This $20,000 Tiny Camper Is Built Like A Tank And Can Go 141 MPH

We’re now deep into camping season, which means that our highways and campgrounds are filled with gigantic travel trailers. These campers weigh a shocking number of pounds and often require an even more beefy truck to haul all that heft, but it doesn’t have to be this way. If you can scrape by without bringing your entire house with you on your journey, you can have a ton of fun in a compact trailer – and here’s one I bet you haven’t heard of before. It’s the Carson Kalispell, a mini camper from a brand that makes utility trailers, and its claim to fame is rocketing down a salt flat at 141.998 mph, factory stock except for a pair of high-speed tires.

I just got done camping for a whole week at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2025. I got there by hitching up my parents’ roughly 37-foot-long 2022 Heartland Mallard M33 to the back of a 2025 Chevrolet Silverado EV, and I was pleasantly surprised when the truck made the whole trip with charge to spare. But truth be told, this wasn’t really my ideal camping setup. While I do love big trucks and buses, I also adore compact travel trailers. I like the idea of a camper that’s small and light enough to be hauled by whatever crossover is likely in your garage right now. It’s why my dream travel trailer is still the 1,100-pound U-Haul CT13 fiberglass camper. This Kalispell may not be fiberglass, but it slides right into that tiny camper category that I love.

I’ve known about this camper’s existence for years now. MotorTrend first published an article about this camper a whole 13 years ago. Of course, as I alluded to in the lede up there, the Carson Kalispell set the world record for the fastest travel trailer in that same year. What I was shocked by was when Autoevolution recently pointed out that the Kalispell is still in production, and it looks exactly the same as it did in 2012.

From Equipment Haulers To Campers

The Kalispell isn’t built by a traditional RV manufacturer. From what I’ve been able to find, Carson Trailer, Inc. was founded in California in 1991. Its earliest trailers were sturdy utility trailers, like the ones that you might use to haul a car or landscaping equipment. The company claims to have a handful of manufacturing facilities, and its line of trailers is always growing.

For the vast majority of the Carson Trailer’s history, including in the 1990s, the company’s flagship model was the Fun Runner. Carson claims to be one of the dominating players in the toy hauler niche:

If you’re considering purchasing a toy hauler, look no further than the Carson Fun Runner. Not only have we been building trailers for over 20 years, our Toy Haulers are among the most renown in the U.S. At a time when many of the biggest names in the business have ceased operations, the Carson Toy Hauler Trailer Division has continued to update, innovate and expand, offering more models than ever before. Today we’re considered one of the dominant manufacturers in the niche.

We’re a family run business who personally use the products we build and sell for our own enjoyment. We’ve thrived because we take tremendous pride in our product, our reputation and in being a reliable asset to the trailer industry at large. We’ve never stopped reinvesting in our company as we’re genuinely in it for the long haul. And, we never cut corners. For the exterior siding, Carson always uses .030 mill thickness aluminum siding, compared with the .023 mill thick siding used by most of our competitors. That’s almost 25% thicker! And, don’t forget to compare our metal roof construction against the competition. The majority of trailer manufacturers use rubber roofing to cut corners. Our superior construction is engineered to be long lasting, so you’ll enjoy lower maintenance costs and fewer repairs.

What I find fascinating is Carson’s dedication to sticking with an overall design. While Carson now sells the Fun Runner in several different layouts, the exterior design looks similar to it did in the 1990s. The design has been refined over the years with better materials and other changes says Carson, but the outside is mostly unchanged.

The Kalispell

The little Kalispell didn’t make an appearance on Carson’s website until 2010. The oldest Kalispell models I’ve seen for sale are also from 2010. It’s marketed as a wee sport trailer that’s great for a relaxing weekend in the backcountry.

The Kalispell looks like something that could have rolled out of a mega RV factory in Indiana, but Carson says that this thing is built better than one of those rigs. That goes back to the claim above that Carson’s workers use the campers that they build, and the designs reflect their desire to have something that actually works.

The Kalispell features a fully welded, box-section steel frame and a 6,000-pound axle. That alone signals that this camper is different, as campers this size often come with a 3,500-pound axle. If that’s not overkill enough for you, there’s more, as it has a 3,500-pound tongue jack. The tongue doesn’t weigh all that much – it’s only 400 pounds – but Carson wanted to overbuild the trailer so it will last longer.

