Sharkey's Book Review of... Home on the Road by Roger B. White Published in 2000 by Smithsonian Institution Press ISBN: 1-56098-892-4

The early days of housetrucking go back farther than you might imagine. Would you guess the 1960's? Before that? 50's? No, not the 40's, sorry, housetrucks and house cars date back to almost the dawn of the automotive age. From the advent of the first self-propelled vehicles, inventive people have been rigging up beds, impromptu kitchens, and installing overnight comforts into the new-fangled 'horseless carriages'. The bulk of the first chapters of this well researched book describe many such conversions in comparative detail, including many informative vintage photographs.

Also documented is the birth of what we now regard as the recreational vehicle industry. From the first shops that converted expensive luxury cars into vehicles for the wealthy to participate in the newly-popular 'auto camping', through established automakers releasing specialty vehicles this book describes the beginnings of the integration of outdoors activity with America's new-found love of the automobile.

The availability of larger, more heavy duty chassis produced for the bus transit industry allowed bigger and better house cars to be built, eventually giving rise to our present-day RV industry.

There is even a section titled Hippie Buses: A Real Trip in the chapter Motor Homes in the Age of Aquarius which outlines Ken Kesey's bus trip across the country in 1964, the formation of the Hog Farm and their use of converted buses, as well as Stephen Gaskin's odyssey described in The Caravan.

Actual Housetrucks are also given a nod, however, I thought that the author, although presenting well-researched material, went a bit towards the sensational by stereotyping truck and bus dwellers as 'Hippies' who were "looking to subvert the economic and political norms of society". Hey, some of us built housetrucks because it was the only way to provide ourselves with adequate, stable, long-term housing without being driven into lifetime debt.

Jane Lidz and Rolling Homes gets mentioned, and a photo of a genuine 1970's housetruck from her book is presented (page 72 in RH). The closing paragraph in this section captures the look and feel of housetrucking (quoted below).

Overall, this book left me with the impression that upon becoming a housetrucker 35 years ago, I wasn't instituting a new lifestyle, but joining one that had been established some fifty years prior, one that had laid dormant waiting for a new generation to feel a resonance building. Those of us who built (and build) craftsman-style house trucks and buses carry on a proud tradition that finds it's roots almost a century in the past.

Note: The following text and photos are Copyrighted Material. Please respect the author's rights.

Mass production and mass marketing did not make house cars affordable to average-income tourists. Motorists who were attracted to the idea of a cozy home on wheels...designed their own house-car bodies made of wood, fiber board, metal, or canvas and placed them on new or used automobile chassis. Although several independent manufacturers sold house car-bodies in small quantities in the 1920s, most tourists preferred personalized, one-off models that they either made themselves or ordered from a nearby body maker. Motorists who enjoyed building bodies could spend as little or as much money as they wished. If they chose to commission a house car, they merely visited the nearest city or large town; the decentralized nature of the body-building business meant that qualified body makers were available everywhere. No matter how expensively house-car manufacturers advertised or how moderate the prices became, relatively few autocampers became interested in factory-built house cars ordered from a catalog.