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Recreational Vehicles - Part I

As I was doing research for our recent purchase, I ran across the following anonymous quote:

The best two days you have as an RV owner -
are the day you buy it and the day you sell it.

Probably what the author was alluding to was before you make a major purchase, such as an RV, you better have done your research and are sure of your decision. There are many individuals who buy an RV and are not committed to using it. I guess you could equate it to our tread mill that became a great place to hang clothes. Let's talk a little bit about the background concerning our recent purchase. Before you jump into the RV life, rent a unit like you're considering to use for a week or so to make sure you're going to like it.

Most of what we'll be talking about in the next two issues of "Your Web Connection" will be devoted to those of us that are occasional RVers. If you're considering the full-time lifestyle, like Terry's parents, the Internet is full of wonderful resources. Terry's parents have been on the road for over two years now and they love it! Some day they may settle down again, but for right now they are having the time of their lives! They just spent two months volunteering as docents at a lighthouse on the Oregon coast! Imagine going to sleep and waking up every morning with the sound of the ocean right outside your window. If you're considering the full-time lifestyle, you need to check out the Escapees RV Club. This is probably the best support organization for the millions that are on the road on a full-time basis. Let's now move on to and talking about camping and the great outdoors.

Terry and I Love To Camp!

Back in 1994, when I was getting ready to receive my marketing degree, we were trying to figure out somewhere neat to go to celebrate my (our) achievement. I say ours because without Terry's support, I would have never been able to go back to college after being out for twenty years. To make a long story short, we decided to borrow my brother-in-law and sister's Coleman popup tent trailer. They convinced us to head to Tyler State Park. After the week we spent there, we were hooked! We didn't want to come home.

At the time, we weren't able to buy a popup, so we opted for a tent. The problem is that in the state of Texas, if you're wimps like us, you go camping in the spring and the fall when the weather permits. Otherwise it is either too cold or much too hot to be able to enjoy the time in nature. There were so many times that we really needed to get away, but it was just either too hot or too cold. The other major consideration was it took just too long to get the Explorer packed on a Friday evening. We were both just too beat after the stressful work week. We'll be talking a little bit more about that later, having everything already packed.

We grew to love our tent. Even in the rain storms, minor leaks and all, we loved our tent. Some of the best times Terry and I have had together have been spent camping in our tent. As time went on, we started looking more seriously as the advantages of having a popup tent trailer. With my knees getting worse it was getting harder to get up off of our air mattress. We're now ready to develop a whole new set of memories in our new tent trailer. So let's take a look at the pros and cons we considered when purchasing our popup.

Pros of our popup trailer:

• Everything is packed and ready to go - Before it took us at least a couple of hours to get everything ready and packed in the Explorer. The popup has all of the necessary camping equipment. All Terry and I have to do now is pack the ice chest, clothes, books, etc. in the back of the Explorer, hook up the camper and we're ready to hit the road.
• Comfort has it's advantages - As we've gotten older, we like the comfort that the popup brings. Our king sized bed is now much easier to get out of. We opted for the air conditioning and it will be worth it's weight in gold, especially when we go camping during the hotter time of the year.
• Convenience is wonderful - It's great having an electric powered refrigerator, hot and cold running water, and storage and counter space where we have our books, games and snacks. If it's hot, we can sit at our dinette, bug free and comfortable, and enjoy ourselves.
• Inclement weather camping now possible - In the past when we wanted to go camping, if there was a hint of bad weather, we normally didn't go. If it rained, it was a pain to deal with the tent as well as cooking outside. One funny story comes to mind was a Sunday morning breakfast. I was just getting the pancakes off the griddle, when rain drops about the size of quarters starting falling. Terry and I got soaked, but we got breakfast eaten. Now if the weather is bad, we can cook inside or under our canopy.
• Ease of setup and break down of trailer - It wasn't that the tent was really hard to setup or breakdown, it was the unloading and carrying everything down to the campsite that took all the time. Terry and I got real good at setting up and breaking down the tent. In a very short while, we'll be as good with our new camper. On a side note, if you do upgrade to an RV, and you don't need your tent, consider donating it to an organization that can use it, such as a scout troop.
• Lots of parks easily accessible - Fortunately for us living in the the Dallas-Fort Worth area, we've got over 20 state parks available to us within a two hour drive. That means on a Friday night, it won't take us a long time to escape the Metroplex.
• Nothing better than the great outdoors - There is no way to describe the smell of the air or being able to look out your window and see the beauty of nature, or waking up early in the morning, sometimes too early, to the sounds of the birds in the trees. We always sleep so much better when we're camping. I guess we're just much more relaxed when we're camping.
• Easy to pull - A fold-down popup trailer is much easier to pull than a conventional travel trailer. It has much less wind resistance and weighs less.
• RV and camping folks are the best in the world - Some of the best people you'll ever meet are RVers. Terry and I love to see all of the families out in the parks. It's great to see the families spending quality time together bonding and creating meaningful memories that will last a lifetime.

