One of the newest trends in the RV space is the modular camper. Why settle on just one layout when you can change it on the fly? That’s what’s being promised by the Four Wheel Campers CampOut, the habitat that’s being hailed by some as the first truly modular truck camper. Now, the camper on your truck can change easily alongside your needs.
In the past handful of years, RV manufacturers have discovered a niche of RV buyers. Usually, you buy a camper and you’re just stuck with whatever floorplan you bought. Because you and I are only human, our desires may change enough for us to find out that our campers no longer fit our lifestyles. From there, most people might modify their existing rigs, deal with the limitations, or sell and buy something else.
For years, some RV manufacturers have pitched the idea of a camper that changes with you. Perhaps the most famous example in recent times is the Happier Camper HC1. This adorable travel trailer has an interior filled with Lego-like cubes that you can add to or remove to make the perfect camper for you. The Zion Off-Road Z1 is also modular. It’s not like Lego bricks, but allows you to have a cargo trailer or an off-road camper pretty much on the fly.
The Four Wheel Campers CampOut finally brings this sort of concept to the truck camper world, and the promise is that you’ll be able to build or take apart your camper at your own speed and when you want to.
From A Known Name In Adventure Rigs
One of the great things about the CampOut is that it’s not from some startup company that sprouted out of Silicon Valley overnight. Instead, it’s from a company that’s lucky enough to have endured through decades, including the multiple crises of the 1970s. Four Wheel Campers gives us a bit about its history:
It was 1972 and Dave Rowe needed a way to go further off the beaten track. Vans had limitations, so he designed and built a hard-sided camper that could fit on a Scout, Blazer, or Bronco. The next evolution was to reduce weight via a pop-up camper and design them to fit on standard pickup trucks.
Everyone associated with Four Wheel Campers is grateful that the company developed a pop-up design and standardized on welded aluminum frames. The pop-up design reduces weight and wind resistance. The aluminum frame reduces weight, increases durability, and eliminates water damage to wood. Since the beginning, this decision has resulted in a camper that can withstand a gauntlet of off-roading abuse, decade after decade. This has translated to happy campers and high resale values!
By 1989 the company moved to Woodland, CA, where it remains today. Back then, the term “Overlanding” was a reference to what was going on in Australia. By the mid 2000’s though, as an Overlanding lifestyle began gaining traction in the United States, the Four Wheel Campers product was a natural fit. The Overlanding market and community turned out to be our first specific, definable market. Over the years, we have been fortunate to be closely involved with this dynamic group of people. As they have explored increasingly challenging terrain, their journeys have nudged us to continually improve.
Four Wheel Campers has been passed through five changes of ownership throughout the years. As of 2016, the business has been in the hands of investment banker Robert Vogl and private equity firm Salt Creek Capital. Thankfully, while some were uncertain about a famed name falling into the hands of private equity, Four Wheel Campers is still known for quality and good ideas. Now the company has announced its latest idea.
The CampOut
Much of the marketing behind the CampOut says that this new camper was “designed to evolve with you.” The idea behind the CampOut is functionally no different than the ideas that birthed modular travel trailers. It was created for the kinds of people who get bored with their layouts and wished they could do something about it.Now they can, mostly.
The CampOut starts with the shell that keeps Four Wheel Campers a famous name in truck campers. It’s built using an all aluminum welded structure. Aluminum is then used for the walls and another single piece of aluminum is slapped onto the pop-up roof. From there, you’re looking at a liner for the pop-top and insulation for the walls.
Four Wheel Campers has decades of builds to prove that this type of construction lasts, which is great. A unit from this company will likely be around decades longer than my family’s catastrophe of a camper.
The standard exterior of the CampOut comes with an exterior L-track with Molle panels, LED lighting, ports for electrical connections, a port for Starlink, and a port for solar panels.
The standard equipment drops off quickly once you get inside. The standard CampOut is more or less just a blank slate with a couple of required features. Located at the rear of the camper are two modules. On the passenger side is the power module with a lithium battery, a smart monitor, power ports, DC-to-DC charging, and the shore power connection.
On the driver’s side is an empty module with interior and exterior storage. Four Wheel Campers says that each module comes with bamboo countertops, slotted aluminum extrusions, polypropylene honeycomb panels, HDPE doors, and compression latches.
From here, there’s just an empty floor with nothing in it. As far as Four Wheel Campers is concerned, you can either fill it out yourself or buy cubes from Four Wheel Campers to gradually complete your build as you see fit.
