Help us answer one of the most important questions in the truck camper marketplace. Your answer will impact the future of truck camper bathroom design. Where do you sit?
A huge part of what attracted us to truck camping in the first place was the idea that we could have our own walled bathroom with us at all times. In fact, I’m so accustomed to traveling with my own bathroom that it’s odd to travel any kind of real distance in a car or SUV anymore. What do you mean I don’t have my own bathroom with me? You mean I have to find a public bathroom somewhere? I’m spoiled.
On the flip side, there have always been pop-up and hard side truck campers without walled bathrooms, and for good reason. Walled bathrooms take up a large amount of space and require holding tanks and plumbing, or installed cassette toilet systems. These features add a considerable amount of weight. If you’re looking to match a camper to a mid-size of half-ton truck, and/or you want to extensively travel off-road, a big and heavy bathroom can be a non-starter.
A Bathroom Movement
For the first decade of Truck Camper Magazine, the majority of new truck camper announcements were for campers with bathrooms. Campers without bathrooms—the common industry wisdom was at the time—would not sell. There were brands that successfully built and sold non-bathroom campers, but they were predominantly ultralight pop-up models. Again, all of this was common knowledge from about 2007 to 2017, and likely for the decade that proceeded that time.
Fast forward to today and Truck Camper Magazine is announcing about as many truck campers without bathrooms as bathroom models. Just from our nearly eighteen years of covering the truck camper industry, that’s a huge shift. In making this key change, has the truck camper marketplace followed what the consumer wants, or have they drifted off course?
The Big Bathroom Question
The challenge was to create one question that connects all the dots. I call it, ‘The Big Bathroom Question’, and it has three simple parts.
For part one, identify your preference for Overland-style truck campers versus Traditional-style truck campers.
Overland-style truck campers are what you typically see at Overland Expos. They tend to have simpler interior appointments, and are off-road focused to an extreme.
Traditional-style campers are typically sold on RV dealer lots. They tend to have more RV-style interior appointments, and are less extreme in their off-road focus.
Here’s how a few truck camper brands generally skew between Overland or Traditional style truck campers. Which style would your camper preference fit into?
More Overland-Style: Alaskan, Capri, Four Wheel Campers, Hallmark, Hotomobil, Kingstar, OEV, Outpost, Phoenix, Scout, Soaring Eagle, Supertramp
More Traditional-Style: Adventurer, Arctic Fox, Bigfoot, Cirrus, Citation Explore, Lance, Northern Lite, Northstar, Palomino, Rugged Mountain, Wolf Creek
Second, indicate whether you prefer pop-up or hard side truck campers. Obviously there are pop-up and hard side camper brands in both the Overland-style and Traditional-style truck camper markets, so choose accordingly.
Third, select whether you prefer a walled bathroom (with a toilet and—in some cases—a shower and sink), or no walled bathroom. Of course, campers with no walled bathrooms might have a toilet in the main living area, but they’re still ‘no walled bathroom’ campers.
All of the above is answered in a single question with eight multiple choice answers. For example, one person might select, “Overland-Style Truck Camper. Pop-Up. No Walled Bathroom,” where another might select, “Traditional-Style Truck Camper. Hard Side. Walled Bathroom.”
By connecting all three variables together (Overland vs Traditional camper, Pop-Up vs Hard-Side, and Walled vs No Walled Bathroom), we can actually understand readership preferences on this very important question.
CLICK TO TAKE THE BATHROOM SURVEY
