I built a mobile cabin home on the back of a $4K truck because rent is too high
Forget a houseboat… this is a truck-ommodation.
A resourceful Canadian woman named Kai put the “rig” in “jerry-rig” after MacGyvering a cozy cottage on a working truck, as seen in a recent video with 6 million views on TikTok.
“I’m Kai and I live in this house I built on the back of a truck,” gushed the inventive Canuck to her nearly 1 million followers on the platform, where she posts under the handle “@uglytruckling.”
The rustic-ish abode — located in Coastal British Colombia — is built on the cargo bed of a 30-year-old international 4800 with a DT466 engine, which she purportedly found on Craigslist and bought for $4,000.
She compared the aesthetic to a “1970s hippie shack” that meets the ambulatory palace from the Hayao Miyazaki anime classic “Howl’s Moving Castle.”
Kai, who lives with her partner and cat, says she built the unorthodox mobile home because “the rent is too damn high” where she lives.
“I live in the Pacific Northwest and anyone that lives here knows in the last couple of years with the price of inflation everything is just going to the sky,” she lamented, per the Sun. “One-bedroom apartments are like 25 hundred bucks a month, it’s just crazy.”
“I always figured that building something like this would kind of allow me to secure housing no matter where I was,” added the Canuck.
Needless to say, Kai put her money where her house by making everything super minimalist.
“Up above here you can see this is the bedroom loft — this is where I sleep at night,” said Kai, motioning to a shingle-encircled window above the cab, in the clip. “That porthole window opens so it allows a lot of fresh air through in the summertime.”
The outside of the housetruck is covered with hand-split cedar stakes like something out of “Mad Max” meets cottage-core.
Despite their rickety appearance, Kai claims the shingles will “last forever” as they are “naturally rot and insect resistant.”
Other exterior attributes include a century-old window she purchased online and an outdoor shower heated by a propane tank. An indoor shower is currently in the works as well.
The modern-day frontierswoman enters her rig digs via a handmade Dutch door situated on the back porch.
Inside the domicile are a shocking amount of amenities, which is impressive given the Bento Box-esque interior.
Highlights include an L-shaped couch that opens into a guest bed, a wood stove that can heat up to 86 degrees F, and a kitchen outfitted with everything from a fridge to a fully-stocked pantry.
“I love to cook Asian food so I’ve got loads of soy sauce, sesame oil, mirin, sriracha, all kinds of things, explained Kai, who eats vegetables grown in her garden during the summer.
The bathroom is fairly Spartan, entailing two composting toilets, one for humans and the other for her feline friend Buddy.
Best of all, the truck is fully operational, allowing Kai to literally “move house” when she wants to live somewhere else.
Of course, living in a truck is not without its difficulties.
Hardships include having to constantly split wood for the stove and building like a pioneer and having to shower outside when it’s so cold that both her shower hose and shampoo are frozen solid, as seen in a recent haircare tutorial.
However, Kai believes the headaches are worth it as she wants to “build something cool.”
The majority of the TikTok commentariat seemed to agree with her assessment.
“I love when people just do whatever they want and live in their creativity,” gushed one fan.
Another wrote, “You did a hell of a job girl, proud of ya.”
“Never in the history of ever has there been a boring person named Kai. My theory stands,” fawned a third.
However, others wondered how Kai managed to drive the truck with a house on its back.
Surprisingly, the trailblazer, who operates large vehicles for a living, claims that she can drive it up to around 60mph on the highway.
“She actually drives a lot easier than some of the buses that I drive,” explained Kai.
The canuck just has to make sure to pack everything away before moving so things don’t fly around during the trip.
