This Commercial Truck Turned Into A Ridiculous Pop-Up Camper Is The Most Confusing RV I’ve Seen In A While

One of the wildest classes of motorhome out there is the expedition truck. Everything about these rigs is ridiculous, from their fuel stores and their size to their price tags, because they’re meant to go to the ends of the Earth. The Freightliner on your screen looks like an expedition truck, but it’s far weirder than that. It can’t really go off-road, and its design is bizarre with a huge pop-top roof. But at the same time it’s apparently crazy quiet and also gets decent fuel economy. See my confusion?

This 2010 Freightliner M2-106 SportChassis P2XL is the only one of its kind. In the not-too-distant past, the builders of commercial trucks used to sell luxury variants of their big trucks to private customers who wanted something a bit bigger than even a Ford F-450. That’s crazy enough, but then RV company Phoenix Pop Up Campers decided to graft a pop-up camper onto the back of this Freightliner. The whole roof extends upward to add vertical space to an already tall vehicle, and it has slides that come out, too. It’s like an expedition truck gave birth to a Super C (a Class C RV riding on a commercial truck chassis), and I just can’t put my finger on it.

This rig is simultaneously so awesome, yet so baffling, and yet the price doesn’t seem that bad, either. This is a motorhome that’s full of contradictions, and maybe that’s what’s great about it. Oh no, I’m confused again.

The Ultimate In Big Trucks

It’s no secret that America has big truck fever. If you look at yearly sales charts, you’ll find that America practically has a truck addiction. The Ford F-Series took the number one sales spot last year, followed closely by the Chevrolet Silverado. The top ten list doesn’t finish without the Ram Pickup and the GMC Sierra making an appearance, either.

Yet, for some people, even a chunky Ford Super Duty, Ram HD, or Silverado HD just isn’t big enough. Those folks will likely be served by the niche of big commercial trucks converted into personal vehicles. I’ve written about this phenomenon before, and there were a shocking number of these trucks out there.

A company, going by Extreme Supertruck, claims to have invented the niche, as I wrote in a retrospective:

As the story goes, in 2001 Chris Walker and George Stickler were looking to replace their older trucks with a Ford F-650. The pair were executives of the telecommunications and utility construction company Southeast Utilities of Georgia. On the way home from the dealership, the men decided to use their previous experience in racing and fabrication to convert the commercial truck into a large and “badass” pickup truck.

The company says that immediately after the first Extreme Supertruck was built, someone approached Walker and Stickler and then bought the truck. Since then, the guys turned their custom builds into a business, and its customers range from racers to kings to athlete — and also the sorts of people who manage to kill a F-350 pickup every few years. The company says it’s a registered Ford upfitter, so getting a gargantuan Ford pickup is a turn-key process about as close as you’re going to get to buying a commercial truck pickup right from a dealer.

Extreme Supertruck’s builds apparently caught the attention of OEMs. The GMC TopKick C4500 by Monroe Truck Equipment followed in 2003 as a sort of factory-built commercial truck pickup truck, then came the International Extreme Truck Series in 2004.

One manufacturer I left out of that retrospective was SportChassis Corp. This company opened its doors in 1995 with Tim Sinor at the helm. SportChassis spent its first years building ambulance bodies for commercial vehicles before shifting into the gigantic luxury vehicle market in 2002. This timing would make SportChassis an early competitor to Extreme Supertruck before the OEMs themselves got involved in the market.

SportChassis and Extreme Supertruck are still converting big rigs into personal trucks, too, long after the OEMs had canceled their competing products. SportChassis says its typical customers are either people towing equally massive trailers or celebrity athletes – a list that includes Shaq, Joe Montana, Scottie Pippen, and Chris “The Birdman” Anderson.

This Wild Motorhome

So with that in mind, let’s look at what a motorhome fit for someone like Shaq is supposed to be like. The truck on your screen today is a 2010 Freightliner M2-106 SportChassis P2XL customized by Phoenix Pop Up Campers. Yep, that means it took three companies to get to this specific truck.

The donor vehicle is a 2010 Freightliner M2-106. This is a truck typically found in roles including box trucks, flatbed trucks, tankers, less-than-truckload, or vocational duty. The Freightliner M2 is also a popular platform for personal luxury trucks and expedition trucks.

This truck shipped from the factory with a Cummins 8.3-liter ISC inline-six rated at 330 HP and an Allison 3000HS six-speed automatic. SportChassis then took this truck and outfitted it into a pickup truck with leather seats, super single tires, a Focal stereo system, a drop-down rear screen, and an Xbox connection. Additional features included red LED underglow and a rear bench that converted into a bed.

According to a video published in 2015, this massive RV was designed by a guy named Greg.

He says he purchased this 2010 Freightliner M2 106 SportChassis P2XL used and then drove the truck as a giant pickup truck for a while. Then, he decided that he wanted to build the ultimate RV out of it. Greg apparently contacted Lance, EarthRoamer, and other RV builders just for all of them to say that they weren’t interested. That’s when he found Phoenix Pop Up Campers.

