In this post, I mention that, upon my arrival, there were already several other vehicles that looked like they could be home to serial killers, the mentally-insane, or otherwise psychologically degenerate human beings. Some of the vehicles, namely a truck and a few RVs, move around occasionally, a sure sign of life. Others, like the hippie van pictured above on the far right, have not moved in the two months I’ve been here. However, despite these clear signs of organic life, I had never actually encountered any other people who were Livin’ La Vida Loca(motive).

A big part of truck life is managing the limited amount of space you have available to you. Depending on what sort of vehicle you’re living in, you may have more or less space available to you, but generally, unless you live in a full on tractor trailer, you’re going to have less than 200 ft² of space, so you need to be smart about how and where you keep your belongings. As you can see from the picture above, I was able to increase the overall contiguous space available to me (useful, for example, for a truckwarming party).

I’ve [redacted] people’s faces from the photo , both because of the questionable legality of hanging out and drinking in a truck, and for their own privacy.

As you may remember from this Q & A session I mentioned that a truckwarming party was in the works. Some planning, a little food, a few drinks, and a week of time were enough to bring the idea to fruition.

One of the benefits of living in a truck is that you can have your truckwarming party wherever you desire (within driving distance); we opted for a nice quiet park down the road. It wasn’t anything lavish, just a few friends hanging out with some music and card games. There’s a surprising amount of space left over (~100 ft²), especially after the bit of rearranging I did beforehand (I’ll outline my most recent changes in another post), so it wasn’t too cramped. Leaving the back gate open to let the fresh air in made the whole event feel more like a BBQ or camping than anything else. Overall, it was a great time, and I’m grateful to have a group of friends who accept me despite the fact that I’m completely deranged.

I was talking to someone, who we’ll call Michael (because that’s his name), about the truck life and this blog, and he said, “You know, it’d be cool if you had a place on the site where you could see how much money you’ve saved.” Well Michael, I agree with you wholeheartedly, so starting today, there’ll be a live-updating clock on the right left side (or bottom on mobile) of the page that shows the amount of money I’ve saved by living in a truck. I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions that it’s not entirely about the money, but regardless, it’s an interesting metric to have. However, without an explanation as to how I arrived at that value, this whole thing would be pretty pointless. So here is my magic money formula.

I’m not talking about securing in the sense of safety and making something inaccessible, but rather in making sure something stays static relative to its container.

When you’re setting up your room or a new piece of furniture, generally the last thing on your mind is making sure it stays in place. It’s basically just a given that your various belongings aren’t going to wander around when you aren’t in the room. I knew from the start that I’d have to be careful about driving with everything in the back, and one of the first things I did was secure the bed with some rope. Even with proper securement at the forefront of my mind , estimating the stability and safety of various restraints is apparently not my strong suit, and I’d still occasionally find things fallen over after a trip to the post office. So without further ado, here are some things to remember when securing your very own truck-house.