This Surprisingly Awesome Stainless Steel Camper Somehow Has A Second Camper Inside Of It

For the most part, RV manufacturers don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Whether you buy an RV that wears a Forest River sticker or a Thor emblem or another brand’s badge, you’re getting largely the same thing in terms of construction and features. That’s why I’m always happy to see something a little different out there. At the 2025 Florida RV SuperShow I found one of the coolest new units on the market and it’s this gloriously metal beast that has an attached addition meant to be used as a second camper or as a motorcycle garage.

This big guy comes from Michigan-based Kingstar Campers, and it’s unlike most other travel trailers on the market. This trailer has a stainless steel roof, a metal exterior cage, and composite walls. But then, it also wants to be bit weird with a giant multi-purpose space up front that’s explicitly for either the storage of motorcycles and other toys or you could use it as a secondary camper for that particular in-law.

It’s the Kingstar Kruzr K180 Overland Trailer, and it’s a camper made by people who know snowplows and horses. You can start getting those Inception and Xhibit jokes ready right now.

Yes, Snowplows!

Kingstar Campers, a brand of the Kingstar Company, is a startup operation. It was founded in 2018 by Marcus and Cal Niemela, two brothers from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. These names might not be familiar, but their products might be.

According to an interview in Truck Camper Magazine, Marcus explained that his father was a contractor and manufacturer. In the 1970s, his father built wood furnaces under the name of Defiance Company. Fast-forward to 1975, and a 15-year-old Cal Niemela made his mark with the invention of the multi-position V-plow, which was marketed as the Defiance before being renamed to Boss. Now, if you’re one of our many readers on the East Coast or in the Midwest you’ve almost certainly seen a handful of trucks with the company’s beefy plows on front. Maybe some of our southern readers might see some given the absurd weather lately.

The brothers cut their teeth in business and manufacturing by working in their father’s empire, which included Blizzard plows, a construction firm, and a parts cleaning business.

According to Truck Camper Magazine, the Kingstar Camper story really started with a horse named Jackie Diamond (JD). It was 2005 and the Niemela brothers sold the Blizzard plow business. Marcus decided to hit the road with JD, hitching up a horse trailer to a truck carrying a truck camper. On the journey, Marcus found that dealing with the heavy corral system, hay, and water was more difficult than it probably should have been. In response, he created the Kingstar horse trailer, which uses automated power equipment for heavy lifting.

Next came the camper. Marcus wanted a truck camper built for the person who goes horseback riding, biking, and paddle boarding. This would mean a truck camper that was big on storage, could handle some heavy gear, and was designed around making life easier for someone with that active lifestyle. Specifically, the original idea was to sell these campers to the rodeo market.

The Kingstar Camper

By 2019, Kingstar had its first prototype. The Kingstar Camper concept takes a different path than most. The truck camper and its travel trailer sibling are built like a Kingstar horse trailer, but with some notable changes. The horse trailer has an aluminum structure, but the camper uses wood for framing. It’s Kingstar’s opinion that aluminum isn’t the greatest material to use if you’re looking for insulation, warmth, and a quiet interior.

Kingstar is quick to point out that these aren’t the flimsy stick-builds you might be used to. The roof is made out of stainless steel for style and longevity. The hung walls are Azdel composites and the exterior perimeter cage of the camper is covered in aluminum and stainless steel. Kingstar says that once the spray foam insulation and seals are added in, the campers have R12 to R13 insulation values and are airtight. The factory even pressurizes the campers as part of its quality control process to make sure nothing gets out or in.

Kingstar thought the rodeo market would love how overbuilt the camper was. Unfortunately, the company found out that the rodeo market loved the design but thought all of the stainless steel was unnecessary or too expensive. But you know who is into that sort of stuff? The overland camper market. The camper’s launch product was a truck camper, but the new-for-2025 is the same concept as a towable.

The Kingstar Kruzr K180 Overland Trailer is built just like the truck camper, but now it’s in a more popular form factor.

What’s pretty funny about the Kruzr K180 is that upon inspection, the trailer looks and feels like a truck camper that’s tacked onto a trailer. The body, including the window placements, matches that of Kingstar’s truck campers.

Likewise, there are no side doors like you’d find on most other travel trailers. Instead, you step up and into the rear of the trailer like you would a truck camper.

I’m not complaining here. It’s just an observation that you don’t have to go digging around too much to figure out this isn’t a typical trailer. Kingstar’s attention to quality seems pretty good. The metal bits all looked pretty awesome and the overall fit and finish of the unit at the RV show was leagues better than the typical travel trailer. Kingstar says it uses 3M adhesives to prevent galvanic corrosion.

I even liked how the trailer’s undercarriage still had chunks of mud on it. Apparently, Marcus spends more or less half of his time each year living in his company’s trailers and they get used for what they’re designed for. This trailer is also said to have an independent air suspension of Kingstar’s patented design. That’s supposed to smooth out the ride over various surfaces.

And then I stopped at the front end.

