Playa logistics

The single most common reason a trailer rental falls apart late is a tow vehicle that is not rated for the trailer. Check this first, before you fall in love with a floor plan. Each trailer page lists the minimum tow vehicle, and those numbers are not padded.

Remember that the drive in is not a highway drive. Gate Road is washboard, the queue can take hours in the heat with your engine idling, and deep playa surface is soft in places. A vehicle that tows fine on an interstate can struggle here.

If you do not have a suitable vehicle, add delivery and placement to your build. We tow the trailer to your camp address, level it, set it up and collect it afterwards. Plenty of renters fly into Reno and never touch a hitch.

Air conditioning is the dominant electrical load, and the hours you most want it are the hours everything else is also working hardest. Plan your fuel around running A/C through the afternoon, not around a spec-sheet average. If your camp runs an industrial generator, put the trailer on it — one large unit carrying the whole camp is quieter, cheaper on fuel and far better at holding up when everyone is running A/C at once.

Generator run hours are governed by camp etiquette and sometimes by placement rules — a generator running at 4am next to a sleeping neighbour is a real conflict. Solar plus a battery bank covers overnight loads quietly, which is why our larger trailers carry solar arrays.

Store spare fuel safely, away from heat and out of direct sun, and never inside the trailer. Dust in the intake reduces generator efficiency over the week, so your last day will burn more than your first.

This is not a soft guideline. Gray water cannot be dumped on the playa — not dish water, not shower water, not the bucket you rinsed your feet in. It has to be contained and pumped out by a licensed service. The playa is a protected dry lake bed and the rule is enforced.

A self-contained trailer handles containment for you, which means the tank fills and eventually needs emptying. Capacity is therefore a hard limit on how long you can live normally. Our trailers have small tanks, so a mid-week dump and water fill is mandatory rather than optional — check the tank sizes on the trailer page and do the arithmetic before you book.

We do not arrange or resell that service. Licensed pump-out and potable water trucks operate inside the city City every year, you book them directly, and they fill their schedules fast once the event starts. Sort it out before you leave home, not on Wednesday when the tank is full.

The practical consequence: every gallon of fresh water you plan for becomes roughly a gallon of gray water you also have to plan for. Size both sides of the equation, not just the intake.

Playa dust is alkaline and extremely fine. It gets into door seals, window tracks, slide-out gaskets, vents, electronics and your skin. Every trailer we rent is dust-sealed before it goes out, but the seal is a head start, not a solution.

Establish a door discipline rule in your camp on day one — the door does not stand open, ever. Keep goggles and a mask within reach of the door rather than buried in a bag, because whiteouts arrive faster than you can go find them.

Alkaline dust dries and cracks skin, particularly feet. A vinegar-water spray and a good lotion at the end of each day prevents playa foot, which is genuinely painful and entirely avoidable.