This $2,295 Inflatable Plastic Cap Turns Nearly Any Pickup Truck Into A Weekend Camper

An RV is often the second-most expensive thing a person may purchase, right behind a house. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to spend tens of thousands to get a cozy place to sleep. Startup company ThAirCamper has what appears to be one of the cheapest truck bed campers on the market. For only $2,295, the ThAirCamper is sort of like an air mattress, but instead of blowing up a bed, you blow up an entire cozy camper to sleep in. Do inflatable campers have a future in RVs?

Inflatable truck and camping accessories seem to be taking off lately. If you watch Shark Tank, you might have seen Flated, the inflatable truck bed topper. The Flated seems to be a success story of sorts because the company is still around, and I have seen trucks rocking the inflatable topper in their beds.

The camping world is also seeing a surge of inflatable products. Inflatable beds aren’t anything new, but now you can buy inflatable camping tents, inflatable camping chairs, and other gear. One company, Opus Camper, will even sell you an off-road trailer with a built-in inflatable tent. But Opus trailers are sort of expensive for what you get.

That’s what makes the ThAirCamper intriguing. When it’s inflated, it’s roughly the size of a small hard-sided truck slide-in camper. It’s bigger than a rooftop tent! Yet, at $2,295, the ThAirCamper is almost “screw it” money. I had to look into this little thing some more.

Made For Cheap Camping

The ThAirCamper is the work of New Yorker Parr Wiegel. He gives this story as to how he brewed up the idea to make an inflatable truck camper:

“Over the past few years, I have been watching vehicle camping and camping in general go through a growth spurt. This has led to people I know getting off the couch and going outside and camping. I loved the idea because I like nothing more than being in the woods or on a lake with my family and the dog. I watched my friends and neighbors load up their SUVs with tents, sleeping bags, cook stoves, foldable chairs and a bunch or other stuff until it is packed to the gills and set off down the road.

My friends with pickup trucks purchased roof top tents or full-on truck bed campers. I watched and thought to myself, that’s a lot of work and a lot of money to go camping for an evening or weekend. So, I started to think about making camping easier and less expensive. That is when I put two and two together and realized that the material used to make inflatable paddle boards offered properties that could be used to make an inflatable pickup truck camper. Rigid, less weight, durable, shapable and easy to inflate and deflate. I did some drawings, and I took the idea to my wife and nearly passed out when she said this is the best idea yet. That meant a lot to me, so I started to design ThAirCamper.”

Parr says his goal is to make camping affordable and accessible for everyone. A lot of folks want to sleep in something that’s a step up from a tent, but can’t actually afford to buy or store a real travel trailer. To Parr, his ThAirCamper is the solution. It’s cheap, and since it deflates, you can store it anywhere.

The company, which appeared on social media and the Internet in 2024, is pretty upfront and says that this camper is designed for overnight stops and weekend adventures. In other words, you probably aren’t going to sleep in it for a week at a time, unless you’re a bit crazy.

The ThAirCamper

Something I’ve found interesting about this camper is that it’s not flimsy like a bouncy castle or a blow-up Christmas lawn ornament.

ThAirCamper says its campers feature PVC drop-stitch material for its structure, which includes two-inch thick walls with insulation. This material isn’t anything new. It’s used on inflatable stand-up paddleboards and is similar to what you’ll find in a Flated truck cap.

The camper sounds like it’s pretty robust, too. There’s a video online showing nine people piled into this thing, and the camper still keeps its shape. Parr says the camper is self-supporting, so it’s not depending on your truck’s bedrails or roof to hold itself up. Parr also claims that the camper has an R9 insulation value, too, so it can resist temperature swings at least a little. This video can explain how the camper comes together better than I can:

As you can see, it blows up like an air mattress. But unlike an air mattress, it seems to be pretty sturdy once it’s all pumped up. It also doesn’t take a ton of air to get the camper rigid, with Parr saying that you can get away with 2.5 PSI to keep the camper up.

Once the camper is up, it’s astoundingly simple inside. You get two benches, a floor that doubles as a mattress, and an over-cab bed area. That’s it. There’s no electrical system, no bathroom, no HVAC, or any of the sort. All of that is up to you. This camper is pretty much just a step up from a tent. Well, it’s more or like two or three steps.

Parr has also thought about heating and cooling. If you’re not daring enough to run a heater inside your inflatable camper, and I don’t blame you, there is a vent so you can duct in your choice of heater or air-conditioner.

If this sounds sort of lackluster in terms of features, that’s because this camper is supposed to be something that you use for a short time. It’s not something I would take to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh for a whole week. But a couple of days at a state park? This could be neat! Another interesting thing is that, since this camper is self-supporting, you technically don’t even need a pickup truck. You can inflate it anywhere you can set it.

As far as compatibility goes, the ThAirCamper fits in any pickup truck with at least 44 inches of space between the bed’s wheel wells, a cab no taller than 44 inches from the floor of the bed, and bed rails no taller than 22 inches. If you have bed rails or a cab that’s a touch too tall, you can compensate with a platform.

As of publishing, the only truck that ThAirCamper says its camper can’t fit in is the Ford Maverick, and that’s only because the wheel wells are 42 inches from each other. But I bet you could probably make a platform that’ll get you those two inches.

Transporting the camper also gets interesting. Parr offers three methods for getting the camper around. You can deflate the camper entirely for the most space. You can deflate the camper halfway, just enough to close your truck bed tonneau cover over. Or, you can drive with the camper in your truck bed completely inflated. I probably wouldn’t do that last one, since I just wouldn’t want the camper getting battered by rocks, dust, and other road debris. Also, since this takes only 15 minutes or so to put up, why waste the gas when you don’t need to?

Cheap And Cheerful, But Will It Last?

ThAirCamper says its inflatable camper costs $2,295 and weighs 180 pounds. While a regular tent is still much cheaper and there are some cheaper rooftop tents, this isn’t that bad of a price to get something that’s a step up from a tent.

The biggest question, I think, is how this camper will age. Sure, a brand-new one might not have issues holding up, but we’ve all owned inflatable products before. Eventually, most seem to spring a leak. ThAirCamper is such a new company that there are only a handful of real-world reviews and no examples in consumer hands with several years of camping on them. So, longevity is a question mark.

With that being said, I like this idea. The ThAirCamper is not a traditional camper in any sense, but it’s something that you can blow up, use to enjoy a weekend at the lake with your family, and then deflate and store in your garage until the next time. At the same time, it’s quite affordable. I do not think ThAirCamper is going to start some revolution, and I do not think that it’s the future of RVing. However, I always support fun and affordable ways to go camping, so I think this can be a neat solution, provided it lasts long enough.