Outdoors

Tiny camping trailer is an ultralight exo backpack for car and bike

Tiny camping trailer is an ultralight exo backpack for car and bike
This little camper duo might look tiny, but with a Skycamp 3.0 on the trailer and a Skycamp 3.0 Mini on the Hyundai Venue, it sleeps up to six people up high
This little camper duo might look tiny, but with a Skycamp 3.0 on the trailer and a Skycamp 3.0 Mini on the Hyundai Venue, it sleeps up to six people up high
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The Road Warrior Adventurer can work as a lightweight cargo trailer or as a light camper
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The Road Warrior Adventurer can work as a lightweight cargo trailer or as a light camper
The optional storage drawer adds more organization
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The optional storage drawer adds more organization
Instead of a dual-burner gas stove or induction cooktop, Road Warrior offers lighter, more portable Enki fan-assisted biomass stoves
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Instead of a dual-burner gas stove or induction cooktop, Road Warrior offers lighter, more portable Enki fan-assisted biomass stoves
The lids on the side boxes fold down to double as tabletops for work and storage
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The lids on the side boxes fold down to double as tabletops for work and storage
The Enki weighs just 507 pounds empty, making it a good option for small cars, trikes and even some motorcycles
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The Enki weighs just 507 pounds empty, making it a good option for small cars, trikes and even some motorcycles
With its 628-pound static weight rating, the Adventurer rack can hold a few slumbering campers
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With its 628-pound static weight rating, the Adventurer rack can hold a few slumbering campers
This little camper duo might look tiny, but with a Skycamp 3.0 on the trailer and a Skycamp 3.0 Mini on the Hyundai Venue, it sleeps up to six people up high
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This little camper duo might look tiny, but with a Skycamp 3.0 on the trailer and a Skycamp 3.0 Mini on the Hyundai Venue, it sleeps up to six people up high
Road Warrior's new Adventurer trailer is ready to haul some serious gear
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Road Warrior's new Adventurer trailer is ready to haul some serious gear
Road Warrior put the Adventurer prototype to the test behind a Honda motorcycle
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Road Warrior put the Adventurer prototype to the test behind a Honda motorcycle
Bike camp
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Bike camp
Even when fully loaded to its 1,322-lb gross vehicle weight rating, the Road Warrior Adventurer is a light, easily towable little trailer
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Even when fully loaded to its 1,322-lb gross vehicle weight rating, the Road Warrior Adventurer is a light, easily towable little trailer
Moto-camping the American West with the Road Warrior Adventurer prototype
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Moto-camping the American West with the Road Warrior Adventurer prototype
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We've seen a few compact tent-top box trailers out of Australia over the years, but the all-new Adventurer from Road Warrior Campers takes the "smallest of the bunch" cake. Well under 10 feet from hitch to bumper and just over 500 lb on the scales, the trailer comes ready to be towed by a larger motorcycle, trike or small car. Of course, you could pull it with a diesel truck, too, but you might just be tempted to pick it up and throw it inside the pickup box.

With a personal history of trailer-touring the open road atop a Yamaha FJ Sport, Road Warrior founder Kris Umhauer set out to build a light, compact bike-specific trailer in 2016. He didn't take the task lightly, putting several years of R&D into the project before putting the trailer through a rigorous test behind a 2017 Harley Davidson Ultra on a meandering, 8,500-mile (13,680-km) tour from the California Coast to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally that also took in stops as out of the way as the Grand Canyon and Memphis.

Road Warrior put the Adventurer prototype to the test behind a Honda motorcycle
Road Warrior put the Adventurer prototype to the test behind a Honda motorcycle

After getting peppered with questions about the possibility of towing it behind virtually every make/model of small crossover, Umhauer ultimately decided to focus Road Warrior's marketing on small cars and trikes more so than motorcycles. In a Facebook post, he makes clear that the empty trailer is still light enough for a bike, with a width purposefully sized to fit within the bike's track, but stresses that it'll require a bigger bike like his own Ultra or a Honda Goldwing. Road Warrior is working on an even smaller, lighter motorcycle-specific version.

Given that motorcycles of all shapes and sizes make up only around 5 percent of registered vehicles in Australia, focusing on cars first seems the most logical decision, especially since users will likely load the trailers up with rooftop tents, cooking gear, luggage, sports gear and all manner of other provisions that would quickly overload a motorcycle's towing capabilities. And as a car trailer, the Adventurer becomes an absolute featherweight rather than a trailer that might be light enough for your bike.

