The RV market has suffered from a battering in these times of high interest rates, high fuel prices, and economic uncertainty. Many of those who want to take RV trips are just staying home. But if you’re willing to go down on size and materials, you can still get a new RV without imploding your bank account. This is the Sunset Park Sun Lite LTD 13BD. It’s not going to blow you away with its design or materials, but that’s okay, because its whole mission is to get you RVing for cheap.
RVs are a fascinating market to watch. Most people buy campers purely as recreational items –it’s the R in RV, after all. Yes, there are many people who do live in motor coaches, fifth wheels, and truck campers, but so many RV buyers also use their rigs only on the weekends when the weather is nice. Most people don’t really need an RV, and you can easily have a fun road trip without one. Thus, it’s entirely unsurprising that when personal finances take a beating, RVs are among the first products to suffer from reduced sales.
If RV sales trends play out as expected, 2026 may close out with worse shipments than 2013, which was back when the RV industry was still recovering from the Great Recession. There’s even a possibility of RV sales being worse than 2023, when the floor fell out of the market in the post-COVID-19 pandemic world. Many RV manufacturers are responding with smaller trailers that are easier to tow and cheaper to buy. Companies that already had such products are putting them front and center.
One of those companies is Sunset Park RV Manufacturing, an independent RV company that has, thus far, avoided being bought out by the likes of Forest River, Winnebago, or Thor Industries. Whenever I go to RV shows, Sunset Park’s units tend to be some of the cheapest trailers, and the quality doesn’t seem to be any worse than the more expensive stick-built campers by the big guys. The Sun Lite LTD 13BD (above) appears to be no exception.
Affordable By Design
Sunset Park, which has been around since 2007, prefers to hang around the cheaper end of the market. Merle Schmucker, the founder and current owner of the company, thinks that RV sales are often so bad because RV buyers can’t afford how expensive today’s units are. So Sunset Park RV caters to those looking to save some bucks.
The company isn’t really moving the needle on build materials or construction methods. Most of Sunset Park’s units are built using the traditional RV formula of a steel chassis, a wood body structure, wood roof decking, a rubberized outer roof material, and aluminum sidewalls. Sunset Park dealers have told me that while Sunset Park’s materials aren’t impressive by any means, the company does try to put them together better than bigger brands. These dealers also allege that fewer Sunset Parks require structural defect repairs than the wood-framed competition. I can’t confirm that, so my usual warnings about buying stick-built campers still apply.
The Sun Lite LTD 13BD is one of those stick-built trailers. But what it lacks in material innovations, it tries to make up for by being a dirt-cheap way to get out there.
The exterior of the Sun Lite LTD 13BD is expectedly basic. As many stick-and-tin builds, it rocks corrugated aluminum siding over the wood sandwich underneath, and uses a simple steel chassis with a leaf-sprung axle to hold everything above the ground.
But basic doesn’t mean Sunset Park skipped out on the features. The trailer has front and rear stabilizer jacks, propane, an awning, and even one of those really sturdy entry steps that flips out of the trailer and then sits on the ground. The entry door has a window, too, which you won’t always find on a super cheap unit.
Some cost-cutting is evident, like the manual tongue jack crank, or the fact that the propane tank is uncovered. But this trailer is light enough that a power crank isn’t a bad thing – and it’s one less part to break – and you can always buy a cover for the propane tank if you want one. The trailer comes with a rock guard up front to try to protect the trailer from debris kicked up by the tow vehicle. It’s small, but better than nothing.
More evidence of the trailer’s low price can be found in the rear, where you’ll find the wall air conditioner. While this does add a big hole in the side of the camper, I like wall air conditioners as they’re often easily replaced by the trailer’s owner. Sunset Park notes that this trailer comes with a one-piece PVC roof membrane.
There isn’t much to write home about elsewhere outside of the trailer. Some of these units come with optional chunky off-road tires, but I’m not sure I’d be in a rush to take a cheap stick-built camper on any trails.
