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We also moved from a 2nd gen Tacoma to a F250 and have been very pleased. As you know there are a million threads about diesel vs gas, but we really like our diesel. I think your driving style is important, we like to drive long distances per day and long segments between fuel stops and the extra range from the diesel is very important to us. Obviously diesel has some downsides as well, but we love ours. The only other suggestion would be to take a long look at a F350. We occasionally pack heavy and I would like the extra payload cushion. I dismissed a 350 without even thinking about it but might consider one now. The move up to a 350 isn’t that expensive, however depending on where you live licensing may be more expensive.

2026 Maine Trip - Sunset Point Campground - Lubec, Maine. The West Quaddy Lighthouse Beautiful Scenery during our Hikes \ Quick Trip to Eastport for the afternoon Campobello Island - NB This time we took our passports FDR summer home Short stop over in White Mountains of New Hampshire Cog Train - Mount Washington Alittle bit Windy at the Summit Shawna relaxing in the clouds This was our second trip to Lubec Maine and our first exploring New Hampshire on the way up and back. We are already planning our 2027 trip.

This will be fourth truck. Had a Ranger, Ridgeline and Tacoma. Towed a Casita with the Rideline. I'm ready for some overkill at this point

I want your epic Oliver pictures. It could be beautiful landscapes, the trailer in an incredible campsite, or breath taking views. We we want to highlight all the awesome places our trailers travel! Send me an email with the photos and some information about it: Media@olivertraveltrailers.com

Two more Oliver sightings on Sunday, both on M28 while we were travelling West to Porcupine Mountain Wilderness SP. Both Olivers were traveling East, one East of Munsing, MI, and the second between Munsing, MI and Marquette, MI So far 3 on this trip.

Thanks for the tips. Have two small dogs and a small parrot in a cage. If it wasn't for the small zoo I'm transporting, I may be able to get away with a smaller cab. LoL. 4x2 would be nice for ease of MX, but also need it for some of the crappy sand filled boat ramps around here

Just to close the loop on this, I was banking on the fact that Oliver may eventually be able to get more weatherstripping from Lippert, however, it seems that that still has not happened. So we tried a couple of different solutions to clean the weatherstripping before ordering the black, and lo and behold a solution of bleach and dish soap brought things nearly back to the original white. Minimal amount of scrubbing. Soaked for about 20 minutes.

Batteries - two 320ah Lithionics 12V (added 2nd one as option); A/C Houghton (RecPro) A3400, inverter runs it off batteries when not on shore power. I may be missing something, but so far, the BT apps for the Rich Solar components is a major minus. There is wall-mounted Remote for the inverter/charger. The app for the Lithionics batteries is great.

Two in one day! I've had that happen once but without a navigator I've got to keep my eye peeled on "other" things while driving. Bill

Perhaps your salesperson could advise you?

Here are pics of the Solar and Inverter/Charger installs.

A foot note about driving 3/4 ton's stiff suspension. When the truck is loaded and/or towing, the truck gives a great ride. The stiff suspension " beats you up" only when driving unloaded. As stated before, a 3/4 is lousy daily driver for two reasons. the suspension can be teeth jarring when unloaded and the turning radius 20% +/- wider. You will either compromise with a 1/2 when towing or a 3/4 ton when not loaded / not towing.

I too made the migration from a 1/2 ton truck to 3/4 ton for the reasons of more power and payload. What's the saying, "Buy the right tool once, buy the wrong tool twice". The Oliver is very obedient behind anything (within reason) you tow with. You just might be finding that you want more. However, I may be the contrarian when it comes to hating on the Anderson hitch. It made hooking up easier. I would place the ball about two inches behind the bulldog coupler, attach the whale tale (with chains attached) then lower the coupler onto the ball. Pull forward and the chains would pull the ball and coupler into alignment and the ball would drop in with a reassuring clunk. These days without the Anderson, I seem to spend much more time maneuvering the ball under the coupler to get it to drop in. And I have a camera looking right down on it! 🫤

Still heading towards rally. Visited Yellowstone and Grand Teton , now in Custer SD. site at Legion Lake CG

This is an exceptional option! You could easily add the Victron Orion 50A or even the new 70A DC-DC charger with this 350A dual alternator!

