The truck slide-in camper is a versatile way to go RVing with your pickup truck while being able to tow your boat and have hard walls to sleep under. But many of these campers are compact units that you might not want to live in. That was the case with the 12-foot Lance owned by Tom. When he found the camper too small, he decided to expand it to more than double its size. Now, it’s a 30-foot-long behemoth with a slide, a garage, and a porch that’s longer than the Ford F-550 Super Duty dually that’s hauling it. Even cooler is the fact that you can buy it.
This story comes to us from the RVing with Andrew Steele YouTube channel. As Andrew explains, for the past seven years, he’s been searching America for the most unique RVs, and the one that brought in the most traffic was this truck camper. He spotted it four years ago, and the post he made about it got over seven million views. People wanted to know how it was built, who built it, and why.
Andrew has finally tracked down the owner, Tom, and as it turns out, this truck camper is not entirely custom-built. It started off as a mass-market truck camper that was smaller than half its current size. Then, Tom’s needs changed, so did the shape of the camper. Now, this Internet-famous rig is for sale, and its asking price is refreshingly reasonable. The icing on the cake is that the truck underneath comes with one of the most legendary diesel pickup truck engines of all time, the 7.3-liter Power Stroke V8.
When 12 Feet Isn’t Enough
As the story goes, in 2003, Tom bought the 2001 Ford F-550 Super Duty Power Stroke from a retired Northwest Airlines pilot. At the time, the red dually had a 12-foot Lance truck camper sitting in its bed. The pilot bought the camper and truck new to travel with his wife, but, sadly, she was diagnosed with cancer and passed.
Tom has owned the truck and its attached camper ever since then. At first, Tom used the truck and the camper as a vacation vehicle, taking his partner and his family on fun camping trips. Sadly, in 2015, Tom’s partner would be diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer and would later pass. Tom would then start spending more time in the camper, embracing the RV life, and driving it down from Minnesota to Florida, to where his mother had moved. Tragically, she would pass, too.
As Tom further embraced the RV life, he decided to spend the entire winter in Florida. But this presented a problem. A 12-foot camper is a small space to spend six months out of the year in. Tom would spend the next six and a half years transforming the Lance into what you see today.
When you look at the side of the truck, you can see the remnants of the Lance. The area featuring the slide, the awning, and the storage compartments all originated with the Lance. The white part of the cabover portion of the camper is what remained of the Lance’s cabover area. Tom said that the original cabover area was an annoyance because once he got into the queen bed, there were only a few inches between him and the ceiling.
So, Tom, who was an engineer by trade, cut open the Lance. Then he built a wooden frame that raised the roof and extended the cabover portion to an area ahead of the truck’s hood. Tom said that he gave the front of the camper its tapered shape to help it cut through wind like a modern semi-tractor or Class C motorhome.
The rear end of the camper, which is a sort of attic, porch, and garage in one, is also made out of wood and diamond plate. It looks like he stores bicycles, fishing poles, ladders, and beach chairs in the garage.
Tom says that the walls are three inches thick with foam insulation inside and diamond plate steel on the outside. It’s held together with glue, screws, and neoprene washers. Tom describes it as “bulletproof,” “hailproof,” and “leakproof.” I wonder about that “leakproof” part, because I see lots of seams where water can get in, and a wood build can still rot. But Tom doesn’t elaborate any further.
This may also be an optical illusion, but it also looks like the cabover portion of the camper is at a different angle than the rest of it, with the rear portion sloping towards the ground. Still, it looks like a better build than many of the campers cranked out of Indiana. Tom also says that his dream build was something even bigger that rode on the back of a Ford F-750 and had a garage for motorcycles or other toys.
As for this camper, Tom says it weighs around 17,000 pounds total. It’s not clear if that number includes the truck or not.
Correction: I thought I saw F-350 badges when viewing the video, but, thanks to a reader, I have since noticed that the truck is actually a Ford F-550. Based on Ford’s documentation, this truck should be within gross weight limits. I regret the error.
The reason the truck looks normal with all of that weight is because Tom is hiding the weight with an aftermarket air suspension.
If you don’t buy the truck with the camper, you’ll need a Ford F-550 or higher to carry this camper. That’s assuming the camper weighs around 9,000 pounds, anyway.
