Just like your best friend during a night out, this Wingman has your back.

How many times have you planned a camping trip and compiled a tent, sleeping bag, mattress pad, and a dry bag with a few clothes piled up on the ground beside your bike. You then try to perform a balancing act of carefully piling the whole shebang on your bike’s pillion and luggage rack — if you’re lucky enough to have a rear luggage rack — while trying to strap it all down before it all rolls away and falls off into an unruly pile on the ground?

Designed specifically for motorcycle travel, the Wingman of the Road is a single package that contains a very durable tent, a light sleeping bag and a foam mattress all rolled into one convenient package. Even better, before you embark on your ride, unroll the Wingman and lay out a few clothes you’ll need for your ride and roll it all up into a single roll. No more juggling multiple rolls that decide to depart your bike at the most inopportune time.

The Goose, the model tested in this review, is a single-person tent that, according to wingmanoftheroad.com, has a rolled-up measurement of 63 cm wide x 34 cm diameter and weighs 10 kg.

The advertised weight is accurate. When set up, the inside of the Goose measures 200 cm long x about 80 cm wide and 70 cm high at the peak.

There is plenty of room for sleeping without feeling claustrophobic. There isn’t enough room to sit up but there doesn’t need to be. You’re just inside to get out of the elements and to sleep. The three centimetre thick, high-density foam mattress fills the floor from end to end and side to side, and the sleeping bag is summer-light. Both the mattress cover and the sleeping bag are zipped together, and the mattress can be removed for throwing the fabric in the washing machine. If you’re camping in chilly temperatures, you’ll want to be wearing a base layer and/or an additional blanket or heavier sleeping bag, which can also be rolled up in the Goose. That will, of course, make the rolled diameter larger but the outer straps are plenty long to accommodate. It’s still just one handy package to strap onto your bike.

The Goose didn’t come with instructions, but set-up is pretty straightforward and easily figured out. Once you’re used to it, the Goose sets up in minutes. The two straps that keep the roll contained are 5 cm wide, so they don’t dig into the roll, and they are sewn onto the roll cover, making it impossible to misplace them. I was genuinely impressed with the very robust clips that hold the strap ends together — they are actually metal instead of the standard plastic clips that are so prevalent these days. The metal clips are solid and the latching mechanism has a positive click.

Once the Goose is unrolled, you’ll find the required hardware in a dedicated compartment at the end of the outer roll, which doubles as the floor outside the tent. Hardware consists of six tent pegs and paracord; one large, adjustable-length, shock cord pole which is the main backbone of the tent from end to end; and two smaller pre-bent elastic shock cord poles for each end. All poles are installed from the outside.

Set-up is easy and once it’s completed, the Goose is free-standing so you can move it into position before staking it down. There are D-rings at each corner for tent pegs if you wish, and two tent pegs are required to hold the gables taut on each end. As mentioned earlier, the outer wrap of the Goose acts as the floor outside the tent where you can take off your boots so you don’t track grass or dirt into your bed.

The tent is made of durable canvas — today’s lightweight nylon tents are lighter but not nearly as durable as the Goose. The floor of the tent is a heavy waterproof vinyl and provides substantial durability against rocks, roots and branches.

Both sides of the tent have a zippered outer canvas flap as well as a zippered screen that takes up the whole side of the tent, making it a breeze to slip into.

What could be construed as the main side of the tent has an additional extra-wide flap, or wing, and is designed to be tied to your bike. This “wing” acts as rain protection to cover the outer floor and your riding gear and/or panniers, which fit nicely in the area to keep them out of the elements. Ties on the floor can be also tied to your wheels to keep it in place. I slipped the other side of the floor under the tent to keep it in place.

Your helmet can hang on a hook on either end of the tent under the gable flaps, again out of the elements and unseen from passersby.

The tent ends also have screens covered by flaps, and with everything open they create airflow from all four sides. Or if the weather isn’t cooperating, simply zip up all the flaps and be completely protected from the elements. All of the large-gauge zippers are SBS brand and are quite heavy-duty, with large, glove-friendly pulls.

All the protective flaps on the sides and the ends have provisions to roll up and secure in place so that only the screens are zippered shut, or you can roll the full-side screens up as well and secure them so that the whole tent is open on both sides.

I’d recommend taking a couple extra lengths of paracord since only two are supplied for the wing, but the wing has four grommets. Using all four grommets would prevent the wing from sagging in the middle. It might be possible to use one paracord for two grommets but that wouldn’t work on my bike. Besides, in my experience, it’s always a good idea to have a couple extra tent pegs and paracord, as those items are easily misplaced.

I know what you are wondering: Will the Wingman fit back in the original package? With other tents and sleeping bags that come in their own package, it’s almost impossible to fit the product back in. Not so with the Wingman of the Road.

As mentioned at the beginning of this review, it rolls up into itself, so there is no bag for it to fit into. If you add clothes or a blanket it will understandably increase in size, and it does take some practice to rolling it up efficiently. I’m able to get it rolled to spec at 34 cm diameter.

The Wingman of the Road is a robust product that isn’t the smallest solution on the market but it’s well-thought out in its design and the very durable canvas fabric and heavy vinyl floor will make it a long-lasting companion to the motorcycle camper for many years to come. It’s a very cool product that works as expected.

Go to wingmanoftheroad.com for more information or to order. Price of the Goose is $578. By the time you take into account the price of a high-quality tent, mattress pad and lightweight sleeping bag, this cost is quite reasonable.

Wingman of the Road also has the Toucan two-person tent as well as a variety of motorcycle camping products including the Road Kitchen, which consists of a flat-pack wood-burning camping stove, cast iron pan and cutting board all in a canvas travel bag. There is also a compact cooler, a canvas chair, and a canvas table, among other camping products. It seems these people know a thing or two about spending time in the great outdoors.