To my dismay I discovered that the local ordinances banned overnight parking in store lots, so that plan died on the table. 

TCM: So what did you do?

Matt: For my first year as a full-time camper, I lived on a farm just outside of town.  When the family went out on vacations, I would help to care for and feed the animals.  I would also man the produce stand.  I stayed there until the farm needed the space back for storing equipment in the winter.  After the farm, I found a place to stay about a mile and a half from work.  A guy rented me his RV pad at his house.

ABOVE: Rest Area in Plush, Oregon, about as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get. Matt stayed the night there before heading off road in search of Sun Stones

TCM: That sounds ideal.  How long did you stay there?

Matt: About a year.  At the time, when my contracts ended, I went and stayed with family.  Then I would come back to the area when my next contract began.  While I was rambling through eastern Oregon and visiting family after the end of my contract in 2009, the space I had been using ended up being rented to someone else.  After that I decided I was done with living next to houses and started looked for a RV park near work.  Well, Portland doesn’t really have too many RV parks.  There are some near the east side close to the ski slopes and a few on the west side, but monthly rates in those parks were almost as much as apartments.

That’s when my dad told me about a place on Sauvie Island, just outside of Portland’s city limits.  Unfortunately, the park I was originally aiming for was going through a legal fight with the county.  They had decreed that no one could rent monthly in a RV park unless it was zoned as a mobile home park.  I had to search around some more until I found another, far smaller RV park roughly four miles down the road and across the county line.  I’ve been living there ever since. 

TCM: Do you like it?

Matt: It’s an outdoors mans paradise.  Sauvie Island is surrounded on both sides by the convergence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers.  During the spring and summer you can drive down the road a couple miles and you have your pick of places to fish.  In the fall and winter the island is a major migration point for waterfowl.  I really like it.

TCM: Could you tell us about a few of things you’ve done to your camper since you’ve owned it?

Matt: My very first project was adding the exterior battery rack so that I could have an onboard battery bank.  I’ve also remodeled the bathroom in my camper.  I moved the toilet far enough back that I could fit.  To this day I’d love to ask the person who designed the camper what was going through his/her mind when he/she designed the bathroom.

My most useful project would be the modifications to my fridge.  I’ve added a highly efficient exhaust fan assembly to the back of the fridge to help with the removal of heat generated during the refrigeration process.  I’ve also added circulation fans inside the refrigerator that evens and accelerates the cooling process.  Both systems use inexpensive twelve-volt computer fans, and can be added to any camper old or new.

Some of my other favorite projects include adding a permanently installed household air conditioner unit.  My camper was neither structurally nor electrically suited for a roof-based RV unit.

ABOVE: Thirty gallon auxiliary water tank pumping along quietly while camping at Deception Pass State Pass, Whidbey Island, Washington

I also really like my thirty gallon auxiliary fresh water tank.  It’s based on a five gallon jug setup that I saw on RV.net.  I have modified it to work with a recycled peach syrup tank; that one left me laughing as any water I filled in the camper had a light flavor of peach for the first year.

TCM: I can think of worse flavors water can have than peach.  Some would consider that a feature.  What modification has had the most impact on your truck camping lifestyle?

Matt: Replacing the hydraulic jacks that came with my camper with a set of Atwood electric jacks made quite an impact.  No other project has ever made such a day and night difference in my camping experience.  Before the Atwoods, loading and unloading could take hours, and now it takes only fifteen minutes by just pressing buttons.

Aside from the jacks, the bathroom remodel was the only other project to have such an impact.  Having a fully useable bathroom has definitely impacted my camping lifestyle.  To see my projects in more detail, visit my blog at redneckexpress.blogspot.com.

TCM: Tell us about how the Redneck Express blog started.

Matt: It started it out as old forum posts.  Over the years I had posted projects on the forums, but the threads would automatically lock down after a time of inactivity.  As my image library for my posts moved around I needed to be able to go back and edit the projects; something that just wasn’t possible once the threads locked.

