Vehicle A.D.D

Jack and Darcie Peeler have had a lot of different toys

- By Jered Korfhage

We’ve been through a lot of vehicles,” Jack Peeler said. “Too many to count … and that’s only the four-wheel-drive ones.” It’s because of this that Jack and his wife, Darcie, sold their house and quit their jobs.

Jack and Darcie have been traveling in 4x4s for more than a quarter century. When the two were dating, it started with a trip to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert and a few games of “where does that road go?” From there, they went on to live, wrench, and wheel together in as many places as possible. For a while, that meant building various rockcrawlers. Jack had an axle-swapped YJ Wrangler that seemed to keep growing larger tires as it made its way through the Rubicon, Fordyce, and other landmark trails. Later came an ’88 Toyota 4Runner with a similar treatment of gear, and there was even an 80 Series Land Cruiser that they fixed up with all the trail-ready accoutrements. But, rockcrawling burnout happened, and the couple needed a new way to satisfy their need for adventure.

They were as familiar, at this point, with truck campers as they were with crawling rocks. Jack and Darcie had put around 50,000 miles on an ’02 Ford F-350 with the 7.3L Power Stroke and a Lance 1010 cabover. They also traveled extensively in a Four Wheel Campers Hawk shell model and an 8-foot camper from Sun-Lite. Between these different domiciles, they learned what worked, what didn’t, and knew exactly what they wanted in an off-road-ready camper. But the truck end of the deal needed some fine-tuning.