Escapees May-June 2023

Opening the patio on our open-box toy hauler brings the beautiful light and breezes of the out doors right into our rig, transforming the interior completely. It feels a bit like being on a covered deck. The open-box fl oor plan requires that we drive our side-by-side right into our living room, but the advantage is that we have a very spacious 16' garage in a relatively short 33' fi fth-wheel trailer.

The advantage of an enclosed garage is that the mess of the toys doesn’t barge into your living room. The disadvantage is that in order to have a garage long enough for a large toy, such as a side-by-side, the garage must be at least 12-feet-long (the last 18" of the fl oor is ramped). This makes for a very long trailer end to end, usually over 40 feet. An open-box design allows for the overall trailer length to be much shorter because the garage transforms into living space once the toys have been unloaded, thanks to moveable furniture. Most travel-trailer toy haulers are open-box style. However, only a few manufacturers build open-box, fi fth-wheel toy haulers. Genesis Supreme, of California, builds them exclusively. We bought their 28CRT model which has a 16' garage and is 33' long from end to end. Pros and Cons of Open-Box Designs Although driving a side-by-side into your living room sounds unappealing, we have found that the longer garage and shorter overall trailer length has been a happy trade-off. Toy haulers typically have huge fresh-water tanks so the toys can be washed while boondocking. Ours holds 100 gallons, but it is not uncommon to see fresh-water capacities of 150 gallons or more. A quick

“Most modern toy haulers have a ramp door that can also be set up as a back patio. When you deploy the patio, you e ff ectively open up the entire end wall of the rig to the outdoors…”

wipe-down of the RZR before loading is oftensuf fi cient or, being street legal, we can drive it to a car wash if it’s really dirty. It’s the movable furniture, though, that makes all the difference. In order to fi t the toy(s) in the rig, every piece of furniture must be moved out of the way. Almost all toy haulers come with a powered Happijac bunk-bed system at the back. The top bunk has a queen size mattress and the lower bunk, which is made up of two foldaway couches that face each other, becomes a full-size bed. This is ideal for party situations during the day and for housing guests and/ or kids overnight. Our lifestyle doesn’t involve either, so we generally keep the bunk beds raised up, except for naps, and we don’t use those two couches.

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May/June 2023 ESCAPEES Magazine