What I'm thinking: Before you buy that RV

BLUF: Take an RVing course before you buy.

RV Basic courses are a MUST have for new RVers.

I didn't know this before I purchased my RV. If I had taken one when I started planning for my retirement 4 years ago I might have made some different decisions. I had towed before so I thought "No problem! Buy a 1/2 ton vehicle (Suburban in my case), get a trailer and hit the road." Right? Isn't that what you think?

BOY is there a lot more to it than that!

I bought in Oct 2017 (my 60th birthday). I was going to work two more years but decided to retire 31 May 2018. Roxie (I name everything) sat in storage being prepped until I finally pulled her out in June to take the first trip. I had driven around a church parking lot when I first picked it up and thought "I got this!"

My first back in campsite I take out a "hitching post" the park had between the two back to back spaces. $30 for a new post. Oh, let me go back, my first time backing into the storage space I pinched and sliced my electric cord in half! The storage manager rebuilt my cord so I could get out of the driveway and get to the repair shop to have it replaced. ($50)

Second trip to the Oregon coast in August I cross the Scottsburg bridge (Umpqua highway OR 38). It says go slow… 25mph. Well I was down there but the semi headed toward me wasn't. I don't know if I swerved or it was the wash that swayed me, but I clipped the awning on the side of the bridge and pulled it off. A kind passerby picked up the pieces I left on the bridge and helped me cut the rest of the fabric off. I had to leave it on the side of the road since it was too long to put anywhere (sorry highway dept).

Third trip I get the awning replaced while visiting in Montana by using insurance so just the deductible ($250). On the way home I pull into a Love’s station that was not built for RVs and got my fender caught on the pump protector stanchion. Yellow streak down the side. Power switch for stabilizer gone, bumper destroyed, hose carrier destroyed (still trying to get that damage fixed, $1500).

I pull out of storage for the last time in October to go to my house to pack to go full time. This is in Portland OR. I try to plan my route to avoid obstacles but as I make a turn, I hit the curb. Blown tire so I pull off on a side street and wait for roadside assistance...two hours later they send someone to change a vehicle tire..not an RV tire. Then I notice that my brand-new awning was sliced to shreds by a street sign and one of the outside speakers is missing. I get this fixed in GA while visiting my sister and pay for it myself ($900).

Oh, the adventures of RVing.

Sometime in there I learned about the Escapees RV Boot Camp and RV drivers’ courses. I signed up for both courses for Feb 2019 in Congress AZ, a stop along the way to visit my sisters in GA and attend both the FMCA Rally in Perry and RVillage Rally 2.0 in FL. I found out about and signed up for the FMCA RV Basic class in Perry...you can never learn too much!

AND BOY DID I LEARN. It was like a fire hose being turned on in Congress.

Who knew tires had a use by date? And it isn't just a guideline like those on canned foods, it really means something! C rating vs D rating vs E rating on tires...oh my.

Even though they kept saying "purge, purge, purge...get your weight under control" I walked away with a list of 22 items I needed to add to my RV safety kit!

GVWR, GAWR, GCWR, CCC...and I thought the military had a lot of acronyms!

I've done rewiring in a house but never had to calculate amps, watts, volts, etc so I don't kill a battery.

Just pull into the sight and plug in right...NOOOO. Level? Just so I don't fall over when walking, right? NOOOO Refrigerator might catch on fire and destroy everything. I installed an attachment for the fridge that will shut it off and prevent this.

About 15 pages of notes later...Ok now on to driving class.

How to set up the mirrors correctly. What to look for in the mirror when backing into a space, how to line up rear tires. Driving over a hill properly. GREAT info...Thanks Tim. It made me a lot more conscious about how that thing behind me reacts and even when not towing I'm now thinking about towing.

Finally, on to the Escapees weigh station. OOPS I'm already overweight and haven't added the new items I need! I'd removed most of my paper craft items from the RV before I left and put it in storage. That would have been another couple hundred pounds! For now, shift stuff around to get it more balanced and take it slow.

Whew time to hit the road and digest all that information. More adventures along the way including a grapefruit size bubble on a trailer tire. As I stopped at a rest area a true GOOD SAMARITAN followed me in to tell me about it and saved my bacon. The roadside service guys were expecting a shredded tire and torn up RV which would have happened had it not been for that guy. The importance of weight and tire rating came into play there!

After spending a week in my sister’s driveway purging and putting in the new items, I ordered from Amazon to pick up at her house, I head to Perry and RV Basic. Yes, it was a lot of the same information but new info also and the repetition helped me understand a lot of it better (tires, weight, propane, safety).

One thing they did at both classes was ask how many did not have an RV yet and I was surprised at the number of people who raised their hands. THEY are the smart ones. I was discussing this blog entry with a neighbor who also has an RV and he said they wish they had taken one before purchasing.

After the tire issue I took their advice and purchased a Tire Pressure Monitor System. I scoured the SE to find tires that were rated something other than C for the RV. I finally found a D rated tire (meaning it will carry more weight, has more plys) at a commercial tire store and bought five new tires (over $800) for the TT and put the system on them.

After purging more at my sisters, I head to FL for Rally 2.0. WHAT FUN!! As I leave, I get weighed again. I swear their scales were off (at least one of them was) since one weighed almost 500 lbs more on each wheel than the Escapees stationary scale did. I still don’t know how good a job I did purging since their weight was 1000 lbs more total!

I then take off across country back to Nevada. Just west of Clovis NM, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, my tire monitor goes off. I watch a tire lose air. All the others are ok. I stop on the side of the road before it gets below 40 psi and wait 2 hours for roadside assistance. The young man is surprised that my tire isn’t blown, shredded and/or otherwise destroyed. He REPAIRS the tire, removing the screw I'd picked up and patching it. I’ve never had that done on the side of the road, but they deal mainly with big rigs and farm tractors, so he was equipped to do it. He did not want to put the spare on and leave me with a flat in case something else happened. I’m still running on that tire over 2000 miles later!

Alright, back to the original question…would I do anything different in choosing my rig? Maybe. I love my suburban and having the enclosed cargo space. I camped (slept) in my old one for years before going RV so it is a security blanket for emergencies. Maybe I would have looked harder to find a ¾ ton. My RV isn’t the one I really, really wanted; they had discontinued that model. But other companies made similar models so I should have looked around more. It was shorter and lighter so maybe the ½ ton would have been ok. The understanding of how all the weights work together could have made a lot of difference in my choices.

Bottom line: If you are thinking about taking up the hobby or lifestyle of RVing take a basic course first. Not only will it pay for itself it will save you time, money, and headaches. Take a driving course (unless you know everything there is to know about driving and towing! lol) and you will probably save on your insurance.

https://fmca.com/rv-education-101 (Second one I took)

https://www.escapees.com/education/rvers-boot-camp/ (First one I took)

https://www.rvbasictraining.com/ (don’t know about this one)

https://www.rvschool.com/

https://www.rvschool.com/school-locations/ (Driving school I took)