The number of modular pieces gets pretty far out. It starts with seating, where you can have either a bench or dinette depending on the size of your model. You can also add a propane system with a Truma furnace, a stove, a sink, 8.7 gallons of water, a Thetford Porta Potti, and so much more.
Four Wheel Campers even offers three different refrigerators where you can choose between a regular fridge, a fridge with a seat cushion on top of it, or a powered cooler fridge.
You can also add a king bed, 500 watts of roof solar, an extra lithium battery, a motorized roof lift system, jacks, and three-layer quilts. Four Wheel Campers says you get three options for having these parts fitted. You can order your camper from the factory with whatever options you want. You can also order the modules later on and have your dealer install them. Or you can order the modules, have them shipped to your home, and build them yourself.
These modules are not like Lego bricks like you’d get in a modular travel trailer. Instead, you have to put them together like something you buy from IKEA. Here’s a video:
It should be noted that the cubes do bring some limitations. Your 8.7 gallons of water comes from a bunch of Dometic water jugs stored directly under the sink, which has one of those nifty Dometic portable faucets. The electrical system is mostly contained in the cabinet at the rear of the camper. If you want more water, you have to add more jugs and find places to store them. If you want to charge your phone in bed, you’re going to whip out an extension cord. If you want to shower, that’s on you to figure out.
For A Specific Kind Of Buyer
One cool thing is that the CampOut is designed to be hauled by most trucks. The campers come in a mid-size model and a full-size model, fitting in 5-foot, 6-foot, and 8-foot beds. The 5-foot bed and 6-foot bed models have a starting price of $25,995 while the 8-foot bed model starts at $26,995. A standard 5-foot bed model weighs 860 pounds while the empty 8-foot bed model starts at 1,030 pounds.
Something that’s really neat that most RV companies don’t do is that Four Wheel Campers lists the exact weight of each option. The company has a bunch of race scales it uses to get exact weights of each unit and each option. I wish the entire RV industry did that.
Unfortunately, those options escalate the price quickly. Adding the Truma furnace adds $2,000 to the price tag while the Dometic cooler adds another $1,850. Adding the bench or the dinette tacks on another $1,950 and another $1,850 gets sucked out of your pocket for the sink, 8.7 gallons of water, and gray tank. You’ll cough up another $825 to have the camper installed in your truck. There’s an exception for Toyota Tacomas and Toyota Tundras with composite beds, where you’ll pay $1,050 and $1,975 for installation, respectively.
I will also note that while dealers and influencers are calling this the first modular truck camper, that’s not necessarily true. The Scout Olympic is advertised as a modular camper and you can buy empty slide-in shells and fill them out yourself. But I can see what these people are trying to say. The CampOut was designed to be completely modular rather than just having a few modular bits.
The stats are also pretty decent. A Four Wheel Campers CampOut weighs a few hundred pounds less than something like a Soaring Eagle, but only a couple of hundred pounds more than the substantially smaller TCTruckCamper. I also like the construction, the room for someone over 6 feet tall to stand, and the modular concept.
Of course, as with anything marketed to the off-road adventure set and with this level of quality, the CampOut is not a cheap proposition. Spending $25,995 doesn’t even net you a bed to sleep in or a sink to wash your hands. If your goal is to have a blank slate build out your own camper, the CampOut is not a great use of your cash. You can buy empty slide-in campers for over $10,000 less.
It’s a similar story if you just want a truck slide-in with basic amenities and you don’t care about modularity or overland-style design. You can buy a Capri Cowboy and load it up with more luxurious options for less than the price of an empty CampOut.
So, I think the ideal buyer for this is the same kind of person who would buy a Happier Camper. This buyer wants to be able to change their layout whenever they feel like it, but also doesn’t want to have to construct the modules from scratch. There’s no denying that this sort of thing is still a niche. Most people will likely buy a normal camper with a fixed layout and DIY people will continue to build their own thing.
But, if you’re the kind of person who really enjoys building Ikea furniture and likes camping out of the back of a pickup truck I could see a Four Wheel Campers CampOut in your future.
(Images: Four Wheel Campers)
This is adjacent since I confess I’m not much into campers to begin with, but the Rotopax container in the lead pic has me wondering why those things are so popular.
I was looking into getting a Rotopax holder for a vehicle, but when I actually looked into the containers, wow.
It says to vent them either once or a day or every 10°F it changes, which here in PA, would be multiple times every single day. And that applies to all of them–diesel, DEF, water, gasoline.
So I thought, “well, they at least have ones that split in half in the 2-gallon size for storage purposes only that I could use.”
Then I found out they have no IP rating. Their FAQs specifically mention they’re not rated for protection against dirt or water, which feels like an oversight for something you mount on the outside of your vehicle.
