As trailer camping newbies, we had a lot to learn. The tips in this post are more or less related to usability issues; a later post will look at organization.
Photo of an assembled Aliner, and an Element,
in trees at a campsite.
Many of these tips are specific to our Aliner Scout, but some may be at least a little useful to other new campers, too.
Usability Tips (details below this list):
1. Lists
2. Respect the Stickers
3. You need towing mirrors
4. Love your hand brake
5. How to raise or fold an Aliner, for shorter people
6. Remove the A/C cover when towing
Mechanical Tips
1. Lists — The Single Most Important Tip You Will Ever Be Given
Ha, ha — I now have a list of lists! Seriously, nothing accelerated the learning process for these newbies more than lists: Attaching the Aliner/Detaching the Aliner/Leveling the Aliner/What goes in which bin/Clothes/Food/Everything that doesn´t go in a bin/Departure/Resetting the gear . . . and so on.
Bad photo of a partially-visible clipboard with a silver and red pen
attached and a paper titled ´List of Lists´ clipped in place.
We have to remember to use them, but, after about a dozen edits, we have a really useful set of lists attached to a clipboard, with a red pen, on which we tick off everything as we complete each item.
Bonus tip: If you´re not traveling solo, make sure that both of you each check each item on the list. So far, one of us has caught an incompletely hitch cotter pin the other missed, and ditto for a lowered stabilizer that should have been raised. If you´re traveling solo, it´s all on you, but a list will keep you on track regardless!
Lists: The best efficiency tool ever. Just ask Atul Gawande, surgeon and author of The Checklist Manifesto.
2. Respect the Stickers
As soon as you take possession of your Aliner, before you do anything else, photograph the technical stickers on the side of your camper. This one lists tire inflation and load information:
Photo of a yellow, black and red printed on white sticker.
There´s another one, listing the camper weight as it left the factory. It will fade; you will be sorry if you don´t have a copy. Take a photo of it, too.
Photo of a black, green and white ´real weight´ sticker
from the side of an Aliner. The information has largely
worn off.
This was one of the great tips our sales person gave us when she walked around the camper with us. She pointed out that they would become unreadable fast. Truth.
3. You need towing mirrors, if your vehicle doesn´t have them.
Our folded Aliner is high enough that our rear view mirror is useless. And our side view mirrors don´t extend or adjust sufficiently to allow the driver to see around the vehicle. These clip-ons work really well for us: If we´d had them for the long drive home from the dealer, we would have felt (and been) a lot safer.
Photo shows a large, black, removable mirror clamped
onto the driver´s side of our tow vehicle.
They are rock-solid when put in place, but one of the set does tend to loosen a little bit over time. They do need constant tightening; we check them every time we start out; better safe than mirror-less!
4. Love your handbrake.
If you´re a trailer-towing newbie, try using your hand brake to stop and start your tow vehicle when you´re lining up the hitch. We discovered that we had a lot more control using it than we do using our car´s automatic brakes!
The hand brake stops the vehicle without any lurching or jumps; the car stays exactly where it´s put when the brake is pulled.
Critical, though: Release the handbrake when finished, or, at a minimum, when starting out to leave! Probably very few people use handbrakes these days; remember to release it when you begin driving the vehicle, or your brakes will be toast.
5. How to raise or fold an Aliner, for shorter people.
Dean in Milwaukee posted the most sensible, easiest-to-implement tip for raising an Aliner roof, ever. Undo the exterior clips, begin to raise the roof as usual, then, as soon as the roof is just high enough, open the lower part of the door, step inside, and suddenly all the height most people would need to raise the roof fully is available!
Stepping inside allows about eighteen inches more of reach . . . genius!
6. Remove the A/C cover when towing.
Aliner posts are full of sad stories involving the loss of the A/C cover as the camper blithely travels. Replacement is inconvenient and expensive. (Someone used to make custom covers, which looked great, but apparently they no longer do. And, of course, they weren´t cheap, being, as they were, handmade.) Spare yourself the grief!
Copyright 2026; All Rights Reserved. This blog is written by a human, without AI input. Please respect the gift offered here of content without cost to you, and do not re-post or copy without permission. No one pays me for this content, and I have no commercial, or other, affiliation with any product mentioned here.