- The most famous early era vehicle camping group
- The "Tin Can Tourists"
- Dozen more coach-making manufactures jumped into the market.
Americans have been enjoying camping trips with their vehicles ever since the invention of the automobile and without question, the most famous early era vehicle camping was done by this group of well-known men: light bulb inventor Thomas Edison, car maker Henry Ford, tire magnate Harvey Firestone and author, poet and naturalist John Burroughs. They called themselves "the four vagabonds" while they were out exploring the wilds during these camping jaunts in their motorized expeditions, which started in 1913 and went to 1924. "When we have settled on a camping site," shared Burroughs in one of his writings, "Mr. Edison settles down in his car and reads or meditates; Mr. Ford seizes an axe and swings it vigorously till there is enough wood for the campfire." However, this was not a case of simply living off of the land during these camping trips, but rather outings that saw full fleets of support vehicles with chauffeurs, cooks, maids and complete staff to deal with anything that could possibly come up, Harvey Firestone even would bring along his butler!
Nonetheless, with a great deal of newsmen and photographers covering these camping trips, there was large amounts of publicity generated for the quartet, as well as the hobby of vehicular camping. This extravagant version of camping was hardly anything the average citizen could relate to (they each had 10-foot by 10-foot private tents) with a Model T fully outfitted with a refrigerator, stove and everything required to make it a mobile kitchen, including a dining tent with table for 20), but it did succeed in putting auto camping in the news big time.
In 1919 there was an organization started called "Tin Can Tourists" and the group, originally based in DeSoto Park, Florida, was about 20 vehicles strong at the beginning. The members had cars (with folding side tents, sleeping on cots), trailers and converted trucks(that incorporated sleeping arrangements inside the bed area, often using canvas for shelter material). The name came from them having soldered tin cans on their radiator caps, which symbolized that canned food was typically what they ate while camping. With their determination and drive, they took on the dusty and bumpy early roads (notoriously terrible by any standards, and filled with mud during rainstorms) all across the country in pursuit of adventures in traveling and camping activities. It was their "home on the roam." A few years later, more refined "house cars" were built which also became part of the Tin Can Tourists scene.
With a growing number of both home-built and commercially-built camper vehicles hitting the roads, by the middle 1930s there was a big increase of automobiles being adapted to use in family camping. According to researchers there was in the range of 150,000 members that had camped as a part of the Tin Can Tourists organization alone plus there were others that just set out on their own to explore America with their camping-equipped vehicles.
After World War II the pickup truck had gained in popularity, mostly for farm and commercial use, but also for use by campers who viewed them as being ideal for modifying as it was discovered by backyard builders that the bed of the truck could easily and inexpensively serve as the foundation for the installation of an enclosure to make it a camper all it itself, affordable and self-contained. plus removable. No motel or hotel bills to deal with, plus meals could be made inside the camper or by campfire when actually camping. Recreational traveling on the cheap!
Howard L. Cree created, with help from his wife Lillian, the "Cree Pick-Up Coach" in his Marcellus, Michigan workshop in 1945. The unit was a box-like enclosure that covered the cargo area of the bed, but did not extend up and over the cab area. It offered shelter, albeit a small living quarters inside the galley. Cooking, dining and sleeping could be done inside of it, without the need for a tent. Plus, the use of a pickup truck provided more maneuverability than pulling a travel trailer. Sales of the boxy Cree-built camper came when it was shown at a Chicago sports and travel show. When a writer did a review on this innovative shell, he described it as follows: "Slide this miniature home on a pickup truck, bolt it down, and you have a 'houseboat on wheels' for vacation travel. It gives the equivalent of a car and trailer in one unit, and applies Pullman-style design for comfort."
At about this same timeframe that the Crees developed their product, Walter King from Torrance, California, had come up with his own design of an aluminum-skinned pickup camper, only his was not boxy in construction but rather featured a rounded top design. It was in the summer of 1945 he built his one-off design, and soon after made plans with his wife to take the camper truck out a traveling adventure later that year. The camper was unique enough to garner a great deal of interest from those who saw it, and by the time the Kings were ready to return home from their excursion they had received cash deposits to build five just like it for new-found customers! From there King Manufacturing was born and these "home away from home" truck camper bodies were called Sport Kings, and the early models sold for under $900.00.
Another innovative truck camper pioneer was Don Hall, who in 1953 invented the collapsible design that provided a lower profile while driving, something he could take on the ALCAN Highway (a1700-mile long stretch of highway that went from British Colombia, Canada, to Delta Junction, Alaska, via Whitehorse, Yukon) with his pickup. What separated Hall's design from the others was his telescoping feature, which raised and lowered the upper portion of unit through a patented hydraulic mechanism. The benefit was to be able to lower the unit for less wind resistance while in the retracted position while operating on roads and highways.
The American novelist John Steinbeck, most known for his Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men writings, gave the truck camper movement a major shot-in-the-arm for positive publicity when he penned his book in 1962 titled "Travels with Charley in Search if America." The book was about how he and his large and elderly poodle traveled across America in a new 1961 GMC pickup truck, equipped with a Wolverine slide-in camper (with stove, refrigerated icebox, bed, table for his trusty typewriter and chemical toilet) where he, now 58years old, had "re-discovered" the country that he had extensively written about over the years. His experiences in that truck camper, over an11-week-long time period, saw him do everything from eating with truckers at interstate truck stops, to visiting with regular citizens in small towns that dotted the back roads from New York to San Francisco and back, and included in his dialogues was things like arguing politics with his sisters he visited while on the road to talking about the New York license plates on his rig. The book became a best-seller immediately upon publication and by March of 1966 it was on its 26th printing. The V6-powered 3/4-ton dark green camper is displayed at the National Steinbeck Center located in Salinas, California.
As the camping craze spread, dozen more coach-making manufactures jumped into the market. Aluminum sheet siding with ribbing for strength was the typical outside construction choice by the builders. The sizes started with simple 8-foot floor plans however it didn't take long for the camper body designers to begin to make them longer, wider and with that, heavier. People loved their "romance with the road" camping lifestyle and they wanted some more elbow room while doing what they loved, living out of a pickup while on the road. There was demand for bigger camper coaches for their pickup trucks. The increased weight had an ill effect in the industry because, unfortunately, many overloaded their trucks with too much of a payload for their axles and springs. so the industry worked hard to educate their sales people and dealers to promote the use of 3/4-ton rigs (or 1-ton for chassis mounts) to handle the heavy haulers.
This story is meant to focus on the formative and fun years of the slide-in camper phenomenon that swept across the country like wildfire, and to shed some light on how popular they were during the 1960s and 1970s. During their heyday every neighborhood in every town and city, or so it seemed, across America had examples of camper trucks being used by families for weekend fun and they were regularly seen parked in the driveways and side yards of people's homes in wait for the next camping trip.
Fast forward to modern times and of course there has been a great interest in all things "retro" over the past years in the RV world. One example being the increased amount of restored Airstream trailers being put back on the road, refurbished and retro-fitted with modernized creature comforts and hi-tech devices along the way. While researching this, some Autotrader-type searches were done and it was found that there are vintage "survivor" trucks with campers still out there available, and in unrestored form they can be bought at low costs for the most part. Now would a classic Camper Special truck updated with a fuel-efficient turbo diesel powerplant, 6-speed transmission with overdrive, big disc brakes on all four corners, alloy wheels, air-ride suspension (with auto leveling) and GPS navigation system be something fun and unique? And to then bolt to a modernized, completely refurbished old-school camper body that was fully re-done and refined using cutting-edge interior components including upgraded modern A/C and appliances, cherry glazed cabinets, polarized windows, hardwood flooring, solar and aqua hot heating, select-comfort bedding, power awning, backup-cameras, built-in "energy command center" generator, on-board satellite dish, multi LCD flat screens with full blue-ray entertainment center and onboard WiFi thrown in for good measure? A wide-spread new trend but as they say: hey, its happening!
