THE VAST DESERT AWAITS
MLO RAM Flatbed Camper
TEXT AND PHOTO EDITING BY BRYON DORR IMAGES BY THOMAS HENWOOD & VEHICLE OWNER
It was early September and delivery day had finally rolled around at Main Line Overland’s West Chester, Pennsylvania, headquarters. The customer had already flown in a week prior to inspect the build, and their shipping agent was now picking up the vehicle for the trip to port.
The black Single Cab RAM’s camper roof was lowered; its Scheel-mann seats secured to their bases and its proverbial hatches were battened-down. Main Line Overland’s (MLO’s) biggest adventure vehicle build to date would travel 9,000 nautical miles before reaching its new home in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Pete, Matt, and Tom Henwood, the brothers that run MLO, left nothing to chance for a successful delivery.
MLO Flatbed Journey
MLO has been building a wide variety of impressive overland camper builds since 2014, the year they become a Four Wheel Camper (FWC) dealer. The ‘Flatbed’ versions of FWC’s famously simple, durable, and lightweight truck campers had just hit the market and the brothers at MLO saw an opportunity to build a niche in the industry.
Having grown up in a shop doing frame-off restorations of Jaguars, MGs and other British classics, along with a growing list of overland vehicle builds under their belt, Matt and Pete Henwood saw an opportunity in the market to guide customers through the flatbed conversion process.
For the first year, this meant designing one-off flatbed trays built to their customer’s vehicles and desired specs. The result was a number of RAM and Tacoma builds that have since been all over the world, many used by their adventurous owners as full-time go-anywhere homes.
MLO built themselves a third-gen Tacoma that would feature a special edition flatbed Woolrich FWC, which MLO helped develop. While planning this build, Matt Henwood came across Norweld Flatbed Trays, a company that has been making high-end aluminum flatbeds in Australia for over 40-years. Norweld was able to produce an aluminum over-the-wheel flatbed that was strong, light, offers plentiful storage, has a built in gray water holding tank and offers secure mounting points for the FWC. This Norweld flatbed worked and looked amazing on the MLO Tacoma and was the starting point for over a dozen similar builds at MLO.