This Affordable And Roomy Fiberglass Camper Can Be Towed By Most Vehicles And The Maker Says It’s ‘Tariff-Proof’

Smaller, cheaper, and more compact pickup trucks like the Ford Maverick are looking better by the day. With all of the uncertainty going on right now, it’s nice to have a cheap, fuel-efficient truck that can still do truck stuff. Unfortunately, small pickups and crossovers tend to lose out big on towing capacity, which means limited options for camper trailers. Thankfully, there are some sweet, lightweight options out there, including the Escape 17, a quality fiberglass camper that’s so light you can tow it with almost any truck with a tow hitch.

But perhaps even cooler is that the company building it already has plans to handle the tariff nightmare happening right now.

Last weekend, America’s largest train museum, the Illinois Railway Museum, held its opening weekend. I was right there on opening day to capture some of the first photos of the mighty Electro-Motive Division F40C locomotive that was recently donated to the museum. As I fangirled over the towering blue and red block of passenger-hauling power, something else caught my eye. Off in the distance, I spotted that a museum volunteer had set up camp.

This camper was a fiberglass cutie, and parked right next to it was a Ford Maverick, the trucklet that enthusiasts and some buyers can’t get enough of right now. Sadly, I never got to find the owner of the camper, but to my eye, it was an impressive combination. At its best, the Ford Maverick can tow a maximum of 4,000 pounds, which limits your choices of camper trailers down to generally tiny units. But the camper that this one was towing, an Escape 17, looked surprisingly big for its small footprint.

A Famed Builder Of Fiberglass RVs

I’ve covered a lot of fiberglass camper trailers over the years, from the wild efforts of U-Haul to a new trailer built after a company named after a Conquistador. Yet, I’ve never touched on Escape, a brand our readers have mentioned several times over the years.

Escape’s history dates back to 1993, when Canadians Reace and Tammy Harmatuik started purchasing vintage fiberglass campers to refurbish. People passing by often wondered if the restored trailers were for rent, and this gave the Harmatuiks an idea. That year, they opened Economy Travel Trailer Rentals. By 2002, the Harmatuiks realized there was even more potential here to sell a high-quality fiberglass camper of their own. Escape Trailer Industries was founded with Reace building new trailers of his design.

Since then, Escape has grown to become a unique player in the camper space. Escape has long pursued a highly personal experience with its customers. The trailers are sold directly to customers, and if those customers want, they are even able to participate in the building process of their campers by adding personal touches to their trailers before they even leave the manufacturing facility. Escape offers a customization program where you can be paired up with a factory representative to facilitate special builds with what Escape says are thousands of different possible configurations.

Escape says that it’s able to do this because it’s a smaller player in the RV space. It’s not trying to punch out RVs as quickly as possible. Instead, an Escape takes two weeks to build. Escape’s smaller size also meant that several customers even got to know Reace and Tammy personally, which you won’t really get with the RV giants.

In 2018, the Harmatuiks sold Escape Trailer Industries to KV Private Equity, which appears to be the current owner today. Thankfully, after a deep search through owner forums, it seems that quality has remained largely consistent through all of this time, with Escape owners preferring their campers over pretty much anything else on the market.

Escape currently makes five different models of travel trailers. The largest is the Escape 23, a 24’7” twin-axle fiberglass travel trailer that comes in at a nice 4,600 pounds dry. There’s also the Escape 5.0, a 21’2” and 3,910-pound fiberglass fifth wheel trailer that’s designed to be hauled by any half-ton pickup truck.

The Great Escape

Today, I want to focus on the baby camper of the lot, the Escape 17. An Escape, regardless of its size, begins life as a steel frame and one or two axles. In this case, you’re getting a 2,344-pound axle. The core of an Escape trailer is its body. Some manufacturers of fiberglass trailers might bond fiberglass panels together or drape fiberglass over an inner metal structure. Escape builds its trailer bodies out of an upper and a lower tub that is joined together in the middle, creating a one-piece design.

This type of fiberglass trailer is often considered the best kind of design due to the elimination of failure points and the removal of places where water can get into. There’s no rubberized roof to worry about, no metal structure to rust, no plywood to rot, and dramatically fewer seals to maintain. A fiberglass trailer like an Escape can’t really experience the wall blowout that my family’s typical stick-built trailer did after water got in through the roof.

I will note that wood is used inside an Escape. The trailer’s structure is all fiberglass from top to bottom. However, the trailer’s subfloor is exterior-grade plywood. Normally, I would be concerned about a wood floor, but this floor is inside the fiberglass egg, where it’s safer from water damage. Calling the fiberglass body an “egg” is fitting, too. Check out this video showing how Escapes are built:

The resulting Escape 17 is a pretty unit. Escape positions itself higher than an outfit like Scamp, and it shows in the trailer that you get. The exterior is a touch bigger than what you’d get with a Scamp 16 and you get some neat standard exterior options, including double-pane windows, a manual awning, a bike rack receiver, stabilizer jacks on all corners, and more.

