Hambone’s Crawler Hauler

Malburg114 · Aug 7, 2025

So late last year I sold my truck camper and picked up an enclosed trailer after wanting more room, a shower and toilet. I looked for a while before finding this 32ft enclosed Haulmark Edge trailer. It was between Truckee and Sacramento area and I ran up on a random day off to grab it. It was between two snow storms and I had to go over donner pass but luckily made it before the big storm at the time and went up and back in a day.

Pictures of the old truck camper and the night I picked up the enclosed. I’d never driven with a gooseneck let alone an enclosed trailer this size and doing it at night in the rain and snow was interesting. But hauled it the 500 miles home without issue.

I picked up a gen y offset gooseneck hitch to work with the gooseneck prep package my truck had come with.

Malburg114 · Aug 7, 2025

Overall I was happy with the trailer. The seller swore it was solid and showed me what he said was the only rust in the rear door square tubing above a hinge and I wasn’t overly concerned. It was pouring rain when I arrived so I didn’t do much looking other than checking lights and tires. Some pictures of when I got home after I hosed it off and wiped it down.

Malburg114 · Aug 7, 2025

And then made sure the crawler fit and that it fit where I planned to park it. Which it did with enough room to get the rhino and lawn mower around the open trailer. But the gates are small and was pretty hard to back in as our streets are super narrow.

Malburg114 · Aug 7, 2025

And now the bad. While in Reno getting dinner I crawler under it to inspect my new buy. The trailer rust was much worse than I was told/thought.

Seller told me it had new tires, lights worked, brakes worked, and no frame rust besides at the back.

Well the tires were new, most the lights worked but the entire driver side has the wiring broke for the brakes. No big deal. But while under the trailer, I noticed there was no paint on the frame at all. A few crossmembers where tweaked from someone hitting a rock and the worst was the entire rear driver side wall at the bottom was rusted out.

I later learned it’s due to a horrible design flaw of 2 angle irons for the walls make a “u” and holding all the dirt and water and road salt the tired kick up and it just rotted most of the lower half of the wall studs away. Some of the rust was so bad it was actually eating and corroding the aluminum siding away.

I was already 150 miles from the guys house and it was snowing pretty good on donner pass so I accepted the fact I got duped and drove home determined to fix it.

Malburg114 · Aug 7, 2025

A month pasted and then I pulled the trailer into the driveway and tore into it. I decided to cut the siding 10-12 inches up or so (can’t remember the exact number I did) and fix all the rust. Plan was cut out the old angle iron and replace with new and then use some 1x6” rectangle tube to fix the bottom of the studs. I also bought some 1/8 strap I used to repair any holes. It took a bunch of time and cutting but it got done and painted.

I guess I didn’t take any pictures but all the angle iron at the bottom was replaced and essentially cut the entire bottoms off

Malburg114 · Aug 7, 2025

I then moved onto making it a camper. My dad came down for a week and helped frame out the bathroom and do the plumbing. I got the tanks mounted which I was able to find some 40 gallon tanks that fit perfectly between the frame and crossmembers. I used one for fresh water and one for gray and the. A 15 gallon black. I’d like to add another 40 gallons for fresh and then get a black water tote for a few more days without having to worry about dumping the black or refilling the fresh.

Malburg114 · Aug 7, 2025

We re sheeted the bottoms with some aluminum and put the aluminum trim back on. It needs new outside fenders but overall I was happy. He got the bathroom walls covered and door in and we got the shower pan and walls in as well.

I ordered a drop in propane instant hot water heater which mounted in the front and turned out nice as well and I had some live edge I used for a sink counter top. I put a small bar sink in it

Wheel wells needed 45d to make it easier to drive over.

Malburg114 · Aug 7, 2025

Then I packed it full and we headed to koh. It worked great. The ventless propane blue flame kept us warm and the shower and toilet worked great. We ran out of water despite bringing 12 more gallons on the 3rd day (my dad and I each showered each day so about 3 gallons per shower) and we filled the black tank by the 4th hence the want for the extra fresh water tank for 40 more gallons and the black water tote which should allow us to go 6-8 ish days without hook ups.

I only had a 2k generator from harbor freight and it worked for what we needed on that trip but needed something bigger for the ac and to run the insta pot on anything besides air fry.

Malburg114 · Aug 7, 2025

Overall I was extremely happy with how it worked. There was small details to work out but that’ll all come with time.

I picked up a 3500 predator generator and it runs the ac good and some windows but haven’t had time to put them in.

At some point before koh I picked up a wireless back up camera which helped see behind me and the truck towed it great with just having air bags added.