At the very minimum, those tires are going to be pelting your poor tank dump outlet with all sorts of rocks, mud, and other grime.
The interior is exactly as rudimentary as you’d expect. There’s a bed of unspecified size up at the front, and an open shelf above it.
Directly behind it is a small kitchen with color-matched appliances. Some manufacturers of cheap campers just throw the cheapest-possible everything in the kitchen, so you’ll end up with a white sink, a silver stove, and a black microwave. It’s a small thing, but I like when a company goes just one extra step to make everything match.
Don’t expect a lot here. The trailer has a single-basin sink, a two-burner stove, and a microwave. The kitchen is so small that the refrigerator and freezer are at the back of the trailer, under the air conditioner. The stove doesn’t have a backsplash, so be careful when cooking.
On the other side of the trailer is a dinette with a deployable table. This will probably be your best surface to prep food on. At night, the dinette turns into an additional bed.
At the trailer’s rear is the aforementioned air conditioner and refrigerator, plus the full bathroom. You do get a dry bath with a shower and a toilet that aren’t married together. However, the shower stall makes only a minimal effort to keep water from getting into places it shouldn’t go. The trailer doesn’t have a bathroom sink, so you’ll need to wash your hands in the kitchen sink.
None of this is surprising, given how little you’re paying for this thing. But you’ll definitely want to consider how you’ll improve waterproofing.
Capacities are fairly healthy for a trailer of this size and price. The shower, sink, and toilet feed from a 26-gallon tank, and drop into a pair of 30-gallon gray and waste tanks. The Sun Lite comes in at 16’2″ in length, 9’9″ tall with a roof rack, and has 6’6″ of standing room. Dry weight is 2,370 pounds with a tongue weight of 250 pounds. All fairly standard numbers for a trailer of this price and class.
Additional features that are standard and neat to have include a Bluetooth speaker, a furnace, USB ports, an outside shower, and a walkable roof deck. Sunset Park says you can also order this trailer with a door to load toys like bicycles or kayaks, and there’s another version that puts a bunk bed above the main bed.
The options list is short, but has neat bits. You can get the trailer with a six-inch lift kit, an oven, a tent room to increase space, a power jack, a Murphy bed, and more. The tiny toy hauler version (Sun Lite 14TH) even has an option to turn the loading door into a covered patio. Here’s what that one looks like:
As Cheap As It Sounds
All of this can be had for pretty cheap. If you buy one of the many unsold 2026 models, you can get the Sunset Park Sun Lite LTD 13BD for around $13,000. If you must get a 2027, the cheapest I’ve found was $14,000. While this isn’t the cheapest new hard-wall travel trailer I’ve written about this year, that’s still a pretty low price!
As for who would be the ideal buyer of a Sun Lite LTD 13D, Sunset Park says that the trailer would work best for a couple with a pet, or maybe a couple with a single child. Get the bunk version, and you can squeeze a second child in. But be warned that you’ll be shoving four people into a box only 13 feet long.
Of course, a wood build means that this trailer needs to be protected from water intrusion at all costs. So, expect to maintain seals and that roof regularly. It’s a battle that you will likely lose at some point, but that’s okay. You’re not paying a whole lot for it, so it’ll hurt less when the floor starts getting soft, or you see a water stain in the ceiling. But even stick builds usually have years of fun in them before you get to that point. If it were my money, I’d skip the lift kit. Keep it closer to the ground and less of a brick in the wind.
Sunset Park is refreshingly honest in the marketing. You aren’t supposed to be holed up in this trailer. Instead, you’re supposed to park it, go have fun outside, and then come back to the trailer for a meal, a hot shower, and a toilet. In a world where RV companies seemingly promise the world with units that can’t cash such huge checks, I respect marketing like this. You don’t even get a television to look at!
