Roof top carrier on the truck? - RV-Dreams Community Forum

Lucky Mike · RV-Dreams Family Member

Roof top carrier on the truck?

The Bear II · RV-Dreams Family Member

Do you use your back seat frequently or just once in a while ?

A friend removed his back seat and built a seat cabinet, basically it was a plywood seat. The bottom opened up for storage, the back opened for storage and then he used plastic containers to fill in the floor space and stack along the new seat area. He used a bungee cord cargo net over everything to hold it in place while travelling. If he needed the rear seat for passengers he would unload all of the containers and then had pads for the seat and seat back, he even had holes in the plywood for the seat belts. This gave him lots of extra storage space for his booth stuff and it was protected from the elements and potential thieves. He could still use the back seat fairly easily if he needed to. It was amazing how much he was able to fit back there.

Roof racks are OK, they can be noisy (wind and rattles) plus some have weight limits.

We used to carry our tables (the 6ft banquet tables) and some containers with our inventory in the shower. I used a crossbar like the truckers use to brace the load in their trailers. I used it vertically against a piece of plywood to hold everything in place. Other containers would be carried on the floor throughout the 5th wheel. Once we arrived at our destination they would be moved into the cab of the truck for security or the bed to transport to the sales venue.

-- Edited by The Bear II on Friday 9th of August 2013 04:10:17 PM

NWescapee · RV-Dreams Family Member

Update, after 1 month of full timing and driving separately, we've decided we just don't like that. Dale misses having "mission control" sitting in the seat next to him researching camp options for a night when we're in route, restaurant options, site seeing opportunities, we don't like having to "share" Tazzy Kat between us, etc. Plus he wants me to learn to drive the rig so if something happens I have enough confidence and knowledge to handle it. I know if works for some of you, just isn't our preference since we are on a path of working during the week, traveling / exploring on the weekends and we figure we spent enough time ignoring each other during the week while we're both working that we don't really want to drive separately.

So, we've ordered a couple of tool boxes for the truck to accomodate much of our art show "stuff" with all the things we need to set up the booth. We still don't think it's going to give us quite enough room and are evaluating a Thule or Yakima type roof box. Has anyone used this on the roof of the truck with a 5ver? Any issues or things to be aware of? We're figuring we can stand on the top of the tool box to load / unload the art show stuff and yeah, it might look a little odd, but we really don't care about that. biggrin We just want to get to a point where all the art show stuff fits in the truck going down the road and gets it out of my car that we want to get rid or the basement of the 5ver.

NWescapee · RV-Dreams Family Member

We have the crew cab and the back is full. We have a LOT of stuff required to set up the booth and yes, we're downsizing that as well, but we also don't want to constantly be transferring the stuff between the 5ver and the truck before and after each show.

Mike - thanks for the link, that was one of the options we were considering, trying to decide between that and a Thule or Yakima rack.