I'm not fully nomadic, but I generally do a month on the road and a month back at a place I rent for cheap.

I've been slowly building out a 10-foot cargo trailer similar to this: https://www.trailersplus.com/Nevada/Las_Vegas/6-Wide-Cargo-T...

I got laid off at the start of Covid, but I had enough money saved up that I wasn't in a hurry to get a new job. I looked at lots of manufactured trailers and considered vans as well.

Vans are great because you always have everything with you, but that also means you always have everything with you. Trailers are great because you can drop them and just have a normal car, but then you have to find somewhere to drop them. In the end, I went with a trailer because they're a lot cheaper and I didn't want to go cutting holes in van.

I'd initially planned on getting a manufactured trailer, but all the ones I looked at didn't seem worth the money. The real deal breaker for me was I wanted to do a lot of camping near ski areas and cheaper trailers (sub-$50k) all have plumbing outside the insulated area. I didn't really want to spend $30-50k and then not be able to use the plumbing.

Driving back from an RV dealership, I saw someone pulling a U-Haul and that got me wondering. Sure enough, there's tons of content on youtube of people building out cargo trailers. I actually started by renting a U-Haul for a week and camping out of it in the middle of winter. It wasn't great, but it worked.

At this point, I'm pretty happy with the choice I made, but it's been a ton of work and lots of uncertainty. It's a lot less stressful cutting a hole in a $5k trailer vs a $20-70k van, but it's still pretty stressful. I basically knew nothing about building when I started out. You can just start camping in a cargo trailer right away and it's still better than a tent ... or a teardrop trailer imo.

I've come up with lots of tricks along the way and at some point I'll blog about them. I still have a million ideas I want to try building too though.

I have some pics and stories on my photoblog (another thing I'm working on): https://photoblog.mallocs.net/

user:	mallocs13
created:	March 16, 2020
karma:	3