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Insulated Semi-Truck Trailer Tiny House For Sale w/ Downstairs Bedroom


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Well here’s an awesome build! This designer in Hawaii took a semi-truck trailer and made it into a fantastic tiny house on wheels. It has no loft and instead features a bedroom with a cedar-lined closet and plenty of room to walk around the bed.

The kitchen is the focal point of the house, with epoxy “ocean” countertops, a tile backsplash, and an industrial light fixture. There’s a roomy living space where you can fit a comfy couch, and the bathroom — accessible via a sliding barn door — has a flush toilet, tiled shower, and laundry hookups. It’s currently for sale in Hawaii for $99.5K on Tiny House Marketplace.

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THOW with Large Downstairs Bedroom for $99.5K

Those countertops are so unique!

Quite the aquatic look!

Here’s the living area off of the bathroom.

The ceiling looks lovely.

The bathroom features more oceanic tile.

Flush toilet in the bathroom.

Stunning tile shower.

Pretty roomy in here!

And here’s the bedroom!

Look at that cedar-lined closet!

What do you think?

Highlights:

  • One floor set-up
  • Cedar lined closet
  • Bathroom with large walk-in tiled shower (laundry hookups in the bathroom)
  • Fully insulated
  • Beautiful kitchen with soft-close wood cabinets
  • Epoxy countertops
  • Gas cooktop and instant-on hot water
  • Vinyl plank flooring
  • Located in Hawaii

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Natalie C. McKee

Natalie C. McKee is a contributor for Tiny House Talk and the Tiny House Newsletter. She's a wife, and mama of three little kids. She and her family are homesteaders with sheep, goats, chickens, ducks and quail on their happy little acre.

Latest posts by Natalie C. McKee (see all)

{ 11 comments… add one }
  • Marsha Cowan
    June 22, 2021, 10:02 pm

    Pretty cool! The exterior is beautiful, and the interior is lovely. That kitchen counter is amazing, and so is the bathroom tile. The entire place is just wonderful, floors, ceilings, lights, everthing. Great job!

  • JJZack
    June 23, 2021, 9:13 am

    This is a really nice build. the materials look amazing. I would have added a pantry and maybe a coat closet near the front door, everyone has “stuff” that needs a place to live within our homes, but this is a very clean design, minimalist.

    I have often wondered why more people haven’t used Semi Trailers as tiny homes in the past. I was recently watching a person convert a cargo trailer, which was build brand new for him (size and door configuration) and was listening to how even as a brand new trailer, it already had leaking problems so I can only imagine the leaking issues a semi would have. In a recent move, my U-Haul trailer leaked very badly as well my pickup topper was also leaking as I built that out for camping (see IG @FuzzyKilt), so I’m sure this may have been a nightmare to waterproof. I’d like to know how those issues were solved.

    This really is a beautiful build, logical and very useful! As a designer I have designed things for a Double-Drop Semi-Trailer (such as is used for moving heavy/big equipment), but I’ve not designed the inside of a semi-trailer but have often thought that this could be a really great option (avoiding the need to start from scratch and totally legal on the road – eliminating lofts, etc., all good things). You’ve made the outside look more like a home/tiny home/container home, which is nice for exterior aesthetics.

    I also think using semi trailers could totally help our homeless population, however, I’m sure there are other problems we aren’t considering, such as certain leaking issues. I’m sure trailers aren’t retired until they won’t sustain product inside them, so they are probably too far gone to be reused at that point, but given some sort of membrane (over the top of the trailers) and insulation on the inside, this could be a very cost effective alternative for homeless people. Thoughts?

    • James D.
      June 23, 2021, 6:46 pm

      Actually, most company will rotate their trucks at 4 years and trailers at 7-10 years. Mind, it’s also about productivity and liability, which also includes things like how long insurance companies will cover them, etc.

      So they don’t wait till they’re unusable, though actual usable life will vary depending on how it’s used and what conditions it had to endure. Most will last longer with regular maintenance, main concern is things like road salt attacking the frame. Rest can be pretty banged up, warped, degraded etc but you can fix all of that as long as the frame chassis is still in good condition.