I finally decided to centralize everything into one location for easier reading and research by others who want to reproduce some of my work.  Building it required digging through 400 pages of my own posts to find my old trip threads and old projects.  Because of this, my blog reads like a chronological story, as I reused the dates of when my projects and trips had originally occurred.  For me, it has been my own version of taking Steinbeck’s journey from “Travels with Charley”. 

Being called “The Journey of the Redneck Express” stems from growing up in a railroader’s home.  My father was a Southern Pacific Railroad man, so I grew up heavily influenced by trains.  In the golden era of steam, the most glamorous locomotives that got people where they wanted to go bore the title of “Express”. 

I have always called myself a big redneck.  I’m not afraid to be seen wearing overalls when I’m working outside and my hat is rarely clean.  I can officially say my most common style of tan is a farmer’s.  The preset stations on my truck’s radio play Bluegrass and Country and if I don’t watch myself, I talk with a bit of a twang.

So, combine one big redneck plus a passion for steam trains and you get “Redneck Express”.

TCM: Your blog has lots of tips about fixing things.  Tell us where that interest came from.

Matt: I’ve always worked with my hands.  If there is a puzzle, I can figure it out.  And if my family needed something built, we built it ourselves. 

Growing up, I was hands on with my parents doing my own plumbing, electrical, and construction.  As a rule, we always doubled up the standards and codes.  Why go average when you can go with something more durable and simple?  I apply the same rule to my camper.

When I decide on a project, I figure out a methodology first.  Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of night with a “Eureka!” moment and scribble something down.  When I wake up, I’ll do it.  If I can’t figure out a means to the end, I’ll find someone who can and learn what I’m missing.

TCM: We recently saw your blog post about the new Torklift WobbL-Stoppr.  Tell us about your experience with the product.

Matt: Being a member of NATCOA, we have contact with the various manufacturers of camper products.  Torklift put out a request for folks to sample their WobbL-Stoppr system and report back on how it worked.  I lucked out as one of the three who got to test the product.

Starting out I could push on the nose of the camper and it would wobble about five inches from side to side.  My expectation was that the product would dampen the camper’s tendency to wiggle only a little.  Instead, the camper hardly budged after I installed the WobbL-Stopprs.  I’ve had the system now for several weeks and the camper is still rock steady.  Normally, I’m a skeptic of the claims of most mass-produced RV accessories, but I can honestly say I’m impressed that it’s a product that does exactly what it claims to do.

TCM: When did you get involved with NATCOA? 

Matt: My first experience with NATCOA was when it was founded.  At the time it was another forum where I could increase the visibility of my camper projects.  Then one day the call came for a webmaster to maintain their servers.  Given my school background in web development I replied, “I can do that.  What do you need?”.  That’s when I got more heavily involved with NATCOA.

I enjoy participating with the NATCOA group a lot.  For those seeking advice specific to truck campers, NATCOA is a nice, centralized resource for information.  One must not forget that NATCOA is more than just a forum.  It’s also a club, through which several larger camp-outs each year are coordinated, where both members and non-members can participate.  Even if you don’t participate on the forum, the club will still keep you posted of upcoming events through periodic mailings.  It’s like having a second family with a common interest in truck camping.

One unique benefit about NATCOA over most RVing forums is that a number of camper manufacturers and parts companies are also members.  This allows members another direct course of contact with the companies that make the parts for our campers.

ABOVE: Redneck Express peeking out amongst the painted hills, Eastern Oregon

TCM: We have been a big supporter of NATCOA from day one and encourage anyone who is interested in truck camping to get involved with their club.  Is there anything else I didn’t ask that you would like included with your interview?

Matt: Just one thing, the credo of my travels, if you will.  “There is so much of America to see when you leave the freeways behind.”  Take a truck camper and explore America’s history.  Discover the small towns and places that built this great nation.  There are treasures that you won’t find anywhere else, and some of them, you can only find in a truck camper.

TCM: Thanks Matt.  We’ll be reading your blog.