This company, founded by Rob and Cari Rowe, says its lineage traces back to the original incarnation of Four Wheel Campers:

Our Family started Four Wheel Campers here in Colorado in the early 70′s and ran it until the late 80′s. Then, to diversify the family business, My Father started a new venture, building Tiger Motor Homes. Tiger Motor Homes took off like wildfire, and both companies thrived, but managing both companies he felt was not in the best interest of either company.

Since the FWC product had become a relatively “one size fits all” assembly line item the name Four Wheel Campers was sold in the late 80′s and that company has since moved out of state and change hands several times.

Phoenix Pop Up Campers has regular production campers with a construction that seemingly follows that of the old-school Four Wheel Campers designs. But, important here is that Phoenix Pop Up Campers does customization.

Greg wanted something that looked a bit like an expedition truck, but also wasn’t just a box slapped on the back of a commercial truck. He wanted the camper to follow the curves and design of the Freightliner underneath it. Greg also requested that the motorhome be built with the latest in RV tech.

What he got was pretty impressive. REDiculous, as the truck is called, has a motorhome body with an aluminum skeleton, fiberglass outer panels, fiberglass inner panels, carbon fiber corners, three-inch triple core foam insulation, and dual-pane windows.

Inside, you won’t find a single bit of wood. Instead, there’s a lot of aluminum. All of this was done, Greg says, to make the quietest, most durable, best-insulated coach he could get. Apparently, when the slides and the pop-up roof are closed you can barely hear what’s going on outside of the truck. The insulation is also good enough that you don’t need to run the heat or the air-conditioner for very long to maintain temperature control.

Greg was also obsessed with creating as much room as possible without increasing the truck’s length, so that’s why the camper has two large slides and then one really long pop-top. In doing so, Phoenix was able to give this truck a rather roomy interior. There’s a working wet bath in there, a pretty huge leather dinette, and a real queen bed up in the pop-top area.

The features list is pretty crazy, too:

Interior has all aluminum power coated cabinets, power auto blinds, Flexsteel ultra leather couch, 2 inside refrigerators, one outside ice chest, microwave convection oven,2 burner stove, filtered drinking water faucet, propane furnace heat, instant on propane hot water heater, led lighting, shower, toilet with macerator, focal stereo, 40″ Samsung led HD TV with surround sound with electric lift.

Wineguard DIRECTV Trav’ler satellite system, skylight roof hatch with day night shade, dual solar controllers, flexible solar roof, walkable roof deck with rain catch, ac, propane Onan 2400 watt generator, 30 gals of propane, 85 gals fresh water, truck interior is leather with Alcantara vented center front seats with cooling fans, focal big sound system, GPS, TPS, 5 cameras, front seats are air ride, cab on air ride,, electric steps, 100 gal diesel, outside ridged led floods, care free electric awnings with LED lights, new lithium 120 Ah batteries.

The build video notes that the truck has an air suspension, air-ride seats, an 18,000-pound winch, and scores about 9 mpg on the highway. Greg says he paid $150,000 for the truck used and then spent another $375,000 on the custom camper. I think REDiculous is a fitting name for sure.

There’s so much I love about this rig. The typical camper basically lets in all of the outside noise and insulation often sucks. It’s awesome to hear that this one is perfect for peace and quiet. I also love the blazing hot red paint everywhere, the Freightliner donor truck, and the total lack of wood in the rig’s structure. It’s also just a really unique build. Most trucks like these have a boring square cube bolted to their frames and this isn’t that.

So Cool, So Odd

On the other hand, I am scratching my head at some things here. For one, I would have loved to see maybe a little wood or some sort of accent material to break up the harsh black and red interior. This build is also based on a 4×2 truck. So, while the listing talks about the truck’s great ground clearance, you’re probably not taking this very far off-road.

The winch also seems undersized for this application. This Freightliner M2-based SportChassis truck has a gross weight rating of 19,500 pounds. It’s generally recommended to buy a winch rated for your GVWR times 1.5, but in this case, the winch doesn’t even hit GVWR.

The selling dealership, Texas Best Used Motorcycles, says it’s all yours for the price of $189,500. Maybe I’m crazy, but that doesn’t seem as absurd as I expected. A decent used Freightliner M2-106 SportChassis P2XL will run you around $80,000 or more, so the question then comes down to whether the custom RV body is worth about $100,000.

So, this truck is a motorhome full of contradictions. It looks like an expedition truck, but it may not be the best off-road. It appears to be an extremely well-built coach, but a purpose-built motorhome might have better comforts. But, you could also see this as a sort of mini Super C, and maybe there’s a market for that. See, I’m feeling so conflicted and confused. I love this crazy thing, but if you just want an RV, there are probably better choices.

But maybe I’m also missing the point. This thing was built to be ridiculous on purpose, so of course, it might not make the most logical sense. I suppose the real answer to my confusion is that this thing is meant for a specific kind of person. That person was Greg, so maybe this dealer will find out how many Gregs are out there.