[quote=Susan]
Re: the pickup trailer. My brother wants to put together one of these. Other than the advantage of cannibalization, it seems there are better ways to go. I've camped in the back of a pickup with a shell. It's not too bad for one person, if you have a 24-30" wide piece of plywood from side to side behind the cab for gear, but for family, no.

If you look at one of those trailers that have a flat floor without the wheelwells, there is no comparison in floor space. And if you customized it with folddown bunks and storage, you could carry an incredible amount of gear AND house your whole family. And if your tow vehicle had a camper shell on it, you could carry even more.

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One of the reasons I had to move up to a full size truck was because of having a family, the small/mid sized extended cab didn't have enough room for the car seats in the back and the quad cab small/mid sized trucks have a real short bed and an extended cab full size has more cab space and gets the same mpg. The plus side on the full size is the bed is 6.5' long which makes it bood for sleeping in and I have 4' between the wheelwells so two can sleep side by side easily. I measued my queen mattress at home and its 52" wide, our full size in the spare room is 48 so a full size truck bed is equivalent to a full size (sleeping) bed. So its comfortable for two adults and if we did have to evac/shelter sometime in the near future I would probably have my 1 year old sleep in his car seat, he has slept in it on long trips before so its wouldn't be any different. Either that or move the gear from under the back seat and it lifts giving a flat floor there. If its not hurricane weather then we put up the tent and set up his pack and play like we did camping last summer (which I used as a stealth evac/bug out test and have another planned in a couple months).