The good list of standard features continues inside, where you get useful gear including a furnace, hot water heater, and a small kitchen featuring the refrigerator, sink, and stove essentials. I also like that a wet bath makes an appearance here as well. Escape says that you’ll get a choice of seven vinyl floor options, seven Formica countertop options, and a choice between oak, maple, or “contemporary” cabinetry.

As I noted earlier, Escape offers a frankly ridiculous variety in customization options. You can get your Escape in almost any color you’d want, have a different graphics package applied, and fill out that interior to your heart’s content. Escape offers lithium battery upgrades, solar panels, three different air-conditioners, a composting toilet, a stereo system, a lift kit, tank heaters, and so much more.

I’m amused that the options list even includes an LED light strip for your awning if you so desire. The customization guide even offers the option to install some hatches so you can access some interior storage areas from the outside.

Also pretty flexible are the interior configurations. The Escape 17A is the bare-bones model with the same features noted above, but with the wet bath deleted. In its place is a large permanent bed up front. There’s then a dinette at the rear that turns into another bed.

The Escape 17B has a few floorplans. You can get it with two dinettes that turn into beds, a bigger bed in the rear with a small dinette up front, or a bigger dinette in the rear with a smaller bed up front. Escape says that if you want your 17 model to be a true four-person sleeper, you can opt to replace the smaller dinette options with a gaucho bunk bed. Otherwise, it looks like you’re getting a trailer that’s good for two adults sleeping in the bigger bed and either one adult or two kids in the smaller dinette bed.

You get all of this in a little fiberglass cutie with a ceiling sitting 6’2″ high. That’s a bit too short for many taller folks, but it will fit many others just fine. Escape also lists a fresh tank capacity of 20 gallons, a 26-gallon grey tank, and a 13.2-gallon black tank, or perfect for a weekend of camping.

An Escape 17A without options weighs 2,290 pounds with a tongue weight of 256 pounds. An Escape 17 with a bathroom and some options is closer to 2,640 pounds with a hitch weight of 296 pounds. Either way, Escape recommends a minimum tow vehicle capacity of 3,500 pounds. Escape’s marketing materials show everything from Subaru Crosstreks to Ford Explorers hauling the 17. If you have a Ford Maverick with the optional 4K Tow Package, your truck can tow one of these, too!

The price is pretty reasonable, too. At $34,720, an Escape 17 is a little more expensive than something like a Scamp 16, but you do get a slightly bigger trailer and more standard content in that trailer.

Tariff-Proof?

Of course, there’s an elephant in the room, and it’s the tariffs we’re all worried about right now. Escape is still a Canada-based company and does not have manufacturing in the United States. Given that it’s a small company, it’s also unlikely that Escape is going to move manufacturing here, either. However, the American RV market is huge, and Escape can’t just let tariffs ruin everything.

Thus, Escape has published its plan to fight tariffs:

United States Customers:
1. Confirm your trailer today, and place your (previously) non-refundable 10% deposit to secure your build slot
2. In the event the tariffs never come to pass, everything proceeds as per normal and the deposit remains non-refundable
3. In the event there is a tariff put in place:

Escape will upon completion discount your trailer up to the amount of the tariff or 25% (whichever is less) such that you (the customer) don’t pay more than your signed-off build sheet commitment to import your trailer into the USA or, at its sole discretion Escape will refund your (otherwise) non-refundable 10% deposit.

Escape does say that while pricing will stay the same for now, there will be some immediate changes:

No More Giftboxes in US-Bound Trailers
We’ve paused including “Thank You Giftboxes” for trailers headed to the US. The administrative requirements to import them are simply too overwhelming, including:
1.A 20% tariff on all Made in China items (e.g., the box, pens, etc.)
2.Need for the customer’s SSN or the receiving company’s EIN
3.Requirement for an ACE Manifest
4.An import form for each item in the box

Parts Sales & Warranty Shipments
Made in China components now come with added complexity:
-Warranty Parts: Escape will cover the cost of the tariff.
-Parts Sales: Customers will be responsible for the tariff when importing.

Escape further notes that in the short term, it wants to avoid raising prices. Instead, the company will more or less eat the cost of the tariff to maintain prices, hence the claim that its trailers are currently ‘Tariff-Proof.’ However, Escape warns that this may not be something it can do in the long term. The company sources many of its components from companies in the U.S., which themselves get those components from suppliers in China. Escape says that if the tariffs become a long-term problem, it might have to raise prices.

But for now, Escape says that the price you see on the screen should be the price that you pay, and let the company worry about tariffs. Of course, should things continue to suck and Escape changes plans, there are used Escapes on the market that you can buy without having to worry about the madness from Washington.

This camping season is already turning out to be a stressful one, so this seems like pretty good news. Not only can you still buy a well-equipped fiberglass camper that appears to be decent quality, but the company that’s building it appears to be trying its best not to pass the tariffs onto customers. So, if you just want to get away from it all, maybe just hook up one of these bad boys to your little truck and hit the road this summer.