Turning a Panel Truck Into A Tiny Home

People have asked if you can turn a panel truck into a tiny home. The answer is yes. You’ll never get it legally approved, but who’s to know? The fact is you can turn most anything into a tiny house with enough imagination.

Also called a box truck, cube van, or rolling toaster, it’s basically a rectangular lightweight truck used for delivering goods and packages. The rectangular shape makes it easy to frame the inside. The thin panel walls need to be reinforced. The panels, including the roof, are riveted together with little attention paid to being really weatherproof.

Panel Truck Gradually Becomes a Tiny Home

Follow Kelli’s panel truck conversion on her blog: Think Inside The Box

In the picture above, the very young lady had the opportunity of obtaining a non-functioning panel truck come her way. With a vision, but no actual building knowledge and zero experience, she picked up a hammer and started building. It’s a 1997 GMC tilt cab, 8ft x 14ft box 350 V8 Gas. She’s been working at it for over a year now.

So far, she sealed the roof with an RV fiberglass coating, added a roof hatch and a stained glass window, paneled over the rear cargo door, installed a concrete kitchen counter, and put in a regular house door.

It’s coming along well. I hope she gets a lot of good ideas about infrastructure from my website.

Here’s a completed box truck tiny home

A Box truck tiny home ready to hit the road.

Click on image to see box trucks for sale on eBay.

I visited this tiny home at the 2019 People’s Tiny House Festival. Look at all of the little details they’ve thought about. Cleverly using the lift gate as an outdoor kitchen, they simplified cooking with a Coleman camp stove.

This couple removed the rear cargo door, replacing it with a man-door, two windows, and an air conditioner. They had a small generator running to power everything.

Panel Truck Infrastructure

Plumbing

Depending how complex you want to make your plumbing system, the kitchen sink could be as simple as a cooler for water and a bucket under the sink. A portable toilet is easy to use if you’re not near a bathroom. To empty it, pour contents into a toilet or outhouse when you find one.

Accessory Power

Add a second battery to run your accessories like lights. Use this battery isolator to prevent your starting battery from being drained.

The KeyLine Automatic 140 Amp Dual Battery Isolator is all you need to charge two battery systems. Voltage Sensitive Relay (VSR) cuts in at 13.3 volts and cuts out at 12.8 volts to ensure your primary battery is always charged and ready to start your vehicle. It’s like having two separate power sources for each battery while only having one alternator!

Buy a Used Panel Truck on eBay with this link

When searching eBay also look for “Box Truck” to bring up an entirely separate list of available trucks.

Here’s a cool YouTube video showing a time-lapse conversion of a U-Haul into an RV

Learn more about turning a panel truck into a tiny home on this new post “Stealth Tiny Homes.” We check out some very comfortable tiny houses that don’t look like tiny houses.