Getting the camper on and off the truck is the most stressful thing we have ever done with the Avion. Even more stressful than replacing the floor. When the camper is raised up on the four tall jacks it's just very uncomfortable and something we hope that we don't need to do very often. I know for some people one of the advantages of a truck camper is that you can unload it at a campsite then use your truck without it. That was never part of our plan and based on our experiences loading and unloading it's not something we desire to do. If we ever plan a trip where we want to leave camp set-up and drive a vehicle around we will tow a second vehicle to use for that purpose.
For us loading the truck camper usually means getting it out of the garage first. When it is in our garage the Avion sits on a dolly that has castor wheels on it. It's easy for just two of us to move the camper around on the flat concrete pad of the garage floor, but much more difficult on our slightly lumpy asphalt driveway. We recently swapped the caster wheels out for some larger diameter ones which helps, but it's still pretty difficult and needing 3 or 4 people to move it around. We've also made use of an electric boat trailer winch for move the camper around when its on the dolly which works well at times when there is something to attach the winch to. Once the camper is out of the garage and on a relatively flat area of the driveway we use the tall truck camper jacks to raise the Avion up high enough to back the truck under. I find it interesting that this type of camper is sometimes called a "slide-in truck camper", when in reality its more of a "back the truck under camper while praying a lot camper".
To raise or lower the Avion two of us each work one side of the camper, alternating between the front jacks and the rear jacks. We count the crank turns out-loud to keep in sync so the camper is raised and lowered evenly so it doesn't sway to one side or the other. This helps keep the weight evenly distributed across the 4 jacks. The last inch of lowering when loading on the truck so far always seems to take some work cranking one corner or another while doing a lot of looking at clearances and such. Before we lower the camper we back the truck under then get out and look, then move the truck to get it centered the best we can, so far this has taken several tries each time but we seem to be getting better at it.
When the truck is backed under the camper except for the last foot or so we connect the 7-pin wiring harness for the running lights and also another plug for the campers house battery. Our house battery sits in a box that is secured to the side of the truck bed in-line with one of the fender wells. This saves space inside the camper, but limits access to the battery when the camper is fully loaded into to the truck.
Getting the camper out of the garage and secured to the truck is a long process for us, the fastest we've been able to load it so far has taken 3 hours. We know that we are probably more picky than a lot of folks when trying to get the best alignment between the camper and truck bed, but we feel that if it is loaded straight then it be more obvious if it moves or something starts to go wrong while traveling. For us loading and unloading the Avion once a year is enough, and hopefully at some point we wont need to do that much that if we can figure out a solution for indoor winter storage that allows the truck and camper to stay mated together.
