At Hele Outdoors, we’ve improved thousands of car campers setups with our award winning vehicle sleeping platform and storage system.
Through this journey we’ve had hundreds of conversations with people all over the world about their rigs and must-have products.
This article will sum up all those conversations into the 3 bare-bones essentials we recommend you prepare to maximize stoke and comfort on your next car camping trip!
1 - Sleeping Platform
Adding a sleeping platform to your vehicle is the single most important thing you can do to improve your quality of life on car camping, overlanding, or vanlife trips.
Why? Because it unlocks the single scarcest resource of car camping - space!
By elevating your sleeping area, you can store gear under your bed.
Without this, you’ll have to manually move all your gear to the front seats or even under your vehicle.
Might not sound like much of a hassle when reading this in the comfort of your home, but you’ll think differently after a full day on the road (especially when the weather isn’t cooperating.)
When it comes to sleeping platforms, there’s two routes you can go:
- Build your own
- Buy a modular car camping platform (like the Hele Box!)
Not sure what makes sense for you? This article will help: Build or Buy? Vehicle Sleeping Platform
2 - Storage Bins
Once you are off the ground (thanks to your sleeping platform) invest in a storage system that fits under your sleeping platform and allows you to compartmentalize your gear from your goodies.
You don’t need anything fancy here. HomeDepot is a great place to find a large assortment of affordable storage totes in a wide range of shapes and sizes.
Organizing your gear will make camping in your car much more efficient - make sure to label your storage containers or color code them to ensure you can easily find what you need.
Conveniently - the Hele Box we mentioned earlier also doubles as a compartmentalized storage system and slides right underneath the sleeping platform!
3 - A Plan!
The best part about car camping is exploring the awesome campsites and destinations. Finding these spots aren’t as hard as you might think, but will require you to put in some work.
Make sure to plan out your trip with a general idea of the days you might be in a certain area and have campsites either booked or back up spots should your first choice be taken.
When it comes to planning, these apps are a great place to start. They often have difficulty ratings for all the trails and forest roads + provide helpful information about dispersed camping areas. Here’s 2 of my all time favorites:
If you want to learn more about finding dispersed camp sites, check out this article!
Alright - that’s our bare-bones list of car camping essentials!
If you want a full list of handy car camping goodies - check out our Ultimate Car Camping Checklist
Safe travels!