Power comes from Ford/Navistar’s iconic 7.3-liter Power Stroke V8, which put out 250 horsepower and 505 lb-ft when this automatic transmission-equipped truck was new. Today, the truck is said to have 265,000 miles, no rust, and averages 7.4 mpg. Tom says he really doesn’t want to sell the truck with the camper, but he’ll sell the truck if you give him $20,000 for it.
The interior is completely different from any 2001 Lance. Tom says that when he added on his extensions, he gutted and then renovated the interior. The only original Lance part remaining is the camper’s electrical box, hatches, kitchen vent fan, and other miscellaneous items.
The inside opens up with some storage areas, and then a fascinating dining room. By day, there’s just a bench, which more or less functions as the camper’s living room. If you want to eat, a table flips up, and then you have to install two portable benches.
The kitchen was all custom-built by Tom, and was designed to fit a big guy. He also added a bunch of storage areas, including one specifically for trash bags. Otherwise, you get the standard complement of a stove, microwave, refrigerator, and sink. Most of the camper’s components also route through the kitchen area, including the water tank, water heater, and 400 watt solar system. but this makes sense, as that’s where most of that equipment would have been in the original Lance.
The dry bathroom is a nice little part of the rig, and features a flushing toilet on a pedestal and a shower large enough for a six-foot-tall person to clean up in. It’s noted that the toilet, sink, and shower are also original from the Lance.
The grand finale is the bedroom. The entrance to the bedroom features two massive closets. This is where the original queen bed used to be. Further forward is the new king bed, which features a wood vaulted ceiling over it.
Tom says he’s selling because he’s getting older and it’s time to let it go. He hopes the buyer will be someone who wants to continue the camper’s journey. Tom also thinks the prospective buyer better be an extrovert who loves attention, because they will get it no matter where they go. If none of those details have turned you off, Tom, who can be found around Bradenton, Florida, wants $20,000 for the camper, or $40,000 for the truck and the camper. Click here to reveal his phone number. This number will be deleted when the rig is sold.
Not The Craziest Price I’ve Seen
Tom says he prefers to sell the camper because the truck is in really nice shape, and he’d rather not have to deal with the new truck market. But money talks.
I love so much of what Tom did here. I am a huge fan of custom camper builds, and it’s clear that Tom built something that he truly enjoys. This is a camper he built to cook stir fry in while jamming to Lynyrd Skynyrd on some beach in Florida. This whole camper is a vibe, and I’m here for it.
Good on Tom for having a dream and seeing it through to reality. This beast might just be the craziest camper that’s technically still a Lance.
Top photo: RVing with Andrew Steele/YouTube
If I had a plot of land in the middle of the woods somewhere, I’d take a good look at this and plop it there. $20k might be too much, for $10k I’d give it a chance if I had a septic tank to dump the black tank too.
I have a (relative) lot of land. I spent about 20k last year and built a big platform deck with concrete piers and put a lux wall tent up that will last forever. Have wifi, grill, big table and chairs etc…Nice fire pit below and a great view just needs a pond. Much nicer to spend time at than this would be.
Look at you with the fancy walls!
But you can’t take it with you!
My first thought when I saw the top shot: “…look at it. it’s got anxiety”
You make this guy an offer you better remember, he knows what he’s got.
Gobbless
Having lost parents and in-laws to cancer, I would not want to buy this thing with that backstory. I’m not superstitious, but why risk it.
This thing is like the Cards-Against-Humanity card: Work all your life. Retire, move to FL, die.
Stay healthy Tom!
I see this guy is supposed to be an engineer but he’s clearly not a mechanical, or even civil engineer. Maybe he’s computer or electrical engineer or something but he’s obviously never taken a Structural Analysis class.
While the truck may technically be able to support that weight if correctly distributed, this is not correctly distributed. There is absolutely no way that the frame is designed to counter that massive cantilever hanging out the back beyond the rear axle and the resulting uplift in front of the axel towards the cab. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this truck eventually snapped in half (upward) right behind rear cab mounts.
With the weight added along the whole length, I’m not sure it’s nearly as big of a moment as you think it is. Plus, it’s an F-550 is rated to tow 18,000 lbs, and a payload capacity over 10,000lbs. While I don’t love the design, I don’t think the issue is going to be a snapped frame. It’s likely due to unstability at speed.
