The Story

CarCamp started en route to the Florida Keys in 2014. I was fresh out of college, grossly in debt, but in dire need of some freedom and adventure. I had a friend who lived in Key Largo, so I took a road trip to visit her driving solo from Western North Carolina. 

I knew I didn't have the budget for hotels or Air BnBs and wasn't about to couch surf as a lone female traveler. With my new-to-me Subaru Forester, I decided I'd make a bed on wheels and tossed a mattress in the back. It didn't work. With only 5' of unlevel space in the back, 10" of my body hung down into the crevasse behind the front seats. 

Next, I tried laying a sheet of plywood in the back. I was successful in making a flat sleeping surface, but it pressed the front seats too far forward that I couldn't use the drivers seat. I also had no storage and, for a multi-week trip, didn't love the idea of tossing all my clothes, food and gear on top the bed. So, I raised up the piece of plywood on legs to give myself under-bed storage, and cut the front so I could hinge and fold a piece of the plywood down. Technically, it worked.  

On the 20+ hour drive (with all the detours for site seeing I'd mapped out) a plan began to form. I needed something that would fully fold out, allowing a 5'10" (or taller) person to sprawl out inside their vehicle. I also knew that I wanted it to be easily moveable and removable. I'm not a small person, but my neighbors probably had quite the laugh watching me wrangle the pieces of plywood and 2x4 legs into the car. Then I started day dreaming about how to making the whole platform modular and collapsible. How great would it be, I thought, if you could sleep in your car on the weekends, then close the kit and still use your back seats. My drive was consumed with idea after idea. By the end of the trip, I knew I was going to find a way to make this thing for myself. 

When I returned home, I sketched and designed and sketched some more. I snagged the "gocarcamp" domain and social handles. 

A few years later, after running headfirst into walls about how to produce this product, I built one with a circular saw, jigsaw and drill. It was better than the piece of plywood, but rudimentary at best. 

I wasn't satisfied and decided to buy and fully build out a van to live life on the road full time. Enter the ADHD redirect. 

Fast forward to 2022 when my travel companion, Henry the Golden Retriever, passed away from cancer. I was back in Western North Carolina full of grief and with no purpose. I came back to my CarCamp designs. I started researching how to make templates to cut out all the pieces with a router, but low and behold, a friend decided to buy a CNC machine for his business. We got to work.

Many prototypes were designed. Many failed. 

Until, finally, there was a CarCamp kit that accomplished all the goals. It was modular, moveable by a single individual, folded to accommodate the tall and very tall people, made a level sleeping space, stowed in the vehicle's cargo space AND it worked in many different vehicles. 

  

Inventing, designing and developing CarCamp has been one of the biggest challenges – and biggest successes. Seeing this product solve problems for so many people is truly an honor. CarCamp fits over 20 different models of SUVs and crossovers, with more comping (we're currently developing the Crosstrek and 4Runner models)! 

The CarCamp team can't wait to see where this kit takes you!