The view from the cab
The cab height — meeting truck drivers eye-to-eye and looking down on tram drivers' bald spots — is properly impressive. On streets you drive every day in a sedan you suddenly see what's behind the fence and the sound barrier.
MADHOUSE Roadbook
Driving a big motorhome
Maybe slower, but more to see along the way
A big rig isn't allowed to go as fast as a campervan or a sub-3.5 t caravan (although there's no actual speed limiter on board, so… ).
But across every category: the adventure starts the moment the wheels move at the pitch. Arriving at the sea a few hours later mostly just means how long we lingered over breakfast.
Our friend Radim takes 4 days to Croatia sometimes, 10 days other times — and we're the same. Along the way there are improbable experiences, romantic spots, great food, stunning views. It would be a shame to skip all of that just for heat and pointlessly salty water
Inside, like home
You appreciate a big motorhome the most not outside on the lounger under the awning, but inside. AC in the heat or underfloor heating against the cold, ridiculous amounts of space and — above all — silence and a zen-like calm like home… though that calm is usually much greater
For how many people?
MADHOUSE has 5 travel seats and two ISOFIX-fitted beds. But one important rule we keep repeating with friends should be carved into stone in gold letters.
It came up years ago at the Brno engineering fair, when two young women asked the owner of the liner parked next to ours:
“So, Jirka, how many people is this big rig for?”
He answered without hesitation:
“For one!”
Jirka is a great guy — successful and unusually wise. He was there with a Concorde Centurion: two axles, 18 t, a car garage, an MB Actros chassis. He said “For one.” Remember it.
(Plus Jirka is moving to a bigger rig now, because it’s the only logical way forward — if there are restrictions on the road, they only ever apply to smaller crews…)
Salute to the trailer haulers
A special salute for the caravan-trailer drivers. Absurd length, hard to maneuver, usually not enough power. Water tanks usually run low, or empty for the road — weight limits. And when nature calls, you step OUT of the cab — when it rains, with an umbrella. In our rig, you walk dry-foot past the fridge.
They're the true believers. And they earn the admiration.
A liner with a ~5.5 m wheelbase will turn around on a country road if it has to, and nobody honks. (If anyone does, it's the only thing they can do in their hopeless situation )
Either way, it makes no difference whether we're in a big rig or a small one, on foot, sleeping in a roof tent, under the stars, or on folded-down car seats — we're outside, we're collecting moments, and nothing else matters.
Last time, by a lake in Germany, a guy from Vienna parked next to us with an old 2CV (Citroën). He pulled the driver's seat out, set it on the grass beside the car, brewed coffee in a moka pot on a spirit stove, and looked out at the exact same lake — and his happiness wasn't any smaller than ours with porcelain espresso. Maybe greater, in fact…
Navigation for big rigs
For navigation we use systems built specifically for big rigs. The built-in Alpine system is for geeks only, so we run Sygic Truck on a 13" iPad Pro mounted on the dashboard.
Sygic watches bridge clearances, weight restrictions, etc. — with hit-or-miss reliability… (Sometimes the detour is unnecessary because, even with the rig set up as a motorhome in the system, the routing acts like we're a 40-tonne truck.)
Sygic's real-time traffic implementation (a paid add-on of effectively zero quality) is rough enough that we usually have „standard" navigation running in parallel in the background — Google, Apple, or something else…