The rear overhang is massive, but considering the porch/attic thing is just an open box I bet the weight added to the back of the original camper is about the same as what was added to the front over-cab area.
This strikes me more as a Dunning-Kruger effect situation, where the guy is a mechanical engineer or civil engineer in an unrelated field but figures that’s enough to know how to design something like this. It may even be fairly well-built and durable with decent engineering thinking behind it.
On the other hand, I’m more in the valley of the Dunning-Kruger effect, where I have done enough automotive body structure and frame reliability engineering to have zero confidence in my ability to build something like this without it shaking itself to pieces on the first drive (or without being way overweight or impossible to handle, as this one appears to be…).
Unfortunately for those who really enjoy campers, it seems like the designers of major manufacturer campers are in a still-undefined part of the Dunning-Kruger effect, where they apparently know jack shit about building quality, durable designs, but are happy to keep cranking them out for buyers itching to start a 15 or 20 year loan.
Engineers attempting projects outside their area of expertise are a menace to themselves and society at large.
(PS- I love the engineers I work with)
I wouldn’t trust it either, except he’s put a few hundred thousand miles on it, right? Then again, that’s a lot of time to be slowly fatiguing all the supports
The truck has 265k on it, but that’s since it was new in 2001. The timeline is tough to put together, but looking back through the article the original Lance is also a 2001 and was basically stock until at least 2015. It says the Youtuber who made the video spotted this 4 years ago (I’m assuming in close to its current state), so it’s probably been like this for 5-10 years?
It says the owner was driving it from MN to FL a lot while the Lance was stock, then he “embraced the Florida life” while he built it up, so I’m assuming it’s stayed in Florida since then. I don’t know how he was using it, but it seems like it could be a lot of sitting in a campground for months at a time and maybe occasionally taking some drives through Florida to different beach sites or something. I wouldn’t be surprised if he only put like 10k miles on it since building it (all on flat Florida roads), which isn’t nothing, but wouldn’t give me $20k worth of confidence.
fair point I hadn’t considered. I also grant my logic is flawed: I took flying lessons on a Piper Cherokee that was a few decades older than I was. I told folks I wasn’t nervous b/c hundreds of other ppl had learned to fly on it just fine and I’m not special. Yeah, one of my co-owners destroyed it a few weeks later. Previous performance is no guarantee of future results.
Who would buy this? It’s already given cancer to two people.
You could buy it and give it to your ex-wife…
Or buy it for a current wife and watch her wither to ex-ness.
That’s a little extreme, how about just giving her worms? There’s a pill for that, but its only approved for ex girlfriends, so that would be off label
Shots fired. Omg
It’s the most horrible euthanasia device ever.
If you need to take something as big as house somewhere, do us all a favor and just home for the same result.
Regardless of the weight, this monstrosity has too much overhang!
Classic truck speccing formula- Rear overhang should never exceed 2/3rds of wheelbase and front overhang should never exceed 1/3rd of wheelbase. Bet this thing handles like a pig and air bags ain’t gonna fix it, he should have started with a chassis with a longer CA (Cab After or cab to rear axle) dimension.
Not even from a handling/capability/safety standpoint, but how the hell can he see ANY traffic lights that aren’t a football field away?
At night, the traffic light probably reflects off the the diamond plate box hanging off the front bumper. During the day, it also blinds you.
When you don’t care about looks OR looking at your surroundings as you drive.
The outside of this thing is a horrendous blight.
Which is a shame, cause I quite like the interior.
I cannot fathom a world where I wouldn’t have just sold the slide-in and bought a trailer if I needed more space.
Right? I assume you can’t tow anything with this, which would be the only real argument (other than per-axle tolls) for going with the slide in instead of a towed camper.
It’s not like you could quickly remove the truck if you wanted to run errands without the camper. You could also get a bigger camper and tow it with a smaller non-dually pickup.
Honestly. A 5th wheel toy hauler would solve all his problems. And they come in many different sizes and lengths.
These Ford diesels were famous for requiring the front clip to be taken off before doing any significant work on the motor. This rig looks to make the whole process even more of a pain.
Buy this rig and never see a traffic light again!
The poop emoji seat covers caught me off guard lol
Hotel rooms are like $100/night and come with AC, clean towels and toilet paper.
And you don’t have to look for a tank of diesel to dump your poo every few days.
