Wind Hazards and Truck Campers: What’s the Safe Thing to Do?

A few years ago, my wife and I, along with two furry critters in the backseat of our F-350 were on Florida Route 275 South as we headed for Naples and eventually the Keys to spend a month near Key West in our Northstar Arrow 8.5 camper.  The Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay was coming up soon and typically we’re not afraid of heights, although when we inadvertently wound up on Utah’s Moki Dugway, it took a while for us to recover.

As we approached the bridge, there was a lighted, highway sign that read: “Wind gusts to 55 mph. High profile vehicles exit now.” Good advice, except that we had just passed the last exit. Good work, guys!

We were heading south and the wind was from the east, right on our beam, so to speak. Also, the effect of heavy wind seems to be accentuated on bridges and we would soon be 430 feet over the water. With sweaty palms and with the survival mode kicking in, I moved to the left lane, turned on my emergency flashers and slowed to 35 mph. I figured that if we were going to get flipped over, I’d prefer to land in the right lane not in Tampa Bay. Besides, I had a feeling that from the height that we would probably burn up on reentry before we hit the water!

Yes, I was a slow-moving vehicle in the left lane and impeding the flow of traffic, which is typically a sacrilege for which I condemn others. Know what? Not a single driver blew their horn or flipped me off while passing on our right.  It seems that they realized our dilemma.

Let’s face it, truck campers are the very definition of high-profile vehicles. Our heavy water tanks of various varieties, canned goods and other gear are mounted much higher than they would be on a say, Class B rig. On a sailboat’s sails, there’s a point called the center of effort, which typically is pretty high. In effect, our slab sides act like a sail, a major windage area, which can cause us problems.

What prompted this article were some unusual experiences that Marcia and I had in our last year of travels. In June, we were camped in wide-open Wilson, Kansas at a Harvest Host’s location, a decommissioned missile silo that had housed an Atlas nuclear missile in the heady Cold War days of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

We almost had our own crisis that night when we received a WX warning about a line of thunderstorms with 80 mph winds headed our way from the northwest. The first band of wind was pretty brutal, so I weathered the rain to move the truck with the front facing directly into the even heavier gusts headed our way. Even so, our nearly-new BundutecUSA Roadrunner still rocked alarmingly. A Class B followed our lead and also moved. Since we were essentially in a grass parking lot and didn’t have hook-ups, the move was easily accomplished.

A month later, heading north on I-25 in Colorado, destination the Big Horns in Wyoming, a windstorm with gusts over 50 mph hammered the interstate badly and we saw a tiny travel trailer in front of us rocked so violently that we really expected it to go up on two wheels or even flip over. There was an exit less than a mile away and we hid out in a truck stop overflow lot for a couple hours, once again, pointed into the wind.  In this case, we were towing our two-door Jeep Wrangler JK which seemed to make us more stable. We have noticed that our rig seems much more stable when towing our 8,000-pound boat in heavy wind. I can’t prove it, but it sure seems that way.

And finally, in November we were headed to west Texas on I-40 to hunt wild pigs on a friend’s ranch. Winds of 50-60, typical to the area, forced us to hole up in an RV park in Amarillo for three days. Yes, I requested a campsite facing into the wind, which they understood completely.

So when it comes to wind hazards and truck campers, what’s the safe thing to do? I’m not sure that there is one, but here are some ideas that have worked for us.

Wind direction, of course, is a big consideration. On the nose means poor mileage. We all know that and it’s not a big surprise. Seem like it’s always on the nose to you, too? It often does to us. A following wind can be great and we’ve seen boosts in mileage of up to 3 mpg. Of course, on the beam is the big dilemma, especially when you have to fight the vehicle to keep it going where it’s supposed to go. Fatigue is a big factor here and so is being blown out of your lane or onto the berm. A big rig passing now can lead to a disaster. Conditions like this are why we hid out in Amarillo for three nights.

Wind speed is the big bugaboo and what’s too much for you, of course, is up to you. No one can tell you how far to take it. About eight years ago we were camped outside Corpus Christi and I wanted to visit a friend in Friona, Texas, a stone’s throw from New Mexico. Checking the weather, we discovered that west Texas and New Mexico were hit by winds that flipped semis over like toys and even blew a train off a trestle. Remember my comment and wind and bridges? We cancelled those plans.

Check weather apps for wind speed and direction. If you do a deep dive into your app, you’ll find that there are areas that deal only with wind and direction. You can check days ahead along your route.  There is also an app called Windfinder that is usually very accurate.

Change plans depending on wind and direction. Returning to Ohio from Texas in November, we had planned on going through Memphis on Route 40, but a very heavy south wind convinced us to go through St Louis instead, using the wind to our advantage. We were glad that we did.

Campground strategies: If it’s really gusty, see if you can get a site facing into the wind. Have slide-outs? Bring them in! If it’s really bad, move to get the front of the rig into the wind to negate its effect by presenting a smaller profile, even if you have to move into a parking area to do so. If we were in a campground when we got hit by those 80 mph winds, I would have parked on the lawn if necessary. If moving just isn’t possible, extending the jacks to the ground should stabilize your rig quite a bit. Also, even though we’ve never owned a DRW truck, I’m sure that they would be much more stable in windy conditions.

So what’s the bottom line? Stay flexible. Our travels might be different from yours because we’re retired and aren’t tied to a two-week vacation like we used to be. Be ready to change your schedule due to wind. We all know how a set number of miles a day can become grueling and cause tension. Remember, it’s supposed to be fun.

I recall one very gusty day when I wasn’t following what I just wrote in the previous paragraph. We were being rocked about by 30 plus mph winds and Marcia asked me, “so what would happen to Scout and Belle (Airedale and Golden in the back seat) if the truck winds up on its side?” Point made. We were in a nice mom-and-pop campground one hour later.