      Conversions, however, aren’t always an economical way to produce homes as the conversions can cost more than just doing traditional building, depending on what needs to be done to it to make it meet residential home standards and how much you actually have to convert from the original structure.

      It’s one of the issues that plagues container homes, for example, as there’s a threshold where the costs start getting higher than the normal options. While really affordable options will typically need to be something that can be done in large numbers, approaching mass production scale. Otherwise the per unit costs can be an obstacle, especially for the low cost of entry needed to help people who would otherwise be homeless…

      So a modular system that can be scaled and mass produced will have a better likelihood of succeeding than most of the conversion options, especially, in the long term as people also need a way to transition to better living conditions as their means improve over time and their needs change throughout their life… One size fits all never works for all…

    • Natalie C. McKee
      June 24, 2021, 5:17 am

      I really like your ideas! I definitely don’t have your level of experience with semis but I imagine a large reason is because people often think of the entire semi (with the cab) and get frightened away by the size!

  • Amanda J Collins
    June 23, 2021, 11:16 am

    Beautiful but almost 100 racks? I dunno

    • James D.
      June 23, 2021, 6:19 pm

      Well, it’s a Dry Van Semi Trailer, just the trailer before conversion can cost anywhere between $10-$50K, more if it was brand new, unless they got an amazing deal on it… While it’s a 40′, typical cost of a THOW is $2000-$3000 per linear foot for average going from basic to high end custom build. Conversions don’t always reduce the cost that much but even if it did something this size could still easily be over $80K, have to go much smaller to really keep costs down, but this is pretty big and heavy at double the size of the average 8’x20′ THOW… It’s about the biggest road legal size you can go before needing permits, special licenses, etc.

      Add, Hawaii can be more expensive than California (depending on which island) and we are in a high construction cost year where lumber, especially, can be up to over 500% higher than previous norms… Mind, things like epoxy counter tops are not cheap either, even DIY it’s expensive to do that much of it… and, as JJZack mentioned, semi-trailers can be pretty hard to weatherproof, etc. Especially, in an area that can be hit by tropical storms, etc.

      While it’s definitely not a low end build… So it’s definitely not going to be one of the cheapest THOWs out there…

  • jordi
    June 26, 2021, 11:37 am

    Looks larger than a lot of tiny homes. Well done. Beautiful finishes.

  • LargeMarge
    July 1, 2021, 2:45 am

    We have a forty-foot semi-trailer.
    .
    It was a reefer, but years of operation embedded moisture and odors into the insulation.
    We gutted it to bare aluminum.
    .
    It was 13′ 6″ tall, so we whacked-off a couple feet.
    No big, we used a circular-saw and drills… with a powerful lot of rivets.
    .
    I fabricated a 4×8 steel tilt-down porch roof over a 4×8 steel tilt-up porch deck.
    .
    I loaded it with eight-foot wire racks along both walls and across the snoot.
    Some are bunks, some are shelves and counters.
    .
    I chose this trailer because it has an aluminum floor.
    Welding on a wood floor trailer, I watched an invisible spark molder on the floor.
    I watched as it formed an invisible pit, watched that evolve into a hole, I watched a couple minutes as an invisible flame slowly embiggened the hole to the size of my thumb, then I quenched it.
    (You weld, you have water handy.)
    .
    Our trailer has ‘Budweiser, King Of Beers’ on both sides.
    Other than that, it is just something fun to fuss with.

  • Sunny
    July 8, 2021, 9:54 pm

    Hawai’i is such a ripoff….just okay housing for that much and nowhere to place it. If it’s on the Big Island it’s even more overpriced.

    • James D.
      July 9, 2021, 7:53 pm

      Even worse if you’re visiting, Maui is increasing sales tax 3% just in time for expected rise in tourism, for example…

      • Sunny
        July 14, 2021, 8:41 pm

        3%! Holy guacamole. I left back to the mainland during the height of the pandemic and while I miss the weather I’m glad that I did. What a shame…

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