What is "housetrucker"

n. One who lives in a housetruck.

Housetruckers are individuals, families and groups who convert old trucks and school buses into mobile homes and live in them, preferring an unattached and transient lifestyle to more conventional housing. These vehicles began appearing around New Zealand during the mid-1970s and even though there are fewer today they continue to travel New Zealand roads.

Today these hippie nomads are found traveling independently and in convoys from town to town making a living from small cottage industries such as arts and crafts, or following various fruit picking seasons as they occur throughout the nation. Other part-time housetruckers use their handcrafted rigs only when taking an extended holiday. Some older vehicles which no longer operate are lifted on blocks and used as permanent caravans or extra rooms on properties and in caravan parks.

The notion of living a nomadic lifestyle in mobile collectives and following the seasons is older than civilization itself. Such examples of early tribes like Native Americans wandered across the nation, periodically moving location to maximise the advantages to climate and the environment. Throughout old Europe, the Middle East and Asia are found traditional Gypsies whose lifestyle is similar to that of the modern housetrucker.