A lot of smaller off-road campers sacrifice sleeping or showering experience to elevate off-road capability or reduce weight. Mammoth Overland, the makers of that crazy bear-repellent spraying, bulletproof rolling bunker, thinks you can have it all. Its new Tall Boy trailer stands 9 feet tall and has 22 inches of ground clearance plus a king bed and a stand-up bathroom. It claims to be the tallest way to sleep in a small off-road camper.
The world of overlanding trailers is downright ridiculous right now. There are countless companies cranking out innumerable designs. Each company tries to find a way to stand out. Something common I’ve noticed is that a lot of the compact overlanding trailers ask you to make a compromise on some amenities compared to a typical travel trailer. You may get a smaller bed or perhaps be forced to shower outside. Maybe, your kitchen is behind a tailgate also outside.
You may wonder if anyone actually cares about this. My wife’s healthcare needs call for running water and easy access to a toilet. So a trailer that forces you to do your business outside is automatically a non-starter for her. Personally, I don’t like taking showers outside, either, especially if the weather is awful.
Mammoth Overland tries to stand out by building its trailers like its parent company builds aircraft. It also just builds campers that are intentionally over the top. The Mammoth Overland Tall Boy aims for the sky.
From Planes To RVs
We covered Mammoth Overland a year ago, but I’ll refresh your memory. Mammoth Overland is a subsidiary of Vashon Aircraft, founded by John Torode in Washington in 2012.
Torode thinks flying is too expensive and Vashon Aircraft was created to help bring the costs of flying down through its durable and easy-to-fly all-metal Ranger R7 Light Sport Aircraft. One interesting feature of the R7 is its fold-down seats, which help turn the cockpit of the aircraft into a mini camper. As Mammoth Overland notes in its history, the men who run Vashon Aircraft love the outdoors and got the idea to build off-road travel trailers like they build planes. Mammoth Overland made its debut in 2021 and true to the idea, the trailers are built out of riveted aluminum just like its parent company’s planes.
Until now, Mammoth Overland’s headlining trailer was the Model ELE, or Extinction Level Event. Everything about the ELE is insane from the trailer’s optional bulletproofing to the fact that it has a bear spray defense system. I got to see this trailer in person and it’s just as wild in real life as this text makes it sound. You really do get to camp in something that resembles a bunker on wheels.
Mammoth Overland President and Vashon Aircraft General Manager Scott Taylor told me that while the ELE is legitimately designed to survive some horrible, hopefully distant future, it also exists for fun. It’s almost satire on how nutty overlanding vehicles have gotten and Mammoth Overland embraces how outlandish the whole thing is. The ELE is crazy and that’s part of the point.
The company’s newest trailer is a lot more serious and is more for family rather than wealthy preppers.
The Tall Boy
As I said in the lede of this piece, a number of off-road trailers ask you to give up some of the luxuries of home in order to access the great outdoors. Or, you get those amenities but have to sleep in a unit with a pop-up tent roof or other tricks.
To give you an example of this, the 19-foot-long Taxa Mantis has a big bed and a stand-up shower, but that shower is inside of a tent inside of the trailer. Your standing room is also courtesy of a pop-top roof with tent fabric. There’s also the 19-foot Mission Overland The Approach, which has a far better shower than the Mantis, but once again achieves standing height through a pop-top tent roof. It also has a queen-size bed. The Taxa has 14 inches of ground clearance while the Mission Overland gets 16 inches of clearance.
There are plenty of other examples out there, including the popular Black Series HQ12. One of the closest trailers to what Mammoth Overland is building might be the Adventure Series RV Epik Ranger from earlier this month. That small trailer has a stand-up shower, standing room, and a big bed. However, the bed isn’t a king and the height is achieved through a hard-sided pop-up clerestory.
It appears the point Mammoth Overland wants to make is that small off-road trailers with king beds and internal stand-up showers are uncommon, and the Tall Boy, also called the Model TL, is designed to offer it all while being smaller than the above trailers.
As Scott Taylor explains in the trailer’s release, every Mammoth Overland design starts with a king-size mattress. This is a demand from Taylor’s wife. From there, Mammoth Overland’s designers built the riveted aluminum trailer around the bed. The designers added two additional adult-sized bunks. These bunks convert into a lounging area when they are not used for sleeping.