Oftentimes, camping trailers look tiny when standing on their own out in an empty parking lot, but then stand just as tall as the tow vehicle, if not taller. The Adventurer really is as low as it looks, measuring just 4.7 ft (144 cm) high with its crossbar rack lowered down in drive mode. Without anything mounted on top, it's quite visibly shorter than the 5.1-ft (155-cm) Venue, the tiniest of Hyundai's seemingly bottomless pool of American and Australian crossovers and SUVs. With the iKamper Skycamp 3.0 mounted on top, as in some of the photos, the Adventurer measures closer to 6 ft (1.8 m) high.

Even when fully loaded to its 1,322-lb gross vehicle weight rating, the Road Warrior Adventurer is a light, easily towable little trailer
Even when fully loaded to its 1,322-lb gross vehicle weight rating, the Road Warrior Adventurer is a light, easily towable little trailer

As far as overall length goes, the Adventurer measures a mere 7.4 ft (2.3 m) long to the tip of its tongue, well shorter than most other tiny camper trailers, including the 8.5-ft (2.6-m) HEO T3, 10-ft (3-m) wagon-wheeled SportsRig TrailStomper, 10.2-ft (3.1-m) Kleox Shelter and 10.7-ft (3.3-m) Taxa Woolly Bear. At 507 lb (230 kg) empty, the Adventurer is as light or lighter than those other trailers, with the exception of the TrailStomper, which now lists in at 450 lb (204 kg), a bit heavier than it was billed at when we first covered it in 2019.

Like many a compact cargo box trailer designed to accommodate a rooftop tent (RTT), the Adventurer includes an upper rack with crossbars. A little different than average, its box-tube steel rack's supports extend down to the chassis rather than the top of the cargo box, lending the appearance of an exoskeleton. The upper rack is adjustable via its liftable, strut-assist supports, tilting forward toward the tow vehicle to clear room for opening the rear hatch door or rising straight up to its 5.6 ft (1.7 m) max height to maintain access into the central cargo box while also lifting the available awning and RTT higher off the ground. The rack is rated for up to 220 lb (100 kg) when driving or 628 lb (285 kg) when parked.

The Road Warrior Adventurer can work as a lightweight cargo trailer or as a light camper
The Road Warrior Adventurer can work as a lightweight cargo trailer or as a light camper

In addition to the exo-rack, the Adventurer offers four sides worth of storage space. The main 1,150-L central body compartment is accessed at the rear via the lift-up top hatch and swing-out tailgate or from either side using the lockable red side doors. The long, 51-L upper toolboxes at the sides include lids that fold down 180 degrees to work as countertops. Finally, the 148-L front storage box offers space for a generator, portable grill, firewood or other large provisions. The trailer can carry over 800 lb (363 kg) up to its 1,320 lb (600 kg) aggregate trailer mass (ATM).

The Adventurer's powder-coated aluminum body sits atop a box-tube aluminum chassis with a box-tube steel hitch. The trailer's 175/60R13 tires are cushioned by a torsion-axle suspension. Unlike the average landmine-proof tent-top box trailer we see out of Australia, the Adventurer appears better-suited for road touring than off-roading.

Road Warrior starts the Adventurer bidding at AU$10,500 (approx. US$7,300) and offers various options, including iKamper rooftop tents, a storage drawer for the tailgate compartment, and a side awning. Rather than selling any type of large kitchen gear, Road Warrior has kept the focus on a fast-and-light setup by offering several small, portable Enki biomass stoves.

Source: Road Warrior

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4 comments
4 comments
minivini
It’s nice to see something like this under $10k! That said, it’ll be an absolute nightmare to back up with such a minuscule tongue! I’d add four or five feet of length to that so the first outing wouldn’t include a crunching sound and damage to the car and trailer!
NMBill
What minivini said! I guess the trailer would be fine for a motorcycle, but if you're in a car and want to tow a trailer, why not pull something a bit bigger?
BlueOak
Yah, nice to be under US $8K…. However, that’s pretty much a shell. No fold out tent at that price. Clever packaging, but it’s basically a compact trailer with a frame attached, so a higher price would be crazy.
Uncle Anonymous
This is a nice little rig at a reasonable price. I don't know that I'd get the platform tent though. It's a good option, but odds are I'd bust a leg going down the ladder while half asleep for a pee in the middle of the night. 🙂