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Whereas visiting Nice Falls, Montana, a couple of years in the past, I requested a neighborhood about good spots to camp. He appeared on the Jeep I used to be driving and stated, “You’ll want a rooftop tent.” In response to the look of perplexion on my face, he continued: “Bears. You don’t need to be at snack top.”
I shopped for rooftop tents, however I by no means discovered one which justified the expense, ungainly bulk, and the few hundred kilos it added to the worst potential place on my truck. So I averted tenting in locations with bears.
Then GoFastCampers (GFC) exterior Bozeman, Montana, launched its Platform Camper for the Ford Maverick; a mixture pickup mattress topper and rooftop tent that claimed to deal with all of my reservations. The Platform Camper was gentle, appeared good, and at $7700, it price lower than comparable items. When enterprise took me again to Montana, I pinged GFC, which led to an appointment to tour the corporate’s amenities and some days with a Maverick outfitted with the corporate’s Platform Camper.
“Every part on that is designed to final endlessly and to be value restoring,” GFC co-founder Graeme MacPherson stated concerning the Platform Camper. This assertion applies to the 620-some-odd bits that go into each Platform Camper.
“The first design ethos of our product is to not look horrible in your truck. You would not be embarrassed to indicate up with the Maverick wherever in a metropolis,” MacPherson continued. The totally assembled and put in Platform Camper hits an approachable center floor between two aesthetics that will disconcert urbanites: van down by the river and tactical prepper.
How the Platform Camper Is Made
GFC buys aluminum tubing and rods, then produces its personal elements to show them right into a Platform Camper. In a comfy metal constructing room known as “Machine City,” Haas Automation CNC machines mill aluminum elements from uncooked inventory.
The items for an entire camper are lower, milled, drilled, and polished collectively, then positioned into their respective slots on a single cart reserved for a person buyer’s Platform Camper. GFC doesn’t construct a Platform Camper till ten days previous to set up.
I have been on loads of manufacturing unit excursions, and the whole lot I noticed on this tour of GFC’s amenities spoke of high quality. Lasers lower the patterns for the 300D denier ripstop material earlier than extra lasers weld the panels and the anodizing on aluminum elements meets architectural requirements, so gadgets corresponding to brackets and hinges received’t fade or flip purple after years within the solar. Moreover, the corporate matches a strong UV safety movie to the translucent composite honeycomb roof panel. And that is simply scratching the floor.
The Platform Camper comprises no natural supplies. As an alternative, the rig depends on composites and milled elements as a method of enhancing the camper’s power with out including pointless mass. GFC made a video that reveals the aluminum spaceframe mattress topper supporting a 5000-pound static load.
In the meantime, the camper’s pop-up tent consists of tracks across the roof’s perimeter, which permit customers to put in equipment corresponding to crossbars or an awning. The rig’s prime is able to supporting as much as 800 kilos with the tent stowed, and 75 kilos with the tent deployed.
GFC claims its Maverick-compatible Platform Camper weighs round 250 kilos—a meager chunk out of the Maverick’s 1500-pound payload capability. The topper panels can be found in 9 colours at no additional price.
Set up, in the meantime, runs $175. That is if it is completed in Bozeman. Go for one in all seven different obtainable areas situated throughout the nation, and that sum rises to as little as $600 and as a lot as $1299. The Platform Camper we borrowed for a couple of days rang in at $8689. That sum included the aforementioned $175 set up charge, $525 value of tent home windows, and a $289 Mantis Claws ladder.
Platform Tenting
It took one procuring journey to search out my sole gripe with the Platform Camper: the exceptionally fiddly key cylinders on the six locks securing the topper panels, none of which simply accepted the important thing every time I tried to lock or unlock a given panel. That stated, the whole lot else concerning the Platform Camper felt well-built and of top quality.
The camper roof sits 6.5 inches above the Maverick’s shark fin antenna. Save for the occasional chirp when the wind hit the truck excellent, I’d have by no means recognized there was a camper nesting within the compact pickup’s mattress. GFC reviews the Platform Camper cuts a few miles per gallon from the Maverick’s gasoline economic system.
I first tried the camper as an workplace, stopping on the Pilot Journey Heart south of Nice Falls, Mountain and promptly getting on a Zoom name. It took roughly 90 seconds to lift the tent and rearrange the composite, modular mattress panels to play the a part of a standing desk for my laptop computer. With the assembly over, I promptly locked the whole lot up and was again on the street in lower than two minutes.
I had only one evening obtainable to really camp within the Platform Camper. A chilly entrance made my time on the Residence Gulch campground extra treacherous than anticipated, with high-speed gusts cascading down from the ridge above my campsite rocking the Maverick.
Sub-50-degree Fahrenheit temperature solely added to the problem of falling asleep within the soft-sided and uninsulated tent of GFC’s Platform Camper. Despite this, the rig by no means confirmed any indicators of misery because of the subpar climate. I heard not a single creak or rattle throughout my evening within the camper.
Because of the sleeping bag I introduced with me, I discovered no challenge with the skinny two-inch thick reminiscence foam mattress of the Platform Camper. Extra discerning sleepers may need to deliver further padding with them previous to calling it an evening within the Platform Camper.
That stated, I wanted GFC outfitted the tent with some further small-item storage corresponding to a pouch or two sewn into the partitions. Likewise, the Platform Camper would profit from a lantern-friendly strap on the inside portion of the tent’s roof.
After three hours of shivering and swaying within the bluster, I known as it quits and drove to Helena. Don’t fret, although, as a result of I plan to move again to Montana with my very own truck to repeat this identical take a look at. Solely subsequent time, I plan to spend not less than one full evening tenting within the GFC Platform Camper. Climate or bears be damned.
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