Building for durability continues with the body. We aren’t told what kind of framing is used here, but Carson says it builds its trailers with metal roofs rather than the rubberized roofs typically used, and the aluminum siding is 25 percent thicker than what you’d get in a camper from a big company. Then there are a lot of smaller, less visible changes, including dirt-resistant windows and flooring that doesn’t have a lot of dead space that dust and dirt can hide in.

The way Carson sees it, you should be able to take this thing nearly anywhere you want to camp for years without worrying about crap falling off. Using thick and heavy build materials seems to be why the Kalispell, which has only a 10’6″ box, weighs a whopping 2,670 pounds dry. For comparison, the Coleman 13B that I wrote about earlier this year is three feet longer, yet is 210 pounds lighter.

Also somewhat neat is what you get in the camper. There’s a 40-gallon fresh water tank, a 22-gallon gray tank, and a 22-gallon black tank. The fresh tank is about the size that you’d get in a much larger trailer. For example, my family’s 37-foot Heartland has a 47-gallon tank while the slightly smaller 35-foot Adirondack has a 46-gallon tank.

The interior is relatively loaded for its size, featuring a dinette that turns into a bed, a sink, a two-burner stove, a full-size RV refrigerator, a furnace, a stereo, and a microwave. Options are pretty functional, including an oven and an air-conditioner.

Another highlight is the bathroom. The Carson guys hated using the tiny wet baths that tend to come in small campers, and as a result, gave the Kalispell a wet bath that a big person could use without getting stuck to the walls.

The 10-footer comes with just the dinette that transforms into a bed, but there is a slightly longer 12-foot version of the Kalispell with a little more floor space, a slightly raised roof, and two queen beds stacked on top of each other in the rear.

Not everything about the Kalispell is awesome. The trailer has one of those terrible old-school entry steps that always seem to get jammed once they’re old, and you’ll notice that the trailer has no awning and no stabilizer jacks.

Something else that’s interesting is that Carson apparently hasn’t changed the design much since 2010. The 2021 and 2025 models look exactly the same as the 2010 model. I’ve noticed that some of Carson’s dealer ads for new Kalispells even use the original images from 2010. That does give the trailer a bit of a dated look, and likely explains the outdated entry steps and outdated interior. But if it’s built well enough, I wouldn’t care how dated it looks.

The World’s Fastest Trailer

This camper is obscure in the world of RVs. It comes from a small, family-owned outfit in the west. Carson seems to do even less advertising than Scamp does. Yet, you’ll find a slew of articles about this thing on the Internet, and that’s thanks to Diesel Power Magazine.

In 2012, the magazine’s Associate Editor, Jason Sands, set out to break the Guinness World Record for the fastest trailer tow. The record at the time was 139.11 mph, and Diesel Power wanted to break the record in the craziest possible way. Diesel Power got David Endres, Director of Operations for Carson Trailer, to lend the team a 10-foot Kalispell that was straight off of the factory floor. This trailer was unmodified, save for V-rated tires. Check out the run:

The tow vehicle was a 2006 GMC Sierra 2500HD modified for the job by Pacific Performance Engineering (PPE). Now, trucks are already huge bricks to push through the wind, and adding a trailer only complicates matters. Remember, aero matters more than weight! So the little Kalispell is like a sail in the wind despite its low weight. PPE’s solution was to slather on the power with twin turbos and an intercooler and exhaust system custom-made for the build. The team coaxed over 1,000 HP out of the truck, and that was before a 15-shot of nitrous. The result? The big truck and its little trailer achieved 141.998 mph, a world record that stands today.

Speed records aside, the Kalispell seems like a pretty decent deal. The original MSRP of these trailers was just $9,999 back in 2012. Today, Carson will sell you one for around $20,000, which isn’t bad at all. Sure, it’s more expensive than something like a Coleman 13B and still more expensive than a 17-foot-long camper, but if it’s built as tough as Carson says it is, the extra dough might be worth it.

Either way, I like a lot of what I see here. It’s awesome to see what happens when people who are passionate about RVing are put in charge of designing campers. The Kalispell is tiny, but it seems to punch above its weight. If you’re crazy enough, it’ll also go wicked fast, too.