Cons of our popup trailer:

• RV payments - A tent was a whole lot cheaper than our Coleman Santa Fe! There a joke going around our house that our bank is allowing us to use the camper as long as we keep making the payments.
• Insurance - You've got to maintain proper insurance on you RV. Fortunately it's not much. Our premium on our popup is only $78.00 for a six month period! Not real bad at all.
• Maintenance - To keep the trailer in top working order, you've got to perform routine maintenance, just like your car. Terry and I've decided once a year to take the unit to our dealer and have them check over everything and perform the maintenance such as checking out all of the systems, packing the wheel bearings, etc. There's even little details like replacing the sacrificial anode in the water heater. You ask what an anode is? I'll tell you a quick story. I became familiar with anodes in one of my past lives when I use to work for a gasoline tank installation company. Most of the storage tanks installed today are fiberglass but this wasn't always the case, they used to be metal. Our earth is full of electrical charges that constantly bombard a foreign object, such as a metal storage tank. After many years, they tank will corrode and fail. When we installed the metal tanks, we also buried on each of the four corners, sacrificial anodes, a softer more conductive metal that the charges would attack first. These anodes would help sustain the life of the tank. Well in our camper's hot water heater, there is an anode that also serves as the drain plug. It has to be serviced and replaced once a year or you risk failure of the hot water tank. In fact I was just reading in one of our RV magazines that a reader just had to buy a whole new hot water tank for $250 because he didn't replace the little $6.00 anode. Apparently these tanks are more susceptible to failure than our home tanks because of the wide variety of water that is put in them due to all the different campgrounds and areas you're likely to visit.   
• Proper tow vehicle - You have to have a tow vehicle and hitch rated for your trailer as well as the wiring installed. Also for the year 2001, electric brakes are standard on all of the Coleman units. We had the brake controller installed as well. Since we're inexperienced at pulling a trailer, we felt the brake controller would be a necessary addition.
• Storage - You have to have a place to park the trailer. Either you're going to have to give up your garage, like we did, or have a spot to park it or pay for storage at an RV lot.
• Parks are crowded during peak times - During certain times of the year, it is almost impossible to get a spot in some of the more popular parks. Some of our national parks are getting so crowded during the peak seasons that the park rangers are having to limit access to our national treasures. Since we used to only camp a couple times a year, we haven't had to deal with this before, it now becomes a reality with our new popup.

Tips on buying an  RV

After doing extensive research on what popup we really wanted I found out one startling fact. Unlike automobiles, with site after site available on the Internet that covers pricing, there are no such sites where you can research pricing of RVs. I'm talking about the sites that give you the approximate cost that the dealer pays for the vehicle. You can't walk into a dealership and say, "I know what you paid for this unit and I'm offering you this amount."  The sites, as far as I'm aware, just aren't out there. Fortunately all of the manufacturers have web sites where you can become knowledgeable about the different RVs you're considering as well as the options. Options are a whole story in themselves which we'll talked about more in a bit. 

The RV industry is also very tight lipped and closed to outsiders. Some of the reports I've read document the top executives of a dealer's major lines coming to visit the dealer on a regular basis. These are not zone managers, these are the real McCoy direct from the home office of the manufacturer. When did you hear of a vice president of Chevrolet, direct out of Detroit, visiting a local dealer to drop in to see how sales are? It's  unfortunate that the industry is so secretive when you consider that some of the higher end RVs cost more than twice the normal house does, we're talking about the full-blown motor homes here. The upper end dealers target older  individuals that are nearing or at retirement age. They normally have large equities in their home plus a savings account to match. Just like the automobile sales industry there is much that the manufacturers and dealers don't want you to know.

Another thing that compounds matters is the multitude of RV options that will be thrown at you. On a automobile, there are a standard or finite set of normal options. Start looking at options on a Class A motor home, the really big ones, and your head will start spinning. Basically you're buying a furnished house. What type of upholstery; leather or cloth; counter tops; formica, corian or even tile. Do you want wood parquet or linoleum floors? Carpet? What type of couch or recliners? How about a washer or dryer? Do you want a convection, microwave or combination oven? How about a stationary satellite dish or one that can track the satellite as you drive down the road? Do you see what I mean? All of these options confuse the final price because, along with the RV, they are hard to price and figure out what the true cost is.

So what do you do to get a fair price?

Fortunately with the tent trailer unit we bought, we were able to go out and look at and price similarly priced units to get a feel about the industry. I did extensive research on the Internet concerning the models we were considering, unit lenghts and weights, floor plans and the available options. We were lucky. Unlike Class A motor homes, there aren't as many options to add on.

After we had done our research and got the pricing on the models we were considering, we knew the range of the pricing. A year before we had visited the annual Fort Worth RV show and were really impressed with the Coleman product. We were pretty well sold on the Coleman line from the start but we did want to visit the other dealers and see what their models offered. Fortunately we had become familiar with one of Coleman's leading dealers in the area, Western Campers in Fort Worth. In fact, Terry's boss and her husband had bought their Coleman there in the mid 80's. They spoke very highly of everyone at the dealership. Jerry, Deborah's husband, loves their service and sales departments. 

So everything was in place. We'd narrowed down the manufacturer and model that we wanted, a Coleman Santa Fe, and we had found one of their premier dealers that had been in business since 1976 to deal with. I've been in the business world long enough to know that you don't stay in business with repeat customers 25 years unless you're doing something right. Also something else was interesting. After visiting the Coleman site, I filled out a request for information. I was surprised when I got an email back from Coleman recommending that I pay Western Campers a visit. They actually gave them the referral. The sale was