I think you're confused about what a smoker is. Then again, shopping at sams club doesn't help. The only smoker you can buy at sams club is a little chief type smoker. Smoking is done at very cool temperatures for very long periods of time. We're talking smoked salmon and jerky. If you want to cook ribs, and shoulers then you will liekly be barbecuing. Barbecuing takes place at temps between 200 and 250 and will get a rack of spare ribs or baby backs done in a few hours. Takes a chicken 3-4 hours and beef chuck 5-8+ hours. The vertical offerings at sams club looked like a rounded off barrel right? This is marketed as a water smoker but is designed to cook at 200-250, hence the water pan that boils at about that temperature as all water does. You are wanting to build a barbecue. Not a grill, grills are hotter and a good example is the weber kettle. Spend some serious time at the barbecuen site and I think you will see with what I am saying.
Next thing is to build your own bbq with character. The pits you see on trailers, at cookoffs, and making pulled pork are indeed barbecues. Almost every one of them uses an offset or separate fire box. They do this to control temperature and to be able to add fuel without disturbing the meat. Replicate this design. Your coooking box can be horizontal or vertical, doesn't really matter since the whole thing will be like a big oven, think about how much meat you want to cook and how you want to arrange it. Most are horizontal to give a single large grate. Build your bbq so the grate is at a pleasant height.
Your firebox will need to be big enough that you are not constantly adding fuel. It doesn't need to be as big as a 55gal bbl. Half that is still pretty large. You need to make it airtight so that you can choke the air off and the big bed of coals will put out consistent heat for a long time. A big slow burning bed of coals will allow you more time to drink beer. A sign of an inexperienced bbqer is the constant smoke from the stack, you want dry heat, not a smoldering log. I find plenty of pink color and flavor smoked into the meat without seeing much any smoke at my stack.
A great fuel is lump charcoal or charcoal briquettes. You want dry heat from wood and you won't get that from propane. Another option is plain wood but you don't wat to cook on it until the wood has cooked down into a glowing mass of coals so you need to have a separate fire pit beside your bbq to cook down the wood.
I''ll attach a pick of my setup. The base is store bought and cooks real well. I made some changes as I saw fit.
