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Ten days in a Four Wheel Pop-Up Camper

Tony Barthel

Today’s review of the Four Wheel Pop Up Campers Hawk model is very, very different in a lot of ways. The biggest change in this is that I got to spend ten days in the camper touring some wonderful spots on the west coast.

Life experience

While I often do these reviews from the standpoint of either seeing the rigs in person or seeing a well done video of them (thank you Josh Winters!) this one was done having borrowed the camper and spent almost two weeks out on the road with it. It certainly gave me a unique perspective and appreciation for it and the pickup camper lifestyle.

This was not unlike how I used to do reviews of new vehicles. The vehicle manufacturers had fleets of press vehicles that they would provide to we journalists specifically so we could write in-depth reviews. It was pretty cool.

Well, so was getting a new car every week.

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Four Wheel Pop Up Campers

Based in Woodland, California, since 1971 Four Wheel Pop Up Campers builds one thing - pop-up campers for the backs of trucks. The trucks that get the campers can range from mid-sized trucks like the Toyota Tacoma to what we had, a big, beefy Ford F350 four-wheel-drive diesel. The company also makes a lot of models for flat-bed trucks which provides more space and makes the rig almost like a Class C sorta kinda.

My experience started in their factory watching the company put together the campers themselves. Actually, it really started in their showroom where you could tour several dozen campers of various sizes and configurations to get an idea of what you might want for your own camper.

From there it was out to the shop where my wife got to lift a fully finished welded aluminum frame - they’re really light. From the frame they skin them in aluminum, either corrugated or smooth-sided, and then finish out the interiors based on customer choices.

On the subject of aluminum, the pop-up roof is a single piece of the stuff so leaks aren’t nearly as likely.

What’s inside

The model we got (see floor plan illustration) featured a three-person dining space on the camp side and a camp kitchen on the road side.

When my wife, Peggy, and I planned this trip we had no idea how much cargo capacity there was so she packed very, very light. But we still had 10 days on the road so there was a good amount of just stuff.

The first impression in the camper is that the cabinets and drawers inside swallowed up everything we brought with ease, except the clothing. Those stayed in two big duffel bags and moved from inside the camper to inside the cab.

We also had a cooler full of food for a week and the 12 volt DC compressor fridge swallowed it up and could have held more. One of the tricks we used to minimize space was to buy eggs in a carton rather than as eggs, for example. So space was utilized carefully.

Tricks of the trip

The model we had did not have a microwave which is seemingly un-American (also no TV!) but, believe me America, this isn’t bad. For example, a friend gave us an incredible meal that he smoked and I reheated it by using the sauce pan that I filled with water, putting a frying pan over that and then “tenting” the whole thing in aluminum foil.

Voila - no microwave needed and the food came out beautifully. We also fed our coffee addiction with our Aeropress which makes for wonderful coffee.

Our popular story about the Aeropress - the ultimate camping coffee maker

This rig had 160 watts of solar on the roof which kept the two AGM batteries topped up every day with one exception. Remember the 12 volt fridge? Well on a day where it reached 92° F that sucker was working in a camper painted black so it wanted more battery power than was available. However, I brought my Jackery with me and fed the camper’s power needs that way.

Our review of the Jackery 1500

In fact I also used the Jackery to charge both our new eBikes - the more uses I find for that thing the more I’m liking it.

Sleep tight….ly

There is a bed above the cab as you would expect in a pickup camper and Four Wheel Pop Up Campers has done a clever job of making this bed expandable from a full-sized to a king-sized bed. It’s a really slick arrangement.

But two fat folks made the decision to have one above the cab, Peggy, and one on the dinette. I will say the cushions Four Wheel Campers have chosen were the one sticking point, to my taste. They felt almost park bench-like in their firmness.

However I bought a mattress pad that I will use in our vintage trailer so it’s all good and that worked out fine in the end.

One of the places we visited was Benton Hot Springs, where you can camp right at the spring-fed hot tub sites.

