How to build a Cub camper

One of the few remaining Australian camper trailer manufacturers (and having been in operation since 1968, the oldest) is Cub Campers.

Cub builds seven different camper trailer models at its three-acre factory/sales site in North Rocks, Sydney.

It takes about two and a half to three weeks to build a Cub camper trailer, from welding the chassis to the completed trailer leaving its final stop, the weighbridge ticket area.

A week ahead of the start of the build, materials are ordered. It works out at about seven weeks from order to delivery.

Forty-seven workers are employed in hands-on positions: eight staff sewing the canvas together, 35 assembling the campers and four in the QA (quality assurance) shed. Another eight work in the front office, sales and design areas, making for 55 in total.

Build and buy

Beyond the front office area (where management, sales and design staff work) is a showroom, displaying a half-dozen of the current models. Just off the showroom area is the customer hand-over area, where new owners are taken through their purchase in a two-to-three hour process.

While Cub doesn’t offer a free-for-all in terms of customisation, it will consider unique buyer requirements though what it calls Cub Special Vehicles (CSV). If it’s a feasible request, CSV will first quote on it and then if the quote is accepted Cub has to allow time for any one-off set-up of the machines and any other work changes that have to be done.

About one CSV order a week goes through the factory; anything from an additional accessory plug, a new colour or an additional window. A recent CSV order involved building a camper for a disabled customer, with an extra door, floor reinforcements and locating points for an entry ramp.

Once past the offices, showroom and hand-over area, we’re into the factory proper, an area of some 3500 square metres.

Pick a part

To begin with is the parts section, which holds rows of storage racks filled with parts: Cub holds an inventory of five to six weeks’ worth of production. The reason for what appears to be a large inventory is that there are so many suppliers involved (about 160 suppliers and around 3500 parts are involved in making a Cub) and Cub is a complete manufacturer.

The parts section is next to the loading dock, to receive parts delivery over everything except for steel, which is unloaded at the back of the factory. A forklift shuffles between the rows, moving the larger items to their destination.

There are other mini-warehouses throughout the factory (such as for tyres) so that the workers don’t have to double-handle the parts.

Shaping the steel

Now it’s onto the first stage of in-house component manufacture -- the sheet metal section.

The turret punch is a large machine that stamps out the various flat metal components of a Cub, from side panels to bed frames to kitchen parts.

The turret punch is computer controlled, getting its instructions of where to punch out a shape from the design office: all the workers need to do is scan the paperwork for each job, then put in the correct tools into the machine and let it do the rest.

It’s not a cheap machine, at about $400,000, but it cuts to 0.1mm accuracy.

Components are stamped in the turret punch in batches of 10 to 20 parts at a time, which takes about two and a half hours.

A design that was finished in the design office the night before can be stamped in the turret punch that morning, and be on a camper that afternoon if required.

Next to the turret punch is the folding area, where all the metal parts requiring a fold are shaped by two brake presses: a larger one for panels like roofs, and a smaller one for parts used in the kitchen, for example. It takes five hours to fold, doing 10 pieces at a time.

Folded panels then go to the dedicated paint booth, which was only installed in March last year. The camper’s outer panels and pre-cut floors are sprayed in the paint booth and then moved to the assembly line in preparation for fitment.

It’s from the storage of these parts that we first see the Kanban card system. Invented in Japan, it’s a semi-automated production order system, allowing the re-ordering of parts (or of making them if in-house parts) before the existing stockpile runs out.

When there are only a certain number of a particular parts left on the rack, a Kanban card will be visible. The card is sent to the meeting area where the supervisor for where the part is ordered or made can pick it up.

Treating the timber

The next section in the factory is the CNC router, used to cut plywood, MDF and interior composite components of the build. There’s also an edge bander here to put edging on the timber.

A floor takes about a minute to cut (although like the turret punch, the floors are done in batches, usually 10 at a time).

Following this is the steel section at the back of the factory, where the lengths of (Australian) galvanised steel are delivered and are cut to required length.

The next area is the chassis section, where there are two chassis welding areas. The first is where the chassis is welded together in a jig from the RHS steel beams. It’s here also that the individual camper’s barcode is first scanned, so that it can now be tracked during the assembly process.

AL-KO axles come in already assembled, and are fitted to the chassis with steel rims bolted on. These rims are only to wheel the chassis around to the next couple production stages in the factory.

The wheels the camper is sold with come mounted with tyres and are stored in a dedicated wheel room ready to be fitted at an assembly stage later.

