OUR STORY
Built unlike anything else
I'm Jay, and I've been traveling the country in campers since I was born, thanks to some really amazing parents. My first bed was a hammock my dad built. In Motel 6s it was the bathtub. Later it was the dirt with no tent, or under a truck where it stayed dry, and eventually my own cabin on wheels. All of that is what pushed me into building campers.
Two years in a wedge
I'd just come off two years living full time in a Roamin' Chariot, an older lightweight wedge-style slide-in with no stove, heater, toilet, or fridge. I packed it with a Coleman stove, a water cube, mountain biking and hiking gear, and a sleeping bag or two. It was probably one of the lightest campers I could have had at the time. My midsize truck, a 2015 GMC Canyon, still ended up with a bent rear axle and destroyed front and rear differentials.
I spent a lot of time thinking about how much I hated that wedge and how badly I wanted the lightest camper possible. Backpacking, mountain biking, and now my own truck had all taught me the same thing: the lighter you keep things, the healthier everything runs, and the more fun you're having.
Finding that camper was the hard part
This segment of the market didn't exist yet. After months of searching, I found the Roamin' Chariot on Craigslist in Cody, Wyoming. I called the seller right away and paid him $500 to hold it for me.
The garage
In 2017, my wife and I bought our first house. It had a small garage. I bought a Lincoln TIG 200, taught myself to weld, and built the camper of my dreams.
It wasn't until I'd nearly finished that I thought other people might want one too, since nothing like it existed on the market. The construction methods I could afford at the time were cutting my own tubing, welding it into a frame, bonding on aluminum skins, having a coworker stitch the canvas, and setting hundreds of rivets by hand. Those same methods still make these, I believe, the lightest, simplest, most reliable, and easiest to use campers on the market today.
2018: the first full pop-up shell
In 2018, I built the first full pop-up camper shell on the market.
Why we still build it this way
We watched competitors grow up around us, most of them seeing an opportunity rather than solving a problem. Their techniques are faster to build, weigh more, and somehow cost more than ours.
I've been called stubborn for not building a wedge, not covering every inch in T-slot, and not offering an imported product. I came up dirtbag camping, and I will always build the camper I actually want to use, not the one that's fastest to slap together for a profit while ignoring the weight and the flaws.
Built around what customers ask for
A lot of what makes our campers different came from customers. When someone runs into a problem or asks for something we don't offer yet, we don't just fix that one camper. We build a system into every camper after it so it can't happen again. That's why we raise bedding height, adjust frame dimensions, resize doors, and move windows to fit how you actually camp.
Today
This company employs 25+ people, has run on zero debt since day one, and it's been steadily refined into a camper that thousands of serious campers put through real trips, year after year. Every one is built entirely in-house at our shop in Flagstaff, AZ, cut, welded, glued, sewn, and riveted by hand, exactly to your truck, and backed by a 3-year warranty.