Welcome Greg, very exciting! It's going to be a long wait for May to get here... 🤣 Great to be planning your tow vehicle, asking for input early! I'm like the 1 in 1000 who lives in the mountains and tows with a 2WD truck. I'm not suggesting it but I do like the simplicity in maintenance, the weight is on the rears when towing. I enjoy the lower center-of-gravity when towing and the lower suspension does not require a painful process just to get into the driver's seat! Got out of the mud recently by lowering rear tire pressure to 30 PSI. I have gotten stuck twice (for an hour) in 3 years and 19K miles towing. I noticed "Crew Cab" in your description. Do you need that? Maybe you have two big dogs but then fitting in the Oliver would be your issue! Meeting other Oliver owners at Quartzsite or at the Texas Rally, I noted how many Oliver Owners use that back seat for storage, some to the point of, "Oh, what a mess back there!" Crew-Cab trucks often are matched to short beds and have less available GVWR (there's a lot of weight in 4WD and a crew cab truck). I prefer to keep our storage in the bed of our 8' long bed and keep our truck cab clean. There's only one dog, an induction cooktop and a pickleball bag in the rear of our cab, some shoes under the seats. We can take 4 out for dinner without too much trouble. We have the extended-cab with rear half door. I couldn't travel without the long bed. But I'm also in the minority here as you will find most have 4-door TVs with the short bed (except for some F350s)!

I remember when we placed our order and the excitement of all of it. As Mike said the forum is full of info on about anything you can think of. The folks on here are great with their willingness to help. Don't be afraid to ask your questions. We have an Elite ll (Hull1182) and we first used an F150 with the 3.5l Ecoboost to tow it. We towed it from Ohio to Maine and back, to Tennessee and back, to Alabama and back - you get the idea. The truck pulled just fine and we learned to live with the payload restrictions. As my truck got long in the teeth I ordered a 2026 F350 Tremor with the 7.3l gas engine. We just returned from three weeks in Maine and New Hampshire. Wow what a difference that made as far as towing. You couldn't tell it was there and made the entire travel experience much more pleasant. I know the F350 is overkill and plenty of folks out there towing with half-tons and a few with SUVs but now we don't worry about payload and I just always wanted one - lol. The gas mileage towing was the same as our F150 on this years trip to Maine thru the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Greetings to the Oliver I spied on 9/29/2026, in north Cheyenne Wyoming near I-25 (driving past the Tractor Supply). Couldn’t see your license plate state, but your Oliver had the swoosh on the side.

Thanks for all the feedback. I have been having mixed feelings about the Rich Solar Components. Although I knew that was what was going to be installed, I assumed OTT had made the switch for all the new models (accept the Apex). Maybe they have and I am not correct about Rich Solar only going into some trailers. I am getting the impression that the components I have are actually pretty good and I think the only disappointment is going to be the lack of good app monitoring and control. As far as the DC-DC controller goes, no they did not do any vehicle wiring. It is all though the 7-pin. In fact, because of that I had tech limit the controller to 10amp output (jumper setting) to protect the truck's wiring and towing module. If the charger was trying to put out 20amps it might draw up 25+ amps. Not sure if the F150 trailer wiring was designed for that load.

Comparing your hull to ours is of course night & day. 10 years ago ours came with 320W rooftop solar, a 2KW Xantrex inverter-only (PD charger in electrical panel) and 200+ lbs of lead acid! We kept the rooftop solar but replaced everything else with 6 Victron devices all on Victron Connect which is an excellent app. I like having control of the inverter/charger to set input amperage, turn on-n-off, etc. We have Epoch batteries and their app is awful, might not connect when SOC is low. Never heard a complaint on Lithionics here. They are expensive but you made a good choice in having 640 Ah. SOC% and amps +/- (in or out) are important numbers to keep your eye on via the app. I do not leave the Oliver for the day without seeing the -amp reading is small, meaning we didn't leave an appliance running. Some like displays, I like apps. 90% of the time I want to read these numbers, I'm either in the truck or somewhere outdoors, by the campfire not wanting to get up and climb into the Oliver cabin to look at a screen. Perhaps Rich Solar CS can help you with their app. One downside on Rich Solar is when you have a question on configuration, lowering the cut-off voltage or whatever, there will be not be the body of experience on our forum to help you. In your first post, you mentioned DC-DC charger. Did they install a Rich Solar DC-DC charger too? To have DC-DC charging there is also a tow vehicle installation. Was this done? I'd say you have batteries and perhaps electrical components equal to or better than most! @David and Gail gave you the thumbs up on Rich Solar quality and you have warranties on these products. Just as long as they perform as advertised and to your expectations. It would be interesting to know however, why did OTT install Rich Solar in your hull, and perhaps only your hull! Keep us posted!

