Camper "Corner" Terminology
The automotive industry denotes "sides" on a car with driver's side and passenger side. Since the RV industry covers both motor homes and trailers (without steering wheels, of course, so no "driver" or "passenger"), they use different terminology.
- Because most entry doors on trailers and motor homes are on the passenger side, this side (the starboard side in nautical terms) in the RV industry is the "door side."*
- The port side--opposite from the door side--is the creatively named "off-door side."
- On trailers, the end with the coupler that attachs to a tow vehicle is the "front". The other end (with the bumper) is the "rear".
So, the four quadrants of a trailer are:
Why is this important?
Some parts are "side-dependent", meaning they have a door side version and an off-door side version that mirror each other but are not identical and not interchangeable.
For example, replacing all four corners on this roof necessitates two DSR/ODSF corners and two ODSR/DSF corners.
The two types of roof corner trim are mirror images of each other, but they are not interchangeable.
*Some trailers have entry doors on both sides of the trailer. For those, one might revert to automotive terminology, as in: "The driver's side entry door needs the lock repaired and the passenger side entry door needs a new weatherseal." Still, because most doors are on the starboard side of the vehicle, most manufacturers refer to this as the "door side".
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