Look, it’s normal for travel trailers to have what some would call “basements” or “garages.” These are storage spaces where you haul all the junk you don’t want in the interior. There are also toy hauler trailers with ramps and rooms to park your motorcycles, quads, or even a small car.

This front-end storage area – which is where your truck’s cab would go if this were a truck camper – is large enough to park multiple small off-road motorcycles.

But then I noticed something a bit weird. The hatches of the garage doors had secondary camper doors on them. These camper doors have locking latches, opening windows, and curtains. This is completely unnecessary for a motorcycle garage. The room is also well-lit and has electricity. What the heck is going on here?

I asked the Kingstar rep at the show, and yep, it’s a dual-purpose space. You can park motorcycles and stow gear in there, or just use it as another living space with its own independent access to the outside, a sort of camper within a camper.

Armed with further curiosity, I stepped inside. Sure enough, the interior of the Kruzer K180 is similar to that of a truck camper. Your kitchen and your bathroom are at the rear like in a truck camper and you sleep on a raised platform, just like a truck camper. But this time there’s a twist in that you can open up the floor and use it as a pass-through to the second bedroom or garage. Or, just leave it closed and the person in there can use it as their own private space.

The interior is well-equipped and, I feel, pretty well thought out. There’s a proper RV stove and oven here in addition to a microwave, so cooking in this guy shouldn’t be a problem. I also like how, unlike many trailers, the stove has two backsplashes. When the stove’s cover is open that acts as a backsplash and there’s a stainless steel one on the wall as well.

The bathroom is on the cramped side, but you do get everything in there to get all cleaned up after a day of riding. The quality of the materials inside is pretty good. The use of stainless steel trim ties in the theme well and everything else does feel like it belongs in a trailer of this price category. Don’t worry, we’ll get there in a moment. I think the interior materials here should be more or less the baseline for a travel trailer. It’s not the lap of luxury in there by any means, but you also get the feeling that this was actually made to be slept in by real people.

In terms of equipment, Kingstar says that standard equipment includes what I noted above plus stainless steel for the shower, 400 watts of solar, a 12V 460Ah LiFePO4 battery, a rear camera, Formica counters, vinyl floors, an outdoor shower, and other smaller bits. For holding tanks you have 32 gallons for fresh water and either 20 gallons or 30 gallons for gray water depending on your bed configuration. The toilet in the bathroom is of the cassette variety.

Cool, But Expensive

You get all of this in a package with an 18-foot box and is 21 feet from tongue to rear bumper. The Kingstar Kruzer K180 weighs 6,536 pounds empty or specifically 7,140 pounds when loaded with a pair of Yamaha TW200 motorcycles. Apparently, the unit is beefy enough that you can load it up to 10,400 pounds total.

Now comes the fun part. Ordering a Kruzer K180 is weird. According to Kingstar, the Kruzer K180 is based on the Kruzr 8. So you start by choosing a Kruzr 8 truck camper in the configurator. There are five floorplan variations that determine what you get in the middle of the camper. The cheapest “Open Range” layout gets you an empty space and two folding camp chairs. The idea is that you plop down in the camp chairs to eat dinner then fold them up and take them outside, leaving a huge open space in the trailer.

If that doesn’t sound very fun to you, the other options include a dinette and a longer couch that converts into a bunk. Or, you can configure the space as an office.  The starting price for the Open Range model is $67,960 while the starting price for the “Command Center” office is $69,960.

Now here’s where things get weirder: As I said before, the configurator makes you choose a truck camper first. Then you’re presented with a ridiculously long options list. You can get the aluminum siding in three different colors and the interior is offered in three different colors. Then you can tack on a diesel heater, Starlink, solar panels, a TV, extra solar, bigger batteries, awnings, storage boxes, and more. You can even swap out the oven for a different cooking appliance and ditch the wet bath for a dry bath. Kingstar says it’ll even do custom options for a cost.

But the option we really need here is “K180,” which tacks on $16,960 to add the frame, the garage, the wheels, and the fancy suspension to turn the Kruzr 180 into a trailer. For those of you counting, that’s at minimum $86,650 before you add a single option. And that’s the price to get the one that puts camping chairs in an empty room.

So, I’m left thinking that this thing is pretty cool with just the right amount of silly. I love the liberal use of strong metals and even with the wood framing this does seem like a strong build. I also love how the makers of this actually use their products on the regular.

However, $86,650 is a real hefty price. I’ve reviewed overland campers that cost tens of thousands less. Sure, none of those have a second room that could be used as a garage or as a bedroom, but you could also just park the motorcycles into the bed of the truck you’ll be towing this with, anyway. Some of the other overland campers of this size are substantially cheaper as well.

That’s a shame because I like what’s going on here. The Kingstar Kruzr K180 Overland Trailer is built well and it’s designed by people who actually use the products. But the off-road camper market is super saturated right now with lots of cheaper options. It will be interesting to see how well this catches on.

(Images: Author, unless otherwise noted)