The Quest For A Truck Camper

Prologue Part 2: Preparing for Departure

An important component of traveling around the country in a truck camper is having a truck…and a camper. Neither of which we owned when we committed to leaving our jobs. We learned from blogs that if you’re starting from square one it’s best to find the camper first, then find a truck with the right specifications to haul it. It took a few dozen hours of research and visiting RV dealers to narrow down our requirements. I was astonished at the amount of variety you can have in a structure that is so narrowly designed. There are campers for short beds, long beds, pop ups, no bath, dry bath, wet bath, one, two or up to three slide outs! Tank sizes turned out to be a big concern for Ryan. Even at this early stage we knew we wanted to move towards an off-the-grid lifestyle, so the bigger the water tank, the more easily we could accomplish that.

It didn’t help that Ryan and I were at a constant tug-of-war while searching for both parts. We are both naturally frugal people, it’s one of the reasons we were able to take this leap and one of the major reasons I love my husband. But while I am the frugal type that is willing to spend a little more for quality and convenience, Ryan is the frugal type that will spend hours of research to save $5. Many of my proposals were met with, that’s too expensive! While many of his proposals were met with, no that’s a junker that will break down in 100 miles!

We narrowed down our choices to the smaller style Lance campers. They were light weight, well built, and included all the comforts of home. The latest models run $25k minimum, which was significantly higher than our desired budget. We would have been happy to buy used, but the closest used camper in the models that we wanted was on the East side of Wisconsin…a good five hour drive. The best inventories were down south in Arizona and California.

Ok let’s go at this in a different direction. We knew for the camper models we wanted we would need a heavy duty truck, the Ford F-250s or higher, or the Dodge 2500 series. Maybe we can get a truck and then go down south to find the camper. It will be worth spending a few nights in a motel if we can save several thousand by going to the source of good used RVs.

Except try and find a decent used heavy duty pickup truck for less than $20k!! The Ford F-150s are a dime a dozen, but as soon as you narrow it down to the 250 models, you have to be willing to part with a small house down payment if you want something with less than 100k miles on it.  I made Ryan agree to finding a truck that was less than 10 years and had less than 100k miles on it, but the sticker prices on those requirements made him twitch.

If I may inject a story: Within those parameters we did find one option, a 2008 F250 for sale up in Ham Lake. It was a white, dual cab with only 75k miles and listed at $12k. It was only a 40 minute drive so we took off.

We arrived at a small independent car dealership. The inside floor was full of all these old classic cool looking cars. It made us wonder if maybe this would be a place to bring the Talon. When a nice older gentleman came over we asked him a few questions about the business and the Talon, but as soon as we inquired about the Ford F250 he said, oh no I only deal in classic cars, you want the guys next door! Oops.

Outside we did indeed see that his door was on the right side of the building, while there was another door on the left with a different logo on top. In that side of the building we found an office with two guys who welcomed us. It seemed we were in the right place this time because as soon as we mentioned the 2008 Ford one of them hopped up and said he would bring it around.

A white, dual cab Ford pickup gets parked in front of the door, but I notice instantly that the decal says 150 instead of 250. The guy apologized and said it must have been a miss-print. The truck looked really nice though, no dents, clean interior, quiet smooth engine. We took it out for a test drive anyway. On the road Ryan notes that the mileage is up at 150k miles! Twice what it was listed at. Now we're suspicious. I pulled out my phone and found the original listing (thank you modern day technology). It was a white dual cab but it was definitely listed as a F250 and definitely said 75k miles.

Back at the office we questioned the guy and showed him the listing. A moment of hesitation, then “OOH You wanted Route 65 sales, we're Freedom Car sales! That guy is down the hall.” What?! So there are three dealerships in the same small building, and two of them happened to both have a white dual cap Ford pickup truck in their inventory!

But it turned out the other guy was out at an auction so all we could do was leave our contact info. A little more chatting revealed that the three dealerships worked well together since they all worked with different markets (newer, older, and classic) and were able to share parking lot space. It made sense but please put some more signs up!! We laughed the whole ride home.