If you do talk to sales, please ask them if Rich Solar is their new brand of choice. I believe this is the first time we've seen internals of a 2027 Oliver. If not, ask if yours was some kind of experiment? (To answer the worry you expressed above.) Clean installation, 60A SC and 3K inverter/charger are good capacity. If Rich Solar has a decent Bluetooth app, this setup may be better than hulls built with a mix of brands; Xantrex inverter, Zamp or Victron SC and Lithionics batteries. Rich Solar brand batteries too, or Lithionics? How many Ah? What make/model A/C? Did they wire your A/C so it can run unplugged, on batteries only? I imagine you also have the induction cooktop which should be wired to run on inverter when shore power is not available. Yeah, every Oliver is a Jem! 😂

Welcome, Greg. As you get ready for you trailer, keep tapping in to the expertise here on the forum. We had a May pick up also, just in 2016. It’s a good time of year weatherwise. I agree with John on the 4X4. Depending on how you like to camp, it can come in handy. We’ve used ours. Your future truck sounds pretty good to me. There are some Ford drivers with the 7.3 gas engine towing their Elite II’s and they all seem to be happy. Mike

This will be a good rainy day project! After 10+ years and 100K+ miles I have a few pictures….😳

I am aware that changes occur for various reasons, and that is probably more often than not a good thing. But, what I find somewhat concerning is that it seems that they may have already stop installing Rich Solar inverter/charges in the 2027 models. It would be great to know if that is indeed the case and if it is, why.

Glue! I knew this would happen! In my 48 years of auto repair, I only used glue once to replace the cloth on a convertible. The "rag-top" must be glued to the frame. OTT had our 2KW inverter screwed into a glued-on board. They glued a board on for the water pump and valves. My inverter, new motorized water valves and everything else I've installed is bolted into place using metal brackets. I'm not fond of Wago connectors either, less is better. Our MP2 is not quite "removable." It just has enough slack in the wires to slide it about 10" back and forth and pull it halfway out as pictured above, but it's certainly hard-wired. Removeable would be difficult as I used the MP2 dual DC buses for many connections, then AC connections in and out, plus 2 Ethernet connections (pic1). I wired most of the MP2 while it was sitting on the streetside bed platform, then fed the wires through to the EMS and AC panel, the DC ground bus and new DC +bus all under the rear dinette seat where the new charge controllers are also installed (pic2). Our Bigfoot was their Class-C model that they no longer produce. I did as much work on the Bigfoot, as I have on our Oliver and tow vehicle combined (yeah engine stuff, like change fluids, hoses and belts, suspension and steering rebuild, besides RV stuff and major electrical). I installed everything on the roof (pic3, except the skylight). I also don't like mounting hardware into fiberglass with metal or wood screws. Everything on this rooftop was mounted with 3M 4950 VHB tape, no holes drilled except for four 1/4" holes hidden under the left side panel for the solar +/- and dish cables adding just a dab of Dicor on each 1/4" hole. The "Professional Installer" would have added some big junction box, drilled some 30 screw holes and emptied the whole tube of Dicor all over everything! 🤣 Times sure have changed. Six years ago I installed a new Dish. Last year I removed the Dish from our Oliver! Six years ago, I purchased 3 new AGM batteries, now we have 3 new LiFePO4 batteries. You can also see I have experience installing Furrion A/C units twice, but they didn't have the amazing Chill Cube back then! I love that the Oliver doesn't need oil changes and other work that RVs need and trailers do not. Trailer maintenance is easy-peasy! 😎