2026 Freedom Express Ultra Lite 245RKS

The Freedom Express Ultra Lite 245RKS is a rear-kitchen couples’ coach — a layout that moves the galley to the back wall so the cook gets a run of counter and the front of the trailer becomes a private bedroom. A front queen bedroom with vaulted under-bed storage anchors one end; a pass-through bath sits in the middle; and a full rear kitchen with a stainless sink, a three-burner cooktop and a 10-cubic-foot 12V refrigerator runs across the back under a window. A single large slide opens the living area, and theater seating comes standard. An exterior pull-out camp kitchen extends the cooking outside. Nominal capacity is four.

At 5,980 pounds unloaded and 28 feet 5 inches, the 245RKS is a comfortable half-ton tow with about 1,520 pounds of cargo capacity. Standard equipment is full 12-volt residential: a Magic Chef 10-cubic-foot 12V refrigerator, a Magic Chef three-burner gas cooktop with a microwave, a GE 15,000-BTU ducted air conditioner with a ducted furnace, a Suburban 42,000-BTU tankless water heater and a Freedom Solar Ready 200-watt panel with a 30-amp controller. A 50-amp upgrade with a second air conditioner is optional. The grey and black tanks are 35 gallons each behind a 52-gallon fresh tank, and a 17-foot power awning shades the door side.

Construction is the Freedom Express Alumicage recipe — two-step pinch-rolled, vacuum-bonded walls with dual-sided Azdel composite under a LAMILUX 1000 fiberglass exterior, a 3/4 gel-coated fiberglass cap, a full walk-on roof with Dicor Tufflex PVC and a heated, enclosed underbelly, all over a spread-axle chassis — a clear tier above the metal-sided Catalina value line. For a couple who cooks and wants a real rear galley, a front bedroom and theater seating in an easy half-ton tow, the 245RKS is one of the line’s most practical mid-size plans.

Coachmen's Freedom Express Ultra Lite is the brand's value-oriented ultra-light travel trailer — a laminated-fiberglass, aluminum-caged line built to tow behind a mid-size SUV or any half-ton. The 245RKS on this page is highlighted; the other profiled plans link to their own pages. Profiled here are breadth-spanning floorplans — a compact couples' rear-bath, a mid couples' coach, a dual-entry family bunkhouse, a dual-slide bunkhouse and the triple-bunk flagship — with the rest of the roster catalogued on the line hub and profiled in demand order. (Coachmen also fields an entry-trim Freedom Express Select sub-line, summarized on the hub.)

This floorplan carries its water comfortably. A full 52-gallon fresh tank is roughly 29% of the 1,520-pound cargo capacity, leaving the 245RKS with a usable gear budget even when you tow full.

The published dry tongue weight of 614 pounds is 10% of the 5,980-pound dry weight, which sits inside the 10–15% band usually quoted for stable towing. It is still a dry figure: loading the front pass-through and the fresh tank both push it up.

Nothing above changes the ceiling. Loaded to its 7,500-pound GVWR the 245RKS is towing 1,520 pounds more than its 5,980-pound dry figure, and that is the number your vehicle has to be rated for — not the brochure weight.

Tank balance is generous here: 52 gallons of fresh against 35 grey and 35 black, so waste capacity keeps pace with supply and the fresh tank is the constraint that ends a dry stay.

Ranked by GVWR, the 245RKS sits 2 of 12 in the Coachmen Freedom Express Ultra Lite line: 7,500 pounds against a line that runs from 6,094 to 10,500 pounds. That position is the useful thing to know, because the plans immediately either side of it are the real alternatives.

Either side of it in the same line: Coachmen Freedom Express Ultra Lite 192RBS is 1,406 pounds lighter at 6,094 lb GVWR; and Coachmen Freedom Express Ultra Lite 22MLS is 100 pounds heavier at 7,600 lb GVWR.

Against the 245RKS: the Hideout 212RKS is 3 ft shorter and sleeps 1 fewer; the Jay Feather 22BH sleeps 3 more. Those are differences in the published numbers only — what they cost, how they are built and how they live are separate questions each of those pages answers on its own terms.

Those are the nearest travel trailers from other lines by weight — one per line, picked by proximity on that figure and nothing else. They are listed so the same tow vehicle can be checked against real alternatives, not because they are equivalent inside; layout, build and price diverge sharply across that group.

For scale, the Coachmen Freedom Express Ultra Lite floorplans profiled here run 4,538 to 8,396 pounds dry and 22 to 37 feet of exterior length across 12 plans. Where a floorplan falls in that spread usually says more about which vehicle can tow it, and which site it fits, than the layout name does.

Every profiled floorplan in this line, with the full weight table, is on the Coachmen Freedom Express Ultra Lite line hub.

This catalog tracks 18 specification fields per floorplan. Named sources publish 16 of them for the 245RKS. The rest are not shown, because the alternative is reading a figure across from a sibling floorplan or from what the segment usually does — and a number nobody published is worth less than an admitted gap.

Not published for this floorplan: interior height, tire specification. If you find one of these in a manufacturer document for this plan, it belongs on this page.

The completeness figure at the foot of this page (93%) measures the same thing on the full field set: it is a measurement of how much this floorplan’s manufacturer publishes, not of how much research went into the page.

Values on this page carrying an asterisk were derived by arithmetic from published figures, or come from a single source, rather than being printed directly by the manufacturer. The flag travels with the number into the downloadable spec sheet.

How every figure here was sourced and checked is set out on the methodology page.