Back in about 1975 while still in college, I built an 8-ft cab-over camper for my shortbox 1/2-ton Dodge pickup. I used 2X4's on edge, lots of screws and glue. I bought some nice windows, and used galvanized corrugated roofing for the roof and the sides. I used lots of 1/4-inch birch plywood on the inside with overbuilt cabinets. If you like the industrial look, you would have liked it. My wife was polite, but not overly enthused.
I did not consider the weight of this creation as a good engineer should have done. But hey, I was not an engineering student, I was an Industrial Tech/Secondary Ed student, we were known to build stuff that lasted!! I have always been of the type to overbuild everything anyway and this was no different then other overbuilt project. When I finally jacked it up and put it on the truck, I could tell we had some issues. So I put some overload springs on the back, and some oversize, beefy tires. But it was not enough, the truck was weighted way to far to the back, it made the front axle rather light on the road.
We went camping in it one night, and the drive to the campground and back sealed the deal- it had to go or I had to get a bigger pickup! Getting a bigger pickup was not a viable option at the time, so I sold the camper to a fellow student who was going to live "on the cheap" in the camper. When I delivered it to him, we had it suspended rather dangerously off the ground as I drove out from under it. The 3 jacks we were using was not enough to safely handle the job, and the buyer, who was trying to man the jacks on one side of the camper opposite me had a difficult time coordinating with me to lower it gently and at the same speed. He did something out of sync with me, and it tipped over and forward, and dropped to the ground with a rather sickening sound on the lower front corner, and then fell the rest of the way down, landing on the bottom, thankfully! It could have been ugly, but even with jacks flying and the camper threatening to go over on it's side, we escaped injury.
I was not so sure about the camper. I just knew that the hit on the ground on the lower front corner would/should have split or broken something. But- it did not hurt anything, except it left a rather large dent in the hard packed gravel driveway. No windows broke, nothing was tweaked out of line, I could hardly believe it! The buyer was impressed with it's solid construction.
Like I said, sometimes it does not hurt to overbuild when you are young and a little short on experience and common sense!
