Travel Lite’s Rebar Takes Coaches on 4,000-Mile Road Trip

TLRV CEO Ryan Rebar took this rig, shown here on an icy mining road in Colorado, on a 4,000-mile road trip. (Photos: TLRV)

Rebar, with his snowboard and the all-new Up Country 775 truck camper in the background.

SYRACUSE, Ind. – In an effort to understand more fully the wants and needs of RV consumers and dealers, Travel Lite RV (TLRV) CEO Ryan Rebar last week embarked on a 4,000-mile road trip out west.

TLRV is in the midst of launching an all-new line of laminated truck campers and Rebar’s three-quarter-ton GMC Sierra Denali was outfitted with one of them – an Up Country 775, the floor plan of which includes a bathroom. He also was towing a Rove 14FD travel trailer outfitted with an off-road package.

“The whole purpose behind this trip is I wanted to see how these things held up,” Rebar said. “I wanted to get some dealer feedback and I wanted to get some customer feedback.”

A camper all his life, Rebar said he loves being outside and in the mountains.

“Everybody tries really hard to be in tune with their dealers and customers,” he said. “But how many guys actually go out and use these things? Go sleep in a truck camper for seven days and see what’s important. See how usable it is. Go into different campgrounds and see how quick it is to set up. Being in the position I am, where we are making decisions about what’s right for our customers, we need to be out trying these things. We should be sleeping in these coaches.”

After leaving Indiana, the first stop for the night was in Kansas, where the temperature was minus eight.

“So, minus eight? Super warm. Super comfortable,” he said. With a standard 18,000 BTU furnace, “when you set the thermostat at 72 degrees. It was 72 degrees inside that coach.”

The interior of the Up Country 775.

From Kansas, he headed northwest to Pueblo, Colo., staying at Pueblo Lake Campground before heading to Breckenridge ski resort for the weekend and stopping to meet with a few dealers along the way. Rebar is an avid snowboarder, having competed in the sport in his younger days.

“Breckenridge was really nice. I stayed right in the parking lot, which was really cool,” he said. “You can camp in the parking lots of these ski resorts, which is super nice. My first night there it was 15 below – in the snow – just crazy coming down and the camper performed flawlessly.”

He said at this point he was 1,800 miles into the trip, “on dirt roads, mining roads, all sorts of rough places. My whole purpose of this trip was just to beat the crap out of these coaches,” he said. “The shake down, right? What have we done right? What have we done wrong? What do we need to adjust?”

He believes it’s important to show that TLRV truck campers can be used in extreme conditions.

“I was parking alongside the road in the mountains when it was snowing outside and sleeping in the truck camper at negative 10,” he said.

Next stop on the trip was Park City, Utah, where he again camped in the parking lot of a ski resort, woke up in the morning and walked right to the lift.

“You’re truly able to dry camp, doing this, and staying in the truck camper was amazing,” Rebar said.

After Park City, he visited a dealership in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and began making his way back to Indiana, but ran into a bit of a problem.

The Up Country 775 floor plan.

“I got messed up heading through the Teton Pass. I had to drop the trailer and the truck camper because the weather was too bad and they wouldn’t let me pass over,” he said. “So I ended up leaving those with a dealer and heading back. But those two coaches saw 2,800 miles. The coldest it got was minus 17. They went off-road, in the dirt, in the mud, in the snow. I took them everywhere.”

The new line of truck campers is all composite construction, using no wood. The aluminum and laminated units incorporate technology used in TLRV Rove travel trailers which offers lighter weight, better seals, zero water intrusion, a better profile and affordability, he said.

The new construction eliminated about 300 pounds. Removable jacks take off another 150 pounds and if you can live without a 70-pound air conditioner, “you can get a full-size truck camper with a toilet down under 1,500 pounds. It’s amazing,” he said.

The new campers also come with a new tie-down system.

“It actually uses the tie-downs in your truck. It doesn’t use an outside tie-down,” he said. “The dealers were loving that. They don’t have to buy anything extra for the customers who take these campers because we’ve provided everything from an attachment standpoint.”

A couple of improvements were borne out of the trip, Rebar said, noting that with the new bed and cabinet design, “I want to add two lights at the head – dimmer lights, because there’s a little too much brightness up there. And we’re going to add a little step because the step getting down is too high. Outside of that, I was really impressed with this truck camper.”

The new Up Country currently is available in two floor plans – the 650, without a bathroom and a dry weight of 1,576 pounds, and the 775 with a bathroom and dry weight of 1,722.

MSRP for the 775, which Rebar took on the road trip, is $28,999.

Source: https://rvbusiness.com/travel-lites-rebar-takes-coaches-on-4000-mile-road-trip/