Hi, I'm Jenna with Tiny House Giant Journey.
We're just going down the road and look what we found.
This is John's house track. We're going to take a tour. Let's go see it.
This is John. And this is the track. You built this yourself, right?
Yup. I, yeah, I had some help though. Had a lot of help.
A lot of friends helping you out. Yeah.
So how long have you been on the road now?
A about a year and a four months I think. And where all, have you traveled?
uh, let's see if you, if you guys look on that corner down there, it'll, uh,
tell you all the different places. Yeah a lot of places.
How's it been on the road with this? Yeah, it's been awesome.
You're liking the adventure? Oh yeah. Yeah, it's been great.
So we did find John while he's on the road,
we actually just saw him filling up gas and we pulled him over.
So you can tell that the house is in travel mode. It's messy.
It's a little mess. You also have a cat that travels with you, right? Jimmy.
Jimmy, he's my copilot. He's your travel companion.
How's he liking living on the road? I don't know. I can't, uh, I don't know.
Can't talk. No,
he's, he's getting used to it, you know, I don't think he uh,
was a traveler in the beginning, but he's, he seems to be having a good time.
So my bed's up here, um,
got two windows up there that I can open. Um,
got a wood stove over here. It's a hundred year
old Montgomery ward with stuff, but it works great.
I mean it's not efficient, but it's working for you though.
It keeps your nice and toasty in here. Yeah. And I'm not doing any really heavy,
like a cold places. So
is that another closet or a pantry? That's a shower. Oh,
That's a shower slot. A shower and storage. Oh, cool. Yeah.
So you're completely self sufficient here it seems like. Yeah. I have a,
a gray water tank under there and then I have a 30 gallon freshwater tank.
Is it underneath this bench here? No, it's outside. Underneath.
Is it a gravity fill shower? Are you using a water pump?
It's a 12 volt, uh, water pump. You know, I don't use a lot of uh,
electronic stuff. So just a 12 volt.
And then I got uh, a 70 watt solar panel up there.
And then I got two batteries under here.
And then I have a inverter here to charge stuff.
And then I do carry a generator.
Like this morning I used it to charge my battery cause my alternator is
Right now you do have a refrigerator, but this is like an RV refrigerator,
right?
Yeah. So that's a two way. It's propane electric. But when I'm, um,
when I'm on the road I just throw some ice,
like usually block ice if I can find it. That's enough to keep it cold?
Yeah. About three to five days.
How did you design this? Is it your own design or how did you?
Yeah, I was inspired from a book called shelter that was published in
the early seventies by Lloyd Kahn. And, um,
it had a couple pages of house trucks in there and, uh,
they were older trucks and, uh,
I just really liked the style and so it was inspired from that. And then, uh,
I kind of, uh, took some cues. off of, uh, Roger Beck,
he's another house trucker who has a book called, uh,
turtles have nice shells and, uh,
I modeled a little bit of my truck after his,
the truck is a 1949 fire truck. And then,
um, it has a, a 1990 Dodge Cummins,
uh, 5.9, uh, engine diesel engine.
Did you have to take it apart to build on top of it or how did that work?
Um,
I had to take the utility box off and then I extended the frame five feet and
uh, laid out a platform of these square tubings, square
tubings all the way down, bolted that down. And then, um,
my good buddy Frank came out from long beach and um, led the initial frame up,
took six weeks and my son helped my Uncle Jack to help, uh, with that.
And then, um, we did that down in Bisbee, Arizona and then,
um, I drove it up to Colorado and it took a year and a half to do the rest.
Right. Yeah. And so is it a two by four framing? It's actually
a one by fours. And the reason why is uh, you save so much more weight.
Yeah. Weight is a big deal. Does it happen to insulation? Yeah,
it's got R13. What kind of insulation did you use?
It's uh, uh, fiberglass I think.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. And so what else do we have going on back here?
I know you're an artist, you're a traveling artist,
so you do tattoos and you do photography.
