Hauling all that stuff to the desert

The only thing that Burning Man organization provides you with is a large open space and some porta potties (plus a bunch of services to keep your ass safe like EMTs, Police, Fire,etc). You have to bring everything else for survival (and fun hopefully). That includes shelter, food, water and other things that make desert living better. Of course you can only haul so much stuff there. Everybody has different ways of travelling to Burning Man. Some people just bring their car, eat energy bars and sleep in the back seat. Others like traveling in comfort and roll up in a rented RV. We have chosen another road (no pun intended), engineering our own unique shelter to keep the sun off us and block some of the elements. You can see the newest version of our shelter in the Bluedream Camp 2003 section, which hasn't changed at all.

Unfortunately I bought my truck before I considered going to Burning Man. So my truck is a 1997 Ford Ranger and has been super reliable since I bought it. But now I regret getting the step-side truck, the regular bed would have given me more storage room. Now that I've been to Burning Man, I probably would have gotten a much larger truck. As time goes on, you will realize you want to bring more each time you go. So what was I going to do with my small truck... I have too much stuff to haul to the desert!!

What to do?

Update: Making a new "Monolith".. look for the new pictures.

Necessity is the mother of invention and I had to figure out a way to load down my truck with all of the stuff we were bring for Burning Man 2000. My next option would be to buy a camper shell to put on the back of my truck but those cost about $1000 (not in the budget) and they couldn't tell me if it would hold up to all the stuff I wanted to put on top. So my next idea was to build a shell from wood and fiberglass.

Just a shell from a couple layers of fiberglass would be very strong but I decided to make a skeleton from wood and then layer the fiberglass over that. It took over two months to complete the shell and final assembly took place about two days before we were to leave for Burning Man 2000. So we dubbed it, "The Monolith" and it has been hauling our stuff ever since. I also attached two bars to the top of the shell for some bicycle carriers