Taylor notes that the Tall Boy is supposed to be a trailer for the whole family, so another important element was the bathroom. Many overland trailers either don’t have a proper bathroom, force you to shower in a tent outside, or cram you into a tiny space inside. That’s fine and dandy for a rugged adventurer, but someone may not want to have their kid shower in a tent outside. So, the Mammoth Overland team says they spent months making several iterations of an interior bathroom for the Tall Boy.
The team eventually landed on a design with a sink, a stand-up shower, and a cassette toilet. The shower and sink feed from the camper’s 50-gallon water tank and instant hot water system. Mammoth Overland wants the experience of camping in this trailer to be as close to home as you can get inside of a 17-foot camper. There’s also a television and a slew of USB ports inside for when the kids want to end their day with a movie or video games.
Taylor says all of this was done because not everyone is a capable hiker. Some people just want to take their families into the wilderness:
“As a teen growing up in Montana, I explored on foot places that most people couldn’t. I always lamented that more families couldn’t experience these amazing, remote spots,” said Mammoth Overland President Scott Taylor. “We gave Tall Boy 22 inches of ground clearance, so that families could confidently and comfortably access parts of our country typically off limits to off-road trailers. Tall Boy combines the durability of our HV and ELE trailers with the amenities and spaciousness of home.”
The only part of the trailer that’s outside is the kitchen. Mammoth Overland says that while it could have moved the kitchen inside, it was kept outside in an effort to connect the family with the trailer to the outdoors. The outdoor kitchen features a sink, a two-burner stove, and a 42-quart refrigerator. Additional food stores go into a pantry that’s accessible from either inside or outside of the trailer.
All of this is powered by a Renogy 400 Ah smart lithium-ion-phosphate battery. The battery is charged through hooking up the trailer to a tow vehicle, shore power, or two flexible 100-watt Renogy solar panels resting on top of a 23 Zero awning. Heating comes from a propane Dickenson heater while ventilation comes from roof fans.
To help the families get there, the Tall Boy has a dual Timbren 5200HD independent suspension setup. These get four 17-inch wheels shod in 33-inch BFGoodrich K02 tires, plus there are two spare tires mounted on the trailer. Mammoth Overland says this suspension and tire setup gives the trailer 22 inches of ground clearance. You also get a molle panel to mount gear and a ladder to access the trailer’s roof rack. This rack is said to hold 1,000 pounds of static weight or 500 pounds of dynamic weight.
As stated before, the trailer’s body is built out of riveted aluminum like a plane. It rides on a steel frame and features R5 insulation and a two-piece aircraft-inspired entry door. Additional equipment includes 3 Rotopax, a high-lift jack, a shovel, a hatchet, rock sliders, rock lights, and traction boards.
Fun Name, Expensive Price
The Mammoth Overland Tall Boy measures 16 feet, 5.2 inches from the tip of the tongue to the rear edge of the box. Some of that length is just tongue and Mammoth Overland doesn’t say how long the box is. It does say that the box is 6 feet, 5.8 inches from floor to ceiling. That said, the designers did fit a lot into such a small space.
Mammoth Overland says this trailer is good for people who are a little over six feet tall and of course, the height is achieved not by pop-tops, but by a tall solid roof. This is great for people who want to camp where trailers with tent-based walls are not allowed. Though, the solar panel output is less great for people who want to stay off-grid for a while.
Sadly, the Tall Boy doesn’t get any bulletproofing or bear spray, but it does weigh just 2,900 pounds empty. Also unclear is how much the trailer’s tall profile impacts how well it tows.
Mammoth Overland is currently taking pre-orders for the Tall Boy, which is expected to go into production in the fourth quarter of this year. The first 10 units will be the Tall Boy Genesis Edition, a $72,000 Tall Boy that’s fully loaded. That’s a lot of money for a small trailer, but, somehow, we’ve seen worse. Mammoth Overland does say there will be cheaper future versions of the Tall Boy, so that’s good news.