I'm a tattooer, but I do, um, I've been doing lots of other stuff.
Uh, I make jewelry, um, paint,
um, leather stuff. I just made these shoes.
Oh, very cool.
Artwork of John as is a self portrait I'd call.
Cause it's your truck. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Very cool.
So that one has a lot of jewelry stuff in it. Um,
I do silver soldering and copper stuff and then right in here
I have a lot of my leather tools all set up
and then I can open that window hinges out.
Let's see here. Yeah.
And this is just kind of my little
jewelry area jewelry.
Um, I got some old drawers under there.
And then back behind here you have actually a backdoor. Yeah. It's kind of cool.
So you have two entrance and exits going on? Yeah, yeah.
When I park I can take the bike off and open that up.
Cause you have like a dirt bike or what a motorcycle. It's an Enduro. Yeah.
So you do a lot of that too,
just, you know, um, it's nice if I break down,
I'm not stranded and yeah,
if I stay in any place for long I can unload that and go explore.
Don't have to drive this around. So, the dimensions of this,
do you have any. Yeah, let's see.
It's eight foot wide and the full length of the whole thing is 23 feet.
Wow. And it's about 12 and a half foot tall.
Where'd you find all your windows? Or did you, are these reclaimed or those are.
Yeah, I got it at an antique store in Fort Collins, Colorado. Right here too.
Yeah, that's an old leaded. I love the sort of Gothic,
it's like Gothic reclaimed rustic look you got going on here. Yeah. Yeah.
Check out that, uh, that stained glass on that side. Yeah, that's beautiful.
And you don't find that they're too brittle on the road being reclaimed windows,
you know, I mean, um,
you, you just got to do your maintenance. I mean,
I could see where things are chipping out,
but I mean that's just something I can do on the road. I can fix all that stuff,
so. Right. Yeah. It's kind of an ongoing thing too. Yeah, it's a,
I'm doing a lot on the road where you go,
you find all the pin striping I'm doing in route and then, um,
yeah, it's probably in a year from now it's going to look totally different.
So you draw here? Yeah. That's called a pin striking.
Yes. I do that, uh, on the road. You know,
when I get bored and I got a lot of time on my hands,
You know how much the whole thing weighs? Six tons. Wow.
Yup. A lot of that is probably the original mechanics of it cause it's uh,
you know, and the thing it added up, it all added up, but it's,
it's still underweight for the capacity of the truck chassis. So yeah,
I'm doing good.
I took down a hundred year old barn in Colorado and use that for the
exterior wood. Did you treat it or painted or, yeah. You know,
in retrospect, um,
it's a lot of maintenance because the wood was so dry.
So every couple months I got a, I got a caucus. Uh,
I use this deck, uh, acrylic stain, uh,
protector thing on there.
So you can really see the back door back here.
Now did you reclaim that back door? Do you make it yourself?
Uh, my friend, uh,
Frank and me made those and my uncle and son helped out. Yeah,
we made both doors. The straps on there are our Oak and those were, uh,
some wood from my grandfather's blacksmith shop that I was able to use.
So that was cool.
So normally this butterfly's open,
but it's been modified now it's a tilt front end, just uh,
easier access to the motor, a lot easier to work on.
So what kind of motor is this again?
So this is a 1990 5.9 Cummins diesel with turbo.
Wow. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds impressive.
It's a really good motor. It gets good gas mileage. And
What's your plan, are you planning on traveling for a long time?
Is this, is this a temporary thing?
So I've been on the road about a year and three months and I'm really liking it
and I think I'm going to be doing it for a few years for sure. Right.
And you can just pick up and go whenever you want to change your scenery.
So that's the advantage of it. Awesome. Well thank you so much for taking us.
You know,
taking the time as we just pulled you over on this side of the road and take us
through your house track. We really appreciate it and safe travels, you know,
the more you keep going, you'll have to give us some advice. Thanks guys.
See you next time.