About a week later we came across an ad for a Ford F-350 that only had 27k miles on it and listed for $11k. It was a 2005 with only basic package and two wheel drive but still, it either had to be a misprint or a total junker. I initially scrolled past it because it was older than I was comfortable with and at that low price there had to be something wrong with it. But Ryan clicked on the ad and said it wouldn’t hurt to simply go look at it. Yeah ok, it was at the local Ford dealer in Bloomington so we could check out other things while we were there. 

The guy who helped us was named Jim, he was in super friendly sales man mode, really nice guy. When we told him that we wanted to check out the red F350, he looked at the inventory, narrowed his eyes in confusion and excused himself to go talk to the manager. His first instinct was also sure it was some sort of mistake or misprint. To all of our surprise though, he came back confirming that it really was for sale at $10,999. 

I was still sure there would be something wrong with the body or the engine, however, when they brought it over for us to inspect I saw no initial problems with it. Only the most minor basic surface rust, clean interior, not even a door ding dent! Hmmm maybe this would actually work?

Both Ryan and I gave it a test drive, down the highway and around the block. I've driven a minivan before on road trips but never a big truck. I was amazed at how easily it responded, my first turn out of the dealership I practically ran into the curb because I turned the wheel too far! Accelerated nicely, ride was relatively smooth. Neither of us noticed any odd noises in the engine, all the buttons worked (what few of them there were). 

When we were done Ryan was ready to sign the paperwork right there and then. I held him back saying if I bought a car, especially a truck, without letting John look at it first he would kill me! To our luck John was just hanging out at home and was there in 20 minutes! He was a little miffed that we were considering buying a giant pickup truck but never passes up a chance to put his skills to work.

The boys took it out for another test drive. Even John couldn't pick out any major problems! Battery is a few years old, so that will likely need to be replaced soon, and maybe some new tires, brakes are a little stiff, but other than that he really had no concerns with it. 

It seemed we were really doing this!

Back at the table we had a look at the car fax and history report. It had been purchased originally for commercial use and was most likely the backup vehicle which would explain the low miles. No major accidents or problems with the engine. While Jim was off doing his thing the three of us were able to theorize why such a good condition vehicle was listed at such a low price.

If you go to the Kelly Blue Book website and pull up the main article for 2005 Ford F350 it says a fair value on the truck is between $9,500-$12,000. BUT that's for that car with the average number of miles on it, and the average 2005 F350 has about 140k-160k miles on it. If you look it up again and input the actual number of miles, suddenly the value jumped up to $16k-$18k. We assumed whoever posted it on the website didn't double check the miles!

We happily wrote them a check and brought our new giant-ass pickup truck home!

Back to the search for a camper to put on top of the truck, having an F-350 expanded the weight restrictions we could look for, and our new purchase was a long bed which also expanded our options. Ryan pulled up a craigslist add for a camper up in Big Lake. We had looked at it before but the weight was 3,000 which was a little higher than we wanted, and it was a year 2000 model which was older than I wanted. This camper looked good though, it even came with two solar panels and was listed at a price of $8,500 which fit perfectly into our budget. Big Lake was only an hour and a half north of the Twin Cities, so again, Ryan didn’t have to twist my arm too hard to at least go look at it.

The guy’s house was easy to find. The camper itself was clean, inside it had an adorable dinette, 3 burner stone, tiny little toaster oven and microwave, wet bathroom, TONS of storage space and the queen sized bed. It was clean, it smelled nice, everything was in perfect working condition, it even had a sun roof in the living area which Ryan was thrilled about. It was manufactured in Canada so it came winterized with working heat. After only a few minutes I was head over heels, I loved it. The guy showed us the outside, how everything worked, it was obvious he took great care of his things and knew what he was doing. By the end even Ryan couldn't say no. We offered to take it!!

Things were coming together, we were now the proud owners of both a truck, and a camper. I couldn’t wait to get on the road!!