All things considered, I think if you’re shopping for a brand-new trailer and you don’t want to spend a bunch of money, this seems to be a decent option. Sure, you might want to do some small things to help the trailer last longer, but aside from that, you can just hitch it up to your Volkswagen Atlas or whatever and just hit the road. I hope this trend of cheaper, smaller trailers sticks around for a while.
Top Graphic Image: Frontier Auto & RV Center
As far as cheap campers go, this is more luxurious than the camper I grew up with… a 1976 Starcraft Galaxy 8 popup camper.
The camper we had didn’t have a toilet or shower. Nor did it have A/C. It had a heater that never worked. It had a fridge that was smaller than what this camper has.
And I recall that my dad paid CAD$3000 for it back in 1978 (meaning it was used… 2 years old)… which is about CAD$13,700 today… or US$9600. New, I’m guessing it cost about the same as the trailer above.
And the old trailer we had weighed about 3000lbs dry… at least 600lbs more than this thing.
And don’t for a second think it had meaningfully better quality. Every year there were things that we had to fix on it… including the odd roof leak. Hell… I recall something broke on it before we even left the RV dealer lot that my dad had them fix before we left.
So what I’m saying is… that Sun Lite trailer above looks like a pretty good deal for the money.
This with the toy hauler door and deck is exactly what I’d want. I don’t cook inside trailers – I always cook outside when I camp, under the awning or an EZ Up, and if the weather is too bad for that, there’s always sandwiches.
My use case definitely warrants the door as we use Workman trikes for festivals. My wife is a poor bike rider, and who doesn’t love having a seat wherever they go?
What’s the AC situation if you go that route, though?
Dry bath to keep the wife happy, too. Would definitely get use out of that deck to keep us a bit off the ground and really take advantage of the state beaches here during the day.
Would totally buy this and haul it behind my built TDI. Tempting honestly
I’ve looked at a few Sunset Park models. They do some innovative stuff with design and keep them lightweight. So many different toy haulers designs that you don’t really see other doing. They also do actual colors on the outside. With all these smaller EVs trucks coming out with low tow ratings something lightweight and cheap like many of the Sunset Park models are probably just the ticket
Amazing that a small trailer like this has a dry bath. Cute little trailer this is.
Yeah, that is a nice feature, I guess they make the space by deleting the bathroom sink, but that’s an OK tradeoff
That window A/C in the back has gotta go. Replace it with a small inverter 10-BTU split unit in the front.
Thank goodness you are highlighting the dinette. Yeah I see the bunks displaced several times sometimes I don’t have kids and you should just shove them in a tent anyway.
It seems about the size of a prison cell (uh, from what I’ve seen in the movies, not actual experience…).
How much is it to rent one of these or similar? Or in other words, how many times do you have to use this thing until it falls apart to make it worthwhile including whatever maintenance, insurance, and storage costs?
I could be wrong but if one was seriously into camping, you’d either step up to something well built with real amenities, really embrace the tenting or overland setup with a rooftent on whatever offroader one’s heart desires, or go even cheaper with a basic pop-up. I don’t see that people would really get their money’s worth out of one of these. Of course I could be wrong. $13k+tax+reg+insurance+storage pays for a lot of nights in a mid-range hotel/motel/holiday-INN instead of a campground (which costs money too, right?)
You do get to shave out some costs by eating food from a grocery store rather than a restaurant when you’re hauling a trailer, but I think that only looking at the number in the ledger is missing a few important things:
Each of those has value. Whether or not it’s sufficient value to justify the cost is, of course, end-user-dependent.
Also, hotel maintenance and housekeeping standards have fallen into the toilet over the past 6 years or so – even at reputable chains, you never know quite what you’re getting. Your own, portable bedroom, with your own mattress and bedding, that you clean and maintain to your standards does give some peace of mind
I justify my camper by saying that there’s no way I would have travelled 30 nights this year if I didn’t own a camper, but because I have the camper, I took more time doing things and visiting places than I ever did before having a camper.
