Meet Rubishack: The Beastly but Super-Fun Tiny House on Tracks

We mean that literally. Most tiny house builders will use absolute phrasing to get eyeballs on their products, but the Rubishack is literally unmatched. It’s a tiny house that rolls on tracks instead of wheels. But it’s also perfectly capable of moving under its own power and doesn’t need a towing vehicle, which again sets it apart from any other tiny out there. It’s more of a motorhome than a tiny.From the outside, though, with the exception of the four tracks, the Rubishack looks like a typical tiny house: a wooden frame, wooden siding, and wraparound glazing to bask the interior in natural light and make whoever is inside feel less like they’re cramped.

That’s where the similarities with tinies stop, though. The Rubishack is an entirely different beast: a Cummins diesel-powered beast that can go anywhere and deliver the kind of fun beastly offroaders usually do.

That’s because the Rubishack is a little bit of everything. Designed and built by Rubitracks, a Canadian tracks specialist shop, it started out as a fairly standard promotional vehicle, as Scott of Rubitracks explains to one outlet. Inspired by YouTube videos of tiny houses and mobile shacks, Scott wanted to build something that would bring more exposure online to his company.

As such, it had to feature the tracks that Rubitracks sells. The chassis and the tracks were salvaged from a previous project.

Initially, they wanted to build something very much like a tiny house, but as they worked on the idea, it grew. They would later plan on putting the living area behind the driver’s cab and eventually settle on going against the rule book here as well. So, in the end, the Rubishack layout had the driver’s “cab” in the middle of the tiny home, with a king-size bed in the front and a dinette in the back.

Even putting this is in writing sounds strange, and we reckon driving the Rubishack comes with a learning curve because of it. There is no dashboard to speak of and the driver is looking out over the bed, through the large window by it, which also serves as windshield. On the bright side, he has plenty of side windows, as well as oversize rearview mirrors.

Videos posted to Rubitracks’ social media don’t say whether the Rubishack is registered, except to note that registering it as a homemade RV would be “doubtful.” But it’s road-legal with the mirrors and lights, and the team has taken it out several times, both out in the wild and onto city streets.

The interior is plain, if you compare it to what you’ll find in actual tiny houses. At the same time, though, it’s also surprisingly well-specced: you have AC and forced-air heating, plugs, and LED lighting. You also have that comfortable bed at the front, over the engine, with a foam mattress.

The driver and front passenger’s seats are sourced from a motorhome, so they swivel to turn to the rear of the home, much like they would have done in the original vehicle. There’s a two-person dinette there, with room to fit one or two more foldable chairs, turning this area into a lounge.

You don’t get kitchen or restroom facilities inside, but the question arises: do you really need them? You would, if you wanted to live in this thing full time, but that’s not what it was meant to do. As the video below shows, it was made to go where no other tiny house in the world would ever dream of.

That’s possible thanks to the Rubitracks HD tracks mounted underneath and the 5.9-liter Cummins diesel engine. The Rubishack can hit maximum speeds of 40 mph (64.3 kph) and, while tight corners might prove a challenge, it can easily roll through muddy water, sand, and other rough terrains like a boss.

Another advantage the Rubishack has over tiny houses is pricing. Pricing remains the Achilles’ heel of the tiny house movement. But where a tiny house of similar size would probably ask upwards of $50,000, the Rubishack comes with a cost estimate of just $30,000.

There is a “but” to all of the above, as you probably anticipated. The Rubishack isn’t for sale and, perhaps just as bad, there will be no other like it built by Rubitracks and offered for sale. The Rubishack was designed and built as “a marketing gimmick to reach more potential customers,” and there are no concrete plans to turn it into something else. Once it has exhausted all marketing potential, the Rubishack will probably be turned into an Airbnb.

But that’s not to say that we can’t hop along for a virtual ride and enjoy it as well. Here’s the Rubishack heading out to the beach on Prince Edward Island, navigating rough terrain like no other house ever did – or will again.