Meantime, the sub-assembly steel welding is going on in adjacent welding areas, where the side and rear frames are cut to their required lengths and welded together on a jig. Other steel items such as kitchen frames, spare wheel carriers and suspension are also welded together here.

There’s also the aluminium welding section where items such as roof bars and tool boxes are made. The tool boxes have come from the folding section, and at the welding section they’re first riveted together and then Mig welded.

Once the chassis has been welded together it’s pushed to a second chassis welding area, where the side sections, coupling, drawbar components (such as gas bottle enclosures and tool box frame) are welded on.

Then the camper is lifted on to a hoist and painted in undercoat and top coat. It’s now ready for the production line...

Owners can elect to have their trailer’s chassis hot-dipped galvanised at extra cost, but that’s done offsite and adds about a week to the camper’s production time.

Wiring up the trailer

Meanwhile, in an upstairs loft area towards the back of the factory is the wiring harness area, mattress area and production office.

The wiring harnesses are made on a table marked out with the different required wire lengths. About 30 parts go into a wiring harness and they’re sourced from about five different suppliers.

Mattress foam comes in pre-cut from Dunlop, and the covers (sewn in house) are fitted to them in the mattress area.

The production office offers a bird’s eye view of the assembly area and here a supervisor monitors workflow. There’s also a supervisor for the steel section and one for the canvas section.

Below this loft area is the kitchen assembly area. Like most other sections of the factory, the target is to build three kitchens per day at a minimum.

There’s also a parts assembly area at the mid-point of the assembly line, where components such as fridge boxes, water tanks, bed frames and roofs are assembled prior to being fitted to the trailers.

The canvas shop is housed in yet another loft area, above the offices at the front of the factory. The Wax Converters canvas is cut and sewn by the eight workers here, the target being to make three or four tents a day.

A CNC canvas cutting machine marks and cuts the canvas. The design is loaded up into the computer running the CNC machine, which then cuts and marks folding creases accordingly, making it easier to sew together.

Final assembly

Now it’s onto the assembly line proper, which takes up almost half the floor space in the factory.

Each stop for the assembly process is given a name, starting with ‘PL1’ (Production Line 1), followed by PL2 and so on. There are eight stops involved in assembling a Cub, and a trailer will spend about two hours at each Production Line stop.

PL1 is where the suspension, coupling, brakes, brake wiring, wheels (and tyres), floor and stabiliser legs and water tank are fitted to the chassis. In the images here the trailers are still on rims only through PL2 and PL3, due to supply issues, when usually they would already have their wheel/tyre combos fitted.

At PL2 the body panels are secured with a combination of double-sided tape, glue and rivets. The moulded wheel arches - a new addition this year -- are bolted on here also.

The body panel decals are added to the body panels alongside the production line before fitment to the trailer.

Door frames, floor covering and lower edging to door panels are added at PL3.

The bed frame, wiring harnesses, kitchen track, locker doors and entry doors are fitted at PL4.

At PL5, the roof goes on using a hoist. Then the front tool box is bolted on.

At PL6, internal panels and fixtures, USB sockets, power points, and internal lights are fitted.

The gas and water lines are fitted to the trailer at PL7.

PL8 sees the tent, kitchen, battery, final electrical connections, a gas test, the VIN plate added and a final QA check.

Meeting hub

The meeting and information area adjacent to PL8 is where workers assemble for morning production meetings. It’s also the information hub for where each trailer is at in the production cycle.

There’s a screen with actual production output. This gives an indicator on how each section is tracking for throughput. A whiteboard has the VIN of each trailer currently being manufactured, with a tick against what has been done to it.

The completed campers are towed from the last assembly station, PL8, with a tractor to the QA shed located at the back of the factory, where each one is subjected to a rigorous two-to-three-hour quality check.

Water tanks are filled and checked for leaks, and all electrical circuits and gas lines are tested.

Once passed its QA check, the water is drained from the tank(s) and the Cub camper is towed to the weigh station, where actual Tare weight is measured. Three print-outs are made: two put in the trailer and one put on the paperwork. The Tare is then scribed onto the compliance plate.

The finished campers are then parked under cover ready for either a factory hand-over or for trucking to dealers.

Quick to react

Despite the apparent complexity with building a hard-floor camper trailer, with the manifold suppliers and about 3500 parts involved, Cub can sort out any problems with components quickly, as almost everything is made in-house.

A change in component design or manufacture can be decided within two days and in production within a week -- not something easily done with campers built overseas -- and this is the key advantage of the Aussie-made product.

Also see:
Big year for Cub Campers

Cub Campers Frontier 2019 Review

50 years of Cub Campers