Shachagra is an custom made DIY coach built onto a tandem axle International Durastar truck. This rig is probably the most influential to my mindset and current design priorities. It’s an amazing vehicle with 4 distinct cabins, one for each of the 3 Cuthbert children and a king size cab over bed for the parents.
I first learned about Shachagra from the builder’s thread on Expedition Portal. Everything about their story got me excited. 3 kids, traveling and homeschooling, Americans driving through Europe, DIY expedition Vehicle on a massive scale. It was truly inspirational. I read every post on the ExPo thread at least 3 times and consumed as much information as I could find on the rig and family.
Doug Cuthbert was retiring from his post on a US Navy base in Italy, where he lived with his family for several years. Once he retired, he came home to the US where he built the camper box and bought the truck and married the two together over the course of a few months. At the end of the school year, his family came home to the US as well to help finish building and integrating the camper to the truck and all of the subsytems. After a few more months they were finished and immediately shipped the unit to England where they began their one year tour around all of Europe from Scotland to Italy , and Turkey to Norway! Doug documented a lot of the build and a lot of commentary from their trip here on his website, www.roadschoolodyssey.com. By far my favorite source of info though is their own Youtube channel! This one is the best place to start with Doug describing his adventure and process.
Where the video above is the whole story from an extreme RV show, the video below is the time lapse of actually building his land yacht. I think I’ve watched it 50 times.
The next video details a lot of the systems used and installed in the RV.
But this next video really shows off what I believe to be the best features of the Cuthbert’s RV. Narrated by their youngest daughter, Grace, she takes you on a tour of her room and the individual staterooms for the kids below the cabinets and floor level of the cabin!
For my personal situation I draw so many parallels to their experience and my own aspirations. I can’t stop thinking about concepts for Harvey 2.0 that use staterooms just like this for the kids. I can’t imagine travelling with 3 teenagers and not having their own personal space. The entire concept and execution are both amazing and unbelievable in Shachagra.
As much as I admire the lifting roof designs of both Global Expedition Vehicles (GXV) and Unicat, I keep coming back to the roominess and simplicity proven out in this design. This build is definitely my inspiration!