$100? Maybe a Days Inn or Knights Inn, which, admittedly, do a great job of catering to the small batch, artisanal meth production industry
Yeah, campgrounds are $100/night these days.
The owner vacations in Florida, where $100 gets you pretty far if you stay out of the tourist areas.
The argument for this always has been, and always will be, “going places where hotels are not”.
This looks a bit too big to get places were there are not hotels, Airbnb, Vrbos.
If you use this ridiculously oversized and wasteful vehicle and others like it, to ‘go places where hotels are not’, those places aren’t going to exist for much longer.
Not this thing per-se, but I’m always tired of this argument.
Most of us are tired of some of you crapping on everything that used to be pristine because of your hobbies.
I don’t even own an RV or travel trailer, nor have I ever. Take about 20% off there bud.
I’d also argue setting up hotel infrastructure is gonna crap on pristine a lot more than an RV will.
Exactly
This would get stuck on the first trail it went on.
Plus if there aren’t any hotel, then where the hell am I going to get my nightly frozen margarita?!
Tons of places you can go that aren’t trails. Check out something like Harvest Hosts just as an example. Maybe not a marguerita, but wine while you camp out in a vineyard would be nice.
Plus he’s blocked off all easy to access tow points.
That’s why I bring my own booze…
What’s the equivalent for break over angle but for the top hitting stuff above you?
Can opener clearance!
Agreed. And also, in this case, we’re talking about full time living and not just a few weekends a year. This isn’t built for bopping over to the local KOA (or, well, “bopping” over to anywhere in a rush).
Living in that thing full time sounds like a circle of hell. Doubly so in Florida.
Places this thing can get to narrows the options considerably.
As a person who sometimes has to drive behind RVs, it bewilders me that people would rather drive a porta-potty around the country rather than to book a hotel.
One of my fav descriptions of an RV comes from Regular Car Reviews: ITS A CAR YOU CAN POOP IN.
so, for some, that’s a huge plus.
I can hear that truck groan from here.
It also looks like a bit of a nightmare to drive. Top heavy, massive overhangs, the cacophony of the 7.3 clattering away under load as it makes NVH and power in roughly equal portions.
But I’ll hand it to this guy for really throwing himself at a project. It’s kooky and interesting.
It’s a cautionary tale. I’m sure it started with a reasonable “I bet if I just made this one modification it could fix my problem.” Keep telling yourself that and you end up with this. I’m sure if you had shown him a picture of this before he started he’d also be horrified.
It can happen to any of us. Esp if you no longer have a partner to tell you you’ve gone too far.
Going by the badges this is an F-550 and not an F-350, which makes the build a little less dangerous. But it still looks pretty fucking dangerous. I sure as hell wouldn’t recommend driving it anywhere.
Wow, my computer monitor sucks more than I thought. I could have sworn I saw F-350 badges when writing this. After reading your comment, I checked on a higher res display and I’ll be dipped, it says F-550.
I’ll issue a correction. Sorry about that.
It’s ok! Most of the time F-550s are rolling around with dump beds or service bodies on them. I zoomed in on the badges hoping he hadn’t used a 1 ton for this. With that much weight hanging out behind the rear axle though I would still worry about the overall stability.
Mercedes, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, especially as we’re about the same age, but it might be time to see an opthalmologist.
My eyes were damaged back when I got hit by a car as a seven-year-old. I’ve been a glasses and contacts wearer ever since. I’m not exaggerating about how crappy my computer monitor is. It doesn’t even have HDMI, and its resolution is only 1440 x 900. I’m pretty sure it was made for Dells from like 2013, maybe older.
Damn. I’m sorry. Tried to make a funny and I ran straight into a kid getting hit by a car.
4k monitors are $250. Even David would spring for that.
I like that your approach to computers mirrors your approach to vehicles
It sure looks like an F-350 based on the wheels and the bed – They didn’t offer the F-550 with a bed and all the converted ones seem to have 19.5″ wheels, plus a F-550 would be huge overkill for the original setup.
I’d bet he slapped those F-550 badges on to lower his chances of getting pulled over/called out for being way overweight
I’d rather be waterboarded than even see this in person let alone own it.
This style camper is my most hated by far, and they turned it up to 11. I can’t imagine the amount of thought, time and money that went into this. People can do what they want with their time and money obviously, but I am hopeful that someone rich buys it just to destroy it. I’d throw some money towards that if anyone local wants to do a go fund me.
