When you have kids, you realize that your mindset around camping tends to change. Reducing friction on getting everything set up, having backup plans for bad weather, and being able to change plans at the drop of a hat (or at the first sign of a meltdown) are key elements to success.

That’s where the GFC Max comes in. It’s the Swiss Army knife of daily-drivable family camping rigs — simple, durable, and built to make getting outside easier, not harder.

This video’s a little different from our usual gear walk-throughs. Instead of talking about specs, I’m walking through how I’ve set up my GFC Max to camp with kids, and what’s made the biggest difference for our family.

The Design Philosophy Behind the Max

The Max was built around a simple idea — that a camper should make getting outside easier, not more complicated. It had to work as a daily driver, be simple enough to set up after work on a Friday, and still have the features that make longer trips comfortable.

Because the truth is, a traditional slide-in camper ruins your truck as a daily driver. And Sprinter vans? They’re incredibly expensive, and maintaining one feels like having a second vehicle that’s allergic to fun. You might get a few small comfort gains with an RV, but at the end of the day, the point of all this is to go camping — not play house in the woods.

For me, that balance was everything. I wanted something that could handle a grocery run one day and a week in the mountains the next — a real tool, not a project. The Max takes what people love about the original GFC — the simplicity, the connection to the outdoors — and adds the space and features that make it work for families.

The Real-World Use Case: Family Adventures

The idea of taking your kids off-grid for weeks sounds awesome — and the GFC Max can absolutely handle that — but the reality for most of us is a little different. Between work, school, and everything else that fills a family calendar, long expeditions aren’t always in the cards.

That’s where the Max really shines. It’s built for both — the big trips and the quick ones. You can head off for a week-long adventure out west, but it’s just as good for a last-minute overnighter in the national forest. An RV isn’t an overnighter. The Max is.

For us, that’s what matters most. A Friday-night run up to the mountains, a weekend at Glacier, or a quick escape to the woods — that’s the stuff that actually happens. And because everything’s always ready to go, those trips stay easy.

That’s what the Max is really about for families: reducing friction so that camping isn’t a production. It’s easy, it’s fast, and it still feels like camping — a little dirt, a little discomfort, and a lot of time outside together.

And honestly, some of my favorite trips have been just me and the kids. There’s something special about those dad-and-kid weekends — a little chaos, a lot of snacks, and the kind of memories that only come from sleeping on a truck bed in the middle of nowhere. If you’ve been putting off taking your kids out solo, don’t. You’ll be surprised how easy it is — and how much they’ll talk about it afterward.

Why the GFC Works for Families

The GFC isn’t your living room. There’s no faux granite countertop or slatted cedar ceiling pretending to make you feel “at home.” It’s not built to replace your house — it’s built to help you leave it.

What makes the GFC work so well for families is that it keeps the important parts simple: a dry, comfortable place to sleep and a little shelter when the weather turns. Everything else — the campfire, the dirt, the stars, the chaos — that’s the good stuff.

Kids don’t need luxury; they need adventure. So get off your phone, get your kid off the iPad, and go do something real together. The Max gives you just enough comfort to make it easy, but not so much that you forget why you came out here in the first place.

The Problem: Growing Family, Shrinking Space

When my oldest was a toddler and my wife and I only had one kid, camping was easy. We spent a month living out of our rooftop tent in Mexico, and it worked great. Back then, everything fit — gear, food, and all of us sleeping up top.

Then the second kid came along. Suddenly, space got tight, and sleep got harder. Little kids have a way of turning a peaceful night into a nonstop kickboxing match, and when nobody’s sleeping, those weekend trips start to sound less appealing.

We tried keeping everyone upstairs in the tent, but it just didn’t work long-term. The solution ended up being simple: the kids sleep downstairs, and we sleep up top. But that led to a new problem — the old panelized floor design blocked visibility between levels. You couldn’t see the kids, couldn’t hear them easily, and if you had a heater running, the warmth stayed trapped up top.

That’s when we developed the constant pass-through — the thing that completely changed family camping in a GFC.

The Solution: The Constant Pass-Through

The constant pass-through completely changed the way families use a GFC. By opening up visibility and airflow between the upper and lower spaces, it made the upstairs-downstairs setup actually work.

Now, when the kids are sleeping downstairs, you can still see them, talk to them, and keep the whole space at a consistent temperature — especially if you’re running a diesel heater in the winter. The heat moves evenly through the camper instead of getting trapped up top.

On full-size trucks, the upper bed is just a bit smaller than a queen; on midsize trucks, it’s about a full. That means plenty of room for parents up top while the kids take over the bunks below. It’s simple, comfortable, and makes the camper feel like one connected space instead of two separate zones.

Bunk Beds for the Win

My personal rig is a Raptor with a five-foot bed, and I still want to be able to carry all my gear — the battery system, fridge, recovery gear — without pulling everything out just to make room for sleeping. That’s where the Disc-O-Bed bunks come in.

They’re simple, tough, and made for exactly this kind of setup. They pack down small, go together fast, and the kids think they’re awesome — probably because they feel like a fort. I had to cut the tubes down a bit to fit the five-foot bed — nothing fancy, just a pipe cutter and an hour of tinkering. On a longer-bed truck, they’d drop right in without modification.

The bunks keep the floor clear for gear, create separate sleeping zones for the kids, and still leave enough space to move around. It’s one of those small changes that completely transforms how the camper works for a family.

Another setup that works great — especially if mom and the kids like to sleep in — is having them upstairs and dad downstairs. You get a quiet early-morning exit, a warm cup of coffee, and maybe even a solo sunrise before anyone else stirs. When it’s just me and the boys, we can all sleep up top, but they usually call dibs on the bunks anyway.

Looking Ahead

However you set it up, the Max grows with your family. This setup works great for a family of four, and it could totally work for five if one of the groms sleeps upstairs. My plan as the kids get older is simple — once they’re old enough to complain about this setup, they can pitch a tent outside.

These bunks fit kids up to about twelve years old, so we’ve got some time before that happens. And when they do outgrow it, I’ll probably just move back to solo or dad-and-kid trips — which honestly might be the best part anyway.

At the end of the day, the Max isn’t about squeezing everyone into the perfect configuration — it’s about having a tool that makes it easy to get outside, together. That’s what matters.