If you want to check the Tall Boy out, you can find it at Overland Expo West 2024 running from May 17 to 19 in Flagstaff, Arizona. Sadly, I will not be there this year. However, this is another trailer I’d love to test. It’s small, tall, and has everything Sheryl and I would want in a camper. Hopefully, the later editions will come with a far more attractive price.
Seems like it would be easier and cheaper to get an Airstream Basecamp 16X – and have the kitchen indoors.
outside kitchens look great in sunny pictures. They are an unusable misery in the all too frequent rain
Silly Mammoth Overland. Tall Boys are for dropping onto battleships and sub pens, not for camping.
CEO: “…lamented that more families couldn’t experience these amazing, remote spots.”
CEO’s wife: demands King sized bed.
I feel like there is some room for therapy here; or at least split vacations.
I want to see a video of someone ignoring the 21 foot total length limit and trying to tow this over Elephant Hill in Canyonlands, that would be entertaining
I get that overlanding is all the rage right now, but how many people who buy these things ever end up taking them off road? Give me this cozy little box without all the overlanding extras and knock the price and the weight down.
I remember seeing that inflatable tent trailer and thinking it would be great to tow with my wagon, but thanks to an overbuilt off road suspension it was like 5000lbs!
Typically these types of trailers can handle dirt and gravel roads much better than your common travel trailer. American made trailers have been historically very bad for long durations of gravel/dirt and fall apart easily. For well maintained BLM or forest service roads, this would be a much better option for a unit that will handle the roads without falling apart.
So you wanted to make them less remote and less amazing by packing them with people? Keep in mind I say this as a trailer camper myself, but I still appreciate the fact that there are remote areas you have to do some work to reach. There are plenty of amazing places you can go with a trailer already, true wilderness is an increasingly valuable – and disappearing – commodity.
I’m not at all convinced that anyone is hauling a trailer into these kinds of places anyway so I suspect this is all marketing-speak, but I don’t think I’m onboard with the mission statement here.
This is so rich people can spend one night on a gravel RV pad, just off the interstate, and then head home telling stories about how they went “overlanding” and “it was all so rugged.”
“Chad made a campfire, it was so manly” (using kerosene), “and we even heard a bear outside!!” (It was a raccoon.)
/But I’m feeling cynical today, so maybe I’m wrong.
I find it interesting that a company focused on affordable aircraft also makes expensive trailers. I would be interested in a write up on the affordable plane though because I am too lazy to go to their website and see the sales oriented explanation and would much rather read an informative one from Mercedes.
I do need to get more hours in my logbook…I like this idea. 🙂
Haha I didn’t even mean hands on, just a review of the options and such, how it’s outfitted and all that like the above is what I meant, but if you can get hands on and get it in the air even better!
On that note, I’d love a deep dive into bushcraft planes. Basically the next level of overlanding where people are flying into VERY remote areas and camping in, sometimes, home built aircraft.
Hopefully not built like a Boeing!
I did not read the article I just had to get this quip in
Really want to drive that in a crosswind towed by a Wrangler
I am shocked its listed dry weight is only 2,900 pounds. That should at least make it easier to tow the rest of the time.
Yeah, assuming you only have 600 lbs of stuff (A Wrangler pre-2024 had a 3500lb tow limit)
Frontal area is a key thing for towing. Some vehicle manufacturers list frontal area limits for what their vehicles can tow, and it’s part of the SAE certifications that manufacturers test to. I’m guessing the frontal area (total height x total width) is more than what most midsize trucks are rated for, not to mention a wrangler. Weight matters, but a large front area, billboard like sides, and likely a high center of gravity would make this a poor choice to be towed behind a Wrangler. Even with the name brand Equal-i-zer weight distribution and sway control hitch you’d have a hard time convincing me this is a good trailer for most off-road vehicles. Now put it behind a Power Wagon, TRX, or Raptor with a good weight distribution and sway control hitch and maybe you’ve got something.
My experience is nearly a decade as an R&D engineer in the trailer hitch market.
We had a few horse trailers and I found the longer ones were more stable even empty, had a six horse where one horse broke the barrier and was moving around that was fun until I was able to stop
Definitely make for a good sail.