I really do appreciate the builder’s dedication and ingenuity. I’m simultaneously baffled and impressed by how it manages to be highly practical and highly impractical at the same time. And awestruck by the total and cavalier disregard for weight limits, yet clearly there was some back-of-the napkin calculation going on to distribute and support that weight, particularly in the front bracing and counterbalancing storage/wight box.
This is what happens when Florida Man gets an engineering degree.
This is when Florida Man thinks he’s better than those “stupid engineers who just told me it couldn’t be done”.
“I’m an engineer. Trust me!“
Well, maybe Florida Man would be more inclined to trust Florida engineers if they weren’t dumping post-tensioned concrete bridges down onto active highways
He majored in Florida Man and minored in engineering.
He did a great job of hiding both the front and rear license plates.
It’s unique and well-built, but it’s someone else’s project. A trailer would
have been a much more practical solution, and he could have custom-built it to his heart’s content.
TBF if the purpose of a plate is to be able to identify the vehicle, I think this is fine.
I saw the video on this unit. Interesting but it is so specifically built for the user, not sure I would want it.
I would hit my head on that porch every single time.
If this is your thing, do it.
K…but why not just buy a class c?
That would be the logical thing to do, but I think he loves the truck so much he did this…
I think the logical thing with that truck would be a 5th wheel.
Close that fu#$ing lid!
Truck: $20k
Camper: $20k
Flagrant disregard for safety: Priceless!
Oh, no. There’s a price. The insurance company could soon find out exactly what that price is if this hits the road.
Those seatcovers totally match the likely driving experience. I can think of a lot better use of $40K. I can hear the truck speaking to me and its saying https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3_IuPMya6k
I’m sorry but this thing is 5500 pounds overweight at best. Air suspension or not this thing is an absolute danger to the roads. 20k for a 25 year old, 265k mile truck with a hacked apart camper with an incredibly dubiously rearward center of gravity is just insane. Being that far over GVWR is well outside of any safety margin built into the trucks brakes, suspension, and drivetrain. It’s impressively done, but I think this falls squarely into the “only asked if they could, not if they should” territory.
Ahem…
It’s $20k for the hacked apart camper. It’s ANOTHER $20k if you want the 256k truck under it.
“Tom, who can be found around Bradenton, Florida, wants $20,000 for the camper, or $40,000 for the truck and the camper.”
As the other site would say, 100% crack pipe.
OH I completely missed that detail that’s even more insane. 20k for the death trap of a camper that’s probably riddled with hidden mold is a hell of a tough sell. Peak boomer “I know what I have no low ballers” mentality right up there with automatic C5 convertibles with the crappy C1 body kits that people think are worth 50k.
Turns out it’s not overweight. I goofed up and read the badges as “F-350” when they really say “F-550”. Assuming he’s on the money about 17,000 pounds, the truck is basically a driver and passenger short of its gross weight.
Amazing build! I only have one question. Why not aluminum instead of steel?
Because steel is what he had laying around in the backyard from his recent junk haul.
He probably has more experience working with steel. I wonder how much weight he could have shaved off with aluminum though. Probably not enough to make this thing safe, but every little bit helps.
I’m not defending this build at all.
Based on the gloss appearing in the pictures, I would guess this is aluminum diamond plate, which depending on the gauge, weights about a 1 lb per square foot. By contrast, steel diamond plate weighs about 10 lbs per square foot, depending on the gauge.
Unpainted aluminum diamond plate isn’t necessarily a bad material for this application, with the exception of surfaces in the driver’s line of vision.
Wood framing in an RV should be outlawed.
I thought the same, along with the lack of visible rust. But the article says steel so I just rolled with it. Benefit of the doubt, as it were.
Ironic that wood in cars is “fancy” and in RVs it’s garbage.
Wood in modern cars is rarely structural. Wood in RVs is often structural. Some cars leak. All RVs leak. Wood rots, hence my comment.
No I know they serve different functions, I was pointing out the irony of how wood is viewed in context. But yeah once you look below the surface, it’s totally different. Now I’m wondering if there is any modern car with wood serving as a structural member.
Depends on how you mean modern. According to Morgan Motor Car’s FAQ page, “…Ash wood is still used to construct the body frames on Plus Four and Supersport.”