Loading and unloading a camper - stuff about DEMOUNTABLES

practical stuff ... loading and unloading a camper

Happijac golden rules

• Happijac's "golden rules" - a clear and well presented page from the Happijac website giving the essential dos and don'ts of loading and unloading. Sadly not all jack manufacturers follow the Happijac example of imprinting the jack leg with a 'ruler' which clearly shows how far the leg is extended and where the limit of extension is.

When loading a demountable, aligning the the pickup centrally with the camper is essential as is keeping the pickup parallel with the camper as it is reversed towards and under it. Neither task is as easy as it sounds and most demountable owners will develop some sort of technique that is appropriate to their particular combination of pickup and camper. The following owners are happy to share their ideas.

• String's Wizzo Camper Alignment Technique - a long page from Teresa Petrykowski and Sterling Udell's blog (see 'where-rv-now.com' on the odds, sods and blogs page). You'll need to scroll down to about the middle of the page to find "String's Wizzo Camper Alignment Technique" - Sterling's low-tech but reliable and accurate system for getting it right.

• Do-It-Yourself Laser Loading System - a page from Russ and Tina De Maris' blog describes their higher-tech approach to the same problem using a laser pointer from their local office supplies store.

• D.U.H loading system - another variation on the theme from FarcticOx on the RV.net forum, sadly without the images which were originally posted but the description is clear enough if you want to give it a go.

• 'Truck Camper Loading, Marital Bliss and Why I Own a Dog' - also from RV.net, BradW's delightful, tongue-in-cheek description of the camper loading process.

• United States Patent: 7891692 - 'Alignment unit for campers' - sadly not everybody is so happy to share their ideas for nothing. I presume the people who took out this patent in February this year (2011) are expecting to make some money out of it.

Once the camper is loaded of course it needs to be held in place by turnbuckles, ratchet straps, chains, or what have you. The important thing is that, whatever tie-down system is used, it is capable of coping with all of the forces that the camper will be subjected to as it travels. If you have a demountable camper and you don't know what they are, you should. This will tell you:

• Magleby report - although this report by mechanical engineer Spencer Magleby was sponsored by Happijac and, not surprisingly therefore, finds Happijac products to be beyond reproach, it nonetheless explains in detail the nature of the stresses that a camper, and its fixings, has to withstand. If you ignore the Happijac dimension it's a thorough and informative article. (You'll need Adobe Reader to read it. If you haven't already got it, you can download it free here .)

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