Observations

This camper had a 20 gallon fresh water tank and no gray tank, although there was a plastic folding container and the sink had a drain into this. I actually ended up really liking this arrangement - no making a big production of dumping the tank. I could either dump it down a sink in a bathroom or it could be dumped on the grass since I used eco-friendly soaps.

While there are models that can be had with showers and toilets, this was not one of those. There was the Go Anywhere toilet included which I wrote about. There’s also an outdoor shower that draws from the water heater so, depending on the circumstances, this could actually work quite well.

We ended-up staying at developed camp spots almost the whole trip with one night’s exception and that was a clothing-optional place so nobody was offended by someone trying out the outdoor shower. Yes, I do have photos. No, I’m not going to share them.

Putting the top up and down is an easy proposition. They’ve done a great job of making it easy with a clever design that includes gas struts to help facilitate the operation.

Several of our nights in the desert were really, really windy and while the material between the lower half and the top of the camper did blow a bit, we were comfortable inside.

In fact I really liked the three-layer top material that featured Velcro attachments for the inner layer, protective layer and clear layer. The way this is done is another example of how this camper is very, very well thought out. You can expose half the clear layer, fully cover it or open the whole thing up which really made for nice cross-breezes.

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More thoughts

Speaking of wind and breezes and such, another big plus of this is that you can buy the truck to suit your circumstances. This was on a lifted diesel one-ton truck but you could also put this same camper on a half-ton truck with a small diesel engine and get pretty good fuel mileage. Or, a half-ton truck with a gas engine and the company guesstimates that the fuel economy hit would only be about 1-2 miles per gallon. Not bad.

My point in this is that we drove through the desert where high winds stopped other RVs from traveling for a while but this big truck with the camper that didn’t have such a huge surface area wasn’t affected by the cross winds at all.

We also had several lunches in a single parking space at a store and didn’t bother raising the top at all. Yes, the headroom with the top down is minimal but both of us could sit at the dinette and have lunch and we only took up a single parking space.

Further, not having some huge RV to drive or tow meant we could travel at whatever the speed limit was. While I don’t go above 65 with a travel trailer behind me, there were roads with higher posted limits and I drove with traffic.

One of the striking things about these is that you bring your own truck which means if you have a pickup already, you’re almost certainly able to put one of these on it. The campers themselves aren’t horribly expensive and this seems far, far better than many Class B RVs as you could get a truck with four-wheel-drive if that’s something you’re interested in.

Further, when the truck needs maintenance you can easily remove the camper and still stay in it while the truck’s getting work done. Try that with a Class C.

Final thoughts

In the attached video there are some shots of the company’s showroom in Woodland, CA along with the factory there as well. I will say these are very well made as is evidenced by them lending this thing out to folks like myself. I hope we cared for it well, but I know that not all do and it was still solid as a rock.

I also won’t share much about the pickup itself because this is an area where you can choose one to suit yourself, or bring one you already own.

Since we’re used to a travel trailer and having more space, it was a challenge to adjust to this smaller space at first but, by the end of the trip, we are actually considering buying one of these for ourselves.

Yes. We have a travel trailer on order and will still get that. But this would be a great quick trip machine or one where we could leave the travel trailer and then use the camper to explore more distant spots. In fact the model we’re considering is called the “Model M” which is essentially an empty shell with a pop-up top. We could use this for cargo or for camping with our camping gear inside.

I could also use this as an office space so I could get a smaller trailer after all, which simplifies a lot of things. I love options.

I had mentioned not liking the Go Anywhere toilet but we did buy a Camco portable toilet which will also find its way into our vintage camper build and that solved that problem.

There are a lot of examples of how it’s clear that Four Wheel Pop Up Campers’ decision makers actually use these rigs themselves. Attention to detail like positive latches on cabinets and drawers, the way the space is designed and the material choices show that these aren’t just designed to keep some corporate accountant happy.

In fact the company has a number of people who regularly camp, and some who even live, in these that help tell the story. I have to admit if the company is working on building a fan base you can add me to that list for a variety of reasons.

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