If you are at all handy and have the means, I think a 15-25 year old Airstream with a good inspection is better than buying a new RV. They are at a point on the depreciation curve where they generally don’t decline in value much at all after that. My credit union was even willing to finance my 14 year old (at the time) Airstream at a pretty fair rate, but I ultimately didn’t end up doing that.
We bought a 2007 Airstream about 5 years ago. I probably have 150 nights in it at this point. I’m sure I could sell it for just $5000 less than I paid for it and I’ve probably put about $6,000 into it with some optional renovations (new couch, some live-edge wood pieces, and other upgrades), plus a set of tires and batteries. Very little has gone wrong with it since I bought it (just the converter that I replaced myself for about $300).
If you ignore what I have tied up in it/what it would sell for and just look at depreciation and upgrade costs per night, it’s under $100 a night. Add in camping fees, gas, etc. and it’s probably $150-200 a night depending on destination. We cook a lot of our own meals which really cuts down on costs. It seems like it’s hard to eat out anymore for under $40-50 for 2 people, so even if we do 2 meals a day at the camper, it cuts out a lot of costs. I pay about $350 a year for insurance on it.
The best part is the great friends we’ve made in the Airstream club, and that’s invaluable.
Depending on where you are there are plenty of free areas to camp in the western US. Most BLM land and forest service land can free camp for 14 days at the same spot.
Not bad. I like it. It’s too small for my wife and I (we’re physically too big to sleep on a bed that small), but something like this that’s just enough bigger to have a queen size bed would be perfect. We’ve never had a TV in any of our campers.
“But what it lacks in material innovations, it tries to make up for by being a dirt-cheap way to get out there.”
Translation: It might look and feel cheap, but at least it is cheap!
Granted, I’m still not terribly comfortable calling $13-14k “dirt cheap.”
KISS. That’s what this does. Less stuff is indeed less to go wrong. It has everything necessary and no frippery. I can respect that! It’s a step above a tent.
What about that “toy hauler” porch? I hop there’s a low payload limit on that. Place a couple hundred extra pounds back there and the hitch will be floating.
Shouldn’t be a problem if you have the stabilizer jacks set.
I wish it wasn’t so grey on the inside. I know they all are for the most part but I wish it wasn’t so.
Inside my Scamp deluxe, all I see besides windows are the hardwood cabinetry that that puts my home kitchen to shame. It’s like a cabin on wheels.
Is it reasonable to call this “times of high interest rates”?
I mean I know they’ve been wicked low for most millennials adulthood – but artificially suppressed since the recession. Maybe we could just call it “no longer low interest” or something…
Yeah, at least we’re still in single digits
wow out here jinxing us millennials. Damn y’all old people!
I am a Millennial though? And Millennials ARE old now, BTW
don’t you put that evil on me ricky bobby!
Even high single digits hurts aot more when things are so much more expensive relative to income than they were in the days of double digit interest rates.
Right? I’ll pay 18% interest all day to get a house for what it sold for in 1980.
Same here.
I got super lucky with my timing for starting my career and buying a house. I started teaching in 2006, and the housing bubble had already gotten so big that I was priced out of the market. I rented a cheap apartment and watched the world burn around me. Bought a house in 2010 for less than half of what it would go for now, and refinanced in 2019 at 2.99% interest.
For anybody not a boomer that fell slightly before or after that window of time, you’re just kinda fucked. There are no cheap apartments anymore. I couldn’t afford my house today.
We managed to buy a house in CA in 2017, but my wife and I are DINKs. Thought I overpaid then but it’s worth nearly twice what we paid.
I also started work in 2006 and it was an extremely fortunate time in a lot of ways. A year later my company had frozen hiring and the market crashed shortly thereafter, providing an excellent buying opportunity for my 401k. I was also able to buy a house in 2011. If I were entering the workforce in 2026, somehow I don’t think I’d be house shopping in 2031. :-/