Wayzless keeps a pioneering tiny house couple on the road

Now pay attention, boys & girls, because this story goes back quite a ways (no pun intended, but we’ll get to that in a minute). If you’re a Johnny-come-lately to the tiny house movement, you’ve already missed out on seeing Terry and Hardy Evans’s Wayzalot. And if you thought the name had something to do with the popular navigation app, you’re really barking up the wrong tree, you millennial arriviste… now go sit over there for a while and listen to a tale of your tiny house elders and how their epic journey began, how it almost ended between two tractor-trailers, and how they got back on the road again.

It’s actually hard to say exactly when the story starts. 1946, the model year of the International Harvester KB-6 that originally pulled the Wayzalot? The early 70s, when Hardy and Terry saw a decorated truck camper at a Renaissance Fair and vowed they’d build a better one someday? 1981, when Hardy acquired the completely inoperable KB-6? 1994, when he finally started fixing it up? 1997, when the Evanses got a trailer and started building the Wayzalot on top of it? It wasn’t until 1999 that the Wayzalot actually got underway – but on the tiny house timescale, that’s still somewhere in the Paleolithic period. Yes, Terry and Hardy were tiny way before tiny was cool.

And once they did get started, they just kept going, racking up 55,000 miles over the next 11 years. Or to be very precise, until May 11, 2010.

Wayzalot 1Wayzalot 2

Wayzalot 5

Wayzalot 6

The Evans were driving the Wayzalot to a vintage RV rally in Tennessee with a new truck (the KB-6 still ran, but could only do five miles an hour uphill) when the semi in front of them braked suddenly. Swerving to avoid it, they got slammed by the semi behind them. Hardy suffered a broken ankle, and the Wayzalot suffered a lot worse.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

After that long on the road, then Evans weren’t about to call it quits. They got a 1949 Glider and spent some time with the Tin Can Tourists. Lovely people, but living in a tin can just wasn’t the same as living in a tiny house. So Hardy fired up the venerable KB-6 once again, hauled a 21-foot fifth wheel trailer home behind it, and spent the next year and a half building the Wayzless. Now they’re back in business, usually behind a late model Ford truck, but sometimes using the old KB-6, which handles the new tiny house a little better because it’s lighter.

And why’s it lighter? Because it weighs less, of course!

Wayzless 1

Wayzless 2

Wayzless 4

Wayzless 3

Wayzless 5

h/t Tiny House Talk

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