Plans for the future are some cabinets above the sink and on the bathroom walls and doors on the sink
Finish the inside of the bathroom.
Some carpet under the bed in the gooseneck.
Some flooring outside the bathroom area
Clean up the diamond flooring
Move the e trac to useable locations
Paint the inside walls
Clean up the outside paint
Outside shower (already ran the plumbing)
Another 40 gallons of fresh water

Malburg114 · Aug 7, 2025

It sat since koh due to working on the new car but tacos on the rubicon is next week so I started getting it ready. I always thought it looked beat from the dull aluminum so picked up a da from harbor freight and some aluminum polish and chemical cleaner and spent a morning “polishing” some of it. Overall I was happy and touched up some of the white and black paint. I need to touch up some more paint on the back door and I have new reflective paint to put on at some point.

Weasel · Aug 8, 2025

nice!

Malburg114 · Aug 8, 2025

Few more hours this morning. Hosed it off and wiped it down. Painted the wheels and cleaned out the inside. Filled the water tank and found a broken pressure relief valve on the water heater so waiting on one of those. Greased the hubs. I’ll load the crawler and camping gear tomorrow and it’ll be ready.

GLTHFJ60 · Aug 14, 2025

Hell yeah.

Are you planning on ducting AC up to the bedrom or do you have a second unit I missed in the pics?

tribal4krawler · Aug 14, 2025

sweet build. I really like how you did the drive over fenders. Such a simple but effective solution. I might steal the idea for my enclosed.

welndmn · Aug 15, 2025

Awesome!
I had to mount an extra water tank on my RV, I just used an extra water pump to pump the 2nd tank into the main tank. Sure, it's not automatic, but it's easy and pumps 20 gallons in 7-8 minutes.

Malburg114 · Aug 19, 2025

GLTHFJ60 said:
Hell yeah.

Are you planning on ducting AC up to the bedrom or do you have a second unit I missed in the pics?

So far haven’t needed the ac yet but my guess is I’ll have to run some sort of duct up there from one of the ac vents. Only good thing is for the ac to run the generator needs to be on which means the 110 outlets work and i put one in the upper bed to run a fan which may be enough.

Malburg114 · Aug 19, 2025

welndmn said:
Awesome!
I had to mount an extra water tank on my RV, I just used an extra water pump to pump the 2nd tank into the main tank. Sure, it's not automatic, but it's easy and pumps 20 gallons in 7-8 minutes.

My plan was just to connect the output from the main tank to the spare tank with a “t”. May take a little longer to fill but should work fine and just let gravity do it’s thing. If that doesn’t work I’ll put a pump and do same as you described and gives me a spare pump.

white-rhino · Aug 19, 2025

Looks good.

Malburg114 · Aug 19, 2025

Another 1000 mile round trip in it. Hauled it to Tahoma for the tacos on the rubicon con. Almost didn’t bring it but was well worth it being able to sleep in it and shower with how dusty the trail was. And no bears broke in which I have a track record with bears breaking into ****. Averaged right around 10mpg over the 1000 miles doing 70-73 mph.

And my dad and I slept in it on the drive home to split up the drive. I stayed up top and he slept on a bed roll just outside the bathroom/in front of the truck so it was good knowing we can pull over anywhere and sleep/use everything.

One of the plastic/rubber covers for the bearing buddies split and threw grease everywhere and one of the tires was wearing a little weird but that’s the only thing I saw wrong.

Camped just outside of tonopah for the night

ridered3 · Sep 24, 2025

Always enjoy a good enclosed gooseneck crawler hauler/toy hauler build! Thanks for sharing!

What else is up your sleeves for this one?

YoungFerdMan · Feb 13, 2026

Malburg114 said:
So late last year I sold my truck camper and picked up an enclosed trailer after wanting more room, a shower and toilet. I looked for a while before finding this 32ft enclosed Haulmark Edge trailer. It was between Truckee and Sacramento area and I ran up on a random day off to grab it. It was between two snow storms and I had to go over donner pass but luckily made it before the big storm at the time and went up and back in a day.

Pictures of the old truck camper and the night I picked up the enclosed. I’d never driven with a gooseneck let alone an enclosed trailer this size and doing it at night in the rain and snow was interesting. But hauled it the 500 miles home without issue.

I picked up a gen y offset gooseneck hitch to work with the gooseneck prep package my truck had come with.

For those amber fog lights on the Ram… did you just get drop in bulbs, or a new housing? Can’t find a thread on the Ram

Malburg114 · Feb 13, 2026

YoungFerdMan said:
For those amber fog lights on the Ram… did you just get drop in bulbs, or a new housing? Can’t find a thread on the Ram

Trucks just a tradesman so didn’t have fog lights. Should be the fog light kit from diode dynamics. I wired them to come on with the running lights.

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