Venting is an issue, but I will be honest, I don’t bother that often. They will swell or contract quite a bit, but they don’t burst or leak so assuming the swelling and contracting is largely uniform throughout the day, I don’t bother as it will average out.
biggest issue I have with buying one of these? No one seems to tell me what the closed height from the top of the bed rail. Makes it impossible to understand if I can find one that will fit in my garage.
Which one are you looking at? I am good friends with the shop lead for one of the larger distributers for these things.
This used to be called “project M” from them (M for Modular) and my Uncle built one of these out on a 2nd Gen Tundra. The difference as you show is that the modules come from 4WPT instead of the consumer directly. I think its less about adaptability and more about getting only what you need/want instead of a build that is only sorta suited to you. That and cost. There is certainly an element of modularity too, but even the most module based setups would be a PITA to remove or move around except seats maybe.
Per 4wcampers website they are selling the M along side this model. From what I can tell the Campout is a full camper where as the M was just the topper. It seems like this is more like old (also still available) shell models but setup for easier DIY.
you are right.
If I needed a Toyota truck camper either I would use an LC70 or a 3UR-FE Tundra (provided it got complete maintenance records)….
Sadly not this generation Toyota.
Again, critics will lash at me, but this motor has been breaking even in post-recall trucks. I am beginning to think this is no longer Toyota of old…and while one has hit 200k miles, its not a question of keeping it 200k or 300k, its an issue of how much the motor will cost outside of warranty…..
The bottom line is that it will likely be like other trucks in the future. Some will never fail, others will break and leave owners with expenses…
But given that I might be not be so well off, I will chose a rust free GMT900 Silverado/Sierra with the 4.8 or L9H and do an appropriate conversion.
I think I would rather go with the Project M model for $12K https://fourwheelcampers.com/model/project-m/
I’ve slept under a standard topper in the bed of a truck many times. While I like the design as an exercise, I found my preferred method is to have a nice air mattress or cot in the bed and then set up a screen tent with a table under it. Sinks and such are fine if you need them. One advantage is that the tent can stay at the camping spot to hold it when you want to use your truck. Another is that you can crawl into bed if others still want to be up and doing stuff at the table. The setup is a bit longer, but not more than 20 minutes up and 30 minutes coming down.
The biggest issue with the full camper is that it makes using your truck for other stuff impossible.
This is why I am a sucker for the Go Fast Campers. It can be used as an actual truck most of the time.
I’m not a huge fan of rooftop tents, but those toppers look very interesting.
Gawk at the price all you want, but 4 Wheel Campers makes an excellent product that will last decades.
3 years ago I lived close to a guy that had a bullnose F-150 with a 4 Wheel Camper on the back that he bought decades ago… might even be from the 80s as well. Looked fine.
and hold their value. I’ve looked for one for years they seem to sell used for as much or more than they did new
Great. I’m still going to gawk at the price. It may be durable… but it doesn’t look like a nice place to spend any time. I can manage that for a lot less.
These offer a way to move fast and freely with relative comfort. More durable and far less heavy than traditional RV solutions means lighter trucks and rougher trails. Its just a different option for different needs.
And at the end of the day, you’ve got something 10% more useful than a $40 sheet of plywood for a bed platform and six plastic storage bins to go underneath it 🙂
Sorry for the snark, I just camped out last weekend and saw these exact two approaches (both slightly scaled down, both Tacomas because Of Course Tacomas). I have to say the couple who emerged from an actual tiny door seemed much happier than the solo dude who crawled out of the canvas topper plywood bed. But not much more so than the lady who slept in the back of her Prius, either.
10% more useful, and 600% more expensive. Extruded aluminum profiles aren’t cheap. I use them due to my job (mechanical engineer) and I really like them, but boy, is it expensive. 80/20, Bosch-Rexroth, TSlots, Maytech, Flexmation… all pricey.
Plus, for this purpose, I’d be adding slot covers. Who wants to pick crumbs and grime out of the slots.
This stuff is good in specific situations; personally, I don’t see this as it.
I also used aluminum strut in my engineering career. Agree with the assessment.
Not to mention, in this application, the strut is used a structural element and then the ‘skinned’ with plastic. Also, aluminum conducts cold and can sweat.
Glued up plywood boxes would probably be must more cost effective as well give a warmer feel to the camper.
The thing is, as far as 4 Wheel Campers is involved, they maybe did the design and are marking up a kit of parts they get from one of the strut manufactures, so they probably don’t even need to stock the kits….makes sense from an inventory perspective.