INDUSTRIAL DUTY CAMPER SHELL

Your typical $1200 to $1500 deluxe camper shell is made of fiberglass, [or tin on 3/4"x1.5" stapled wood framing], has low-security breakable glass windows, and may very well collapse if you sit on it . . . but it has beautiful paint.  It's ONLY good for keeping rain and wind off your cargo, and looking pretty.  This is my design for high-security, heavy-duty industrial-commercial  use.  The top is a cargo deck which easily carries a ton of plywood laid flat  [more than the truck supension] and you still have room to LOCK your tools up behind narrow unbreakable lexan windows.  A bullet-proof job-site work-horse . . . designed and built by a working carpenter . . . for working carpenters and contractors.  It also functions as a superb two-man mobil scaffold or work-platform.  I've never seen ANY other camper shell even close to this well built.  You could set another TRUCK on top of it and carry it around.  This one was planned work-ugly from the start, but if you used stained-and-varnished marine plywood with stainless hardware, the same design would be even stronger, as well as extraordinarily beautiful, and rival luxury wood craftsman-built boats in looks.

Heavy duty cargo tie-down eye-bolts are securely mounted in over 2" of solid wood.  The framed opening is a snoot-door for a big dawg.  The side window is 6"x12" of 1/4" lexan.  You can smash it with a two pound hammer and it doesn't care.  To remove it, you would have to pry it out of the frame, and you still couldn't get inside.  The top deck is a perfectly flat cargo and work surface.  You can see I was using it for a painting platform.  20 sheets of plywood on top is NOT a problem at all.

The rear hatch normally rides on top for easy unobstructed access.  The only thing projecting above the surface of the top deck are the hinge barrels of the hatch hinges.

The rear and center joists are 1.5"x5.5" framing lumber.  The plywood is all 3/4" exterior.

When I tried to drive into the parking garage with the BodyRollerA on the top . . . I tore the rear hatch right off the camper shell.  No problem!  I moved the hinges over a few inches and put it back together.  When you build it right to start with, it's easy to repair because you have something real to work with.  The rear window is 6"x36" of 1/4" lexan.  You can't smash it, and even if you pry it out, you still can't get in.  The hardware is all extra heavy duty galvanized steel. 

The doggy snoot-doors close and lock.  Heavy duty cargo hooks high and low secure everything.  This shell is between two and three years old, and has been parked out in the weather all that time.  It's been used for dump runs, cargo, building materials, shopping, a construction scaffold and painting platform, camping, and everything else we needed it to do.  All the joints are glued and screwed.  Most of the pipe-foam head protector has been removed where the center joist is cleaner.  The shell bolts to the truck bed with the 8 lower cargo-eye-bolts.