How to get a truck camper off (and on) a flatbed truck & our StableCamper System! | E98

Ever wondered how you get a truck camper off a truck? Or how you get it back on? Well, we take you through how we do this with our Host Cascade truck camper and our Ram 5500 flatbed truck!

Stuff We Use

When we leave the truck camper on the truck, we use these all the time to get the entire rig level. If we’re off side-to-side, we compensate by adding leveling blocks to the rear wheels. if we’re off front to back, we’ll add blocks either on the front or rear wheels to get us close.

We do prefer to be fairly level side-to-side and close to level front-to-back or at least “nose up” mainly due to keeping our heads up when sleeping.

When we’re taking the camper off the truck, we will also use these yellow blocks for leveling the stabilizer jacks. We will typically lower all 4 jacks at the same time and when they’re close, we use these to try and keep the jacks at the same length.

Oh, we also had originally purchased the half-size of the above blocks, but they were solid unlike the dually versions above. While we still use them but they tend to collect every bit of water, mud, dirt you can think of. So if you are looking at leveling blocks, MAKE SURE they won’t collect water!

While the jacks do sit on the dually blocks pretty well, I was always paranoid of them slipping (since these are plastic). So we ended up buying a set of 4 rubber pads. Grippy sounded like a better idea.

I was perusing on Amazon and saw these new rubber pads. These are much larger than the pads we have but might also be a good option if you’re choosing to only get the 8×8 yellow blocks (not the larger blocks we mention above).

Camco rubber blocks that you can use with the 8×8 yellow blocks (not the dually ones above)

We also use an older version of this step stool but now see that they also have an adjustable height one which looks pretty interesting!

This is the fixed version but there’s also an adjustable version!

Raising it too far?

I am ultra paranoid of having my INCREDIBLY HEAVY truck camper – it’s north of 5000 pounds – held up by 4 “sticks”. So my mental thought is to keep it as low as possible while loading or unloading.

In order to reduce the length the jacks have to extend, I usually have at least 2 of the yellow leveling blocks on each leg plus one of the rubber pads. This is needed partly due to our taller truck. We didn’t need to do that when we had our Ram 3500 (although we did because I’m paranoid!).

After watching my video, I went to the Reico Titan website and learned that each jack can handle 2500 lbs and can extend to 36″

THIRTY SIX INCHES! That’s just plain NUTS!

I’ve only raised it as far as 28″ and that was crazy stilty, I thought. And I typically raise it somewhere between 24-26″. So, technically I wouldn’t have to use the blocks. But why not, since I already have them? It seems like a safer bet to keep all that weight closer to the ground.

Stablecamper System

We installed our Stablecamper system on the truck about a year after we purchased the camper and well before we began travelling full-time. When the camper is off the truck, it can get pretty rocky without some additional level of stabilization.

I used to joke that I was glad I had sea legs when we were camping and had off-loaded the camper! It’s worse if you’re in the camper and then someone comes in or starts moving around… trust me.

So was tickled when we finally decided to buy this system. And we now couldn’t imagine having the truck camper off the truck and NOT use this. If you regularly take your camper off and are frustrated with the rockiness when moving around, definitely look into these.

The design is quite robust and pretty easy to get on and off (something you’ll need to check into if you’re looking at other systems). And they do a great job of providing brackets for stowing as well.

Bubble Gauge

Something very simple can be quite helpful, and this one fits in that category. We ended up upgrading to these after Gary ran into a mailbox and knocked our rear one off.

These are pretty nice since they give you an idea of how many blocks are needed to get level (1″ increments). A quick inexpensive way to help get your camper level both off and on the truck!