FWC’s and Ultralight backpacking

[Toddhom]

One of the main reasons I was drawn to Four Wheel Campers is because for years I was into ultralight backpacking where you need to be mindful and weigh every item in your pack choosing only the lightest of every essential item you need. FWC’s seem to be the ultralight version of a fully equipped truck camper so it surprises me when I read how people add so many unnecessary items that add weight. I’m curious to know if there are like minded people and if so what have you done to keep your FWC as light as possible.

Todd Homchick

 

[craig333]

I'm sure you'll find plenty of like minded people here. Even when I was a regular backpacker I never obsessed over weight to the point where I weighed every item. My truck can handle the weight of whatever I want to carry. I don't need to be mindful of every ounce. Plus, I'm of the boy scout mentality. Be prepared. Yeah some of what I carry I might not need but if I do, it'll be there. I'd rather be that guy you can come up to and whatever you need I'll go "yep, I got that"

 

[Ronin]

I'm not an ultralight backpacker but manage to do a 5 day backpack trip fully loaded with water plus the clothes I'm wearing at 22-24lbs. My ATC Panther shell weighs in at 900lbs. My Panther is equipped with side dinette, stove, propex furnace, a single 100 AH battery, a truckfridge. and a 5gal water jug hanging off an AT can holder. We use a lot of our backpacking gear like sporks, ti cups & cookwear. We have a rule to never have anything on the floor of the camper except for our lil giant step stool. If it can't be stowed it stays home!

I think people have different needs when they're out in the great unknown, which is why there's so many different rigs. assorted gear, and toys available. Backpacking is no different. I still see people hefting 50 lb. packs. Nothing wrong with it if you can manage it. There is such a thing as going with too little gear to match the conditions you could encounter.

 

[Oilbrnr]

What unnecessary items are you referring to Todd? Curious...

 

[JaSAn]

I too am curious as to what you see as 'unnecessary items that add weight'.
And why you would want to keep your FWC as light as possible.

When I was backpacking I watched gear weight closely. Now that I have a Grandby I am only concerned with keeping under GVWR.

 

[Sleddog]

I lean towards the minimalist style in general and have remodeled my FWC to be as light as possible. The first thing I did after buying a used Fleet was strip everything out of the interior. We used the stripped down shell version for a season to see what we really needed/wanted and how to best arrange it. The next season I remodeled, building a bed platform and putting the stove, sink, and minimal cabinetry back together in such a way that everything can be used with the top down when necessary.

A few things I do not have or have eliminated as unnecessary that others may prefer to have: toilet, shower, refrigerator, awning, dinette/table, solar panel/batteries, water heater, furnace. There are ways to improvise a solution to not having these items that are much lighter weight and take up little space.

All I wanted in a camper was a step up from sleeping in a tent and cooking on the tailgate. My Tundra has lousy payload capacity, but it is paid for and running great. I can't bring myself to buy a bigger truck just so I can haul more stuff, things I might appreciate if I had them along, but ultimately things I don't really need. The most reasonable solution for me was to keep the camper as light as possible.

 

[JWL]

I came from a backpacking background as well and believe less is more. My Hawk Shell will live on my Tundra so I don’t want to drag excess weight around every day, I want things to be “modular “ . When we were first looking at FWC we were told “regular RV’s are for people who want to be inside, these are for people who want to be outside” That registered with us. I prefer to cook outside so didn’t want to have a stove built in. (For quick morning coffee I will still use my backpack stove ) Chairs, table, cooking stand all can be taken outside under the ARB awning and we have a deluxe room if buggy. Go in hang out some at night (maybe) and go to bed. Get home and put it all away. I know if I was full time or really long trips this might change but bottom line is there is only so much room in one of these anyway.

 

[Toddhom]

Weight is my main concern. I have a Tacoma 4x4 with a max payload of around 1400lbs. My camper is an old Eagle somewhere around 6-700lbs dry. I have to be careful or I can quickly exceed max weight.

 

[Jon&Sue_DeArman]

Get Stuck one time, 40 miles from the nearest pavement and You will wish you had a few of those Un-Necessary things in Your camper

 

[DavidR]

I've gone back and forth on weight and ended up in the middle. We also do a lot of backpacking, but the 4WC was specifically for car-camping and overlanding. By definition, it's not the lightest possible option for car camping, that would be just the bare truck with our backpacking equipment, which we have done in the past. With the 4WC, we could have saved some weight by opting for a more minimal version with no cabinetry, stove, space heater, sink, pumped water system, electrical system, etc., but since this was technically a camper and not just a topper, we went with some of those things, especially since we had winter use in mind as well.

At one point, though, I had added a lot of additional weight beyond that. in particular, I built a wood platform for the camper to sit on, which provided a "basement" in which I built a gray water storage tank and had some extra storage space for skis. While I never actually weighed all of that, it was probably at least 75-80 lbs. or more total, and it proved not much more convenient than the 5-gal. plastic water tank I used for gray water previously. I decided I had gone a little overboard with that, and now no longer use it.

 

[UmkaAndHawk]

Perhaps not _ultra_light, but more or less the same here.


We bought a 2019 Tundra and the GVWR is not technically enough to carry even the supposedly light FWC (they _use_ to be light...our 2020 Hawk shell showed up with a dry weight of 945 lbs). (Also, the 4x4 Tundra has, as far as the sticker on the truck says, way less GVWR than I believe most people will admit).

That gives us just a few hundred pounds before we exceed GVWR. With ourselves, and the 38 gal gas tank, along with propane tanks, and a cooler, we're pushing GVWR pretty hard.

We don't worry about every ounce, like we do for backpacking, preferring a more pragmatic approach, but with every trip (it's still new, we haven't much experience yet) we try to optimize--removing unneeded items, replacing with better, sometimes heavier (real, but light, pans instead of our old stupid, inconvenient backpacking set) and sometimes lighter (we don't need any of this stuff....)

To our shell we've added: 7 gal water jug, and foot pump. DIY counter-top and sink. We use a small two burner camping stove, and a small aluminum table for cooking mostly outside. We have light backpacking chairs (note: our actual backpacking chairs are just for our sleeping pads...so this was a car-camping upgrade as far as we are concerned.

There are no cabinets, all our gear (cooking gear, and dry food) is stored in two boxes and a couple of junk drawer trays under the counter which has one very thin shelf.

Seating is a removable bench (3/4 inch birch plywood, for lightness, with an aluminum stiffener) along the back window. We use the bed's cushions for that.

It's both incredibly spartan, but also, what's missing? Nothing as far as we can tell.