Can your fifth-wheel enabled pickup carry a truck camper?

It's a problem for those who own too many RVs. We fulltimed in a fifth wheel for several years, but yearned for the "old days" when we flitted around the countryside, going anywhere we wanted with a truck camper. So now we have a fifth wheel, a travel trailer, and a truck camper. What to do about hauling the truck camper when the pickup bed is tied up with fifth wheel hitch equipment?

The first line, of course, is to pull the fifth wheel hitch out of the truck bed. That's easy enough, but still you're burdened with the hitch rails in the bed of the truck. When we first brought home our new "project" truck camper, we simply loaded into the truck bed, right over the top of the fifth wheel rails. Not a great idea--the poor camper rocked back and forth, giving everybody in the truck a new spin on the term, "vertigo."

With a measuring tape, we soon discovered that the bed rails in the truck were three-quarters of an inch high in the bed. With a little bit of work with the skill saw, we soon chopped up a piece of three-quarter plywood, making the pieces fit around the hitch rails, thus "leveling out the playing field." We made sure we got quality, exterior plywood. Even so, the sun took its toll on the plywood: After a year of baking in the sun, the plywood was trying hard to deteriorate. So it's not a bad idea to take the extra time and effort and hit your new "decking" with a couple of coats of high quality paint--porch and deck paint might not be such a bad idea, to stand up to the wear and tear.

Since then, we've found a permanent place to moore the fifth wheel, and simply pulled the fifth wheel hitch rails out of the truck. Yep, it'll be a major hassle when the fiver has to be moved again, but we're going back in places we'd never be able to get the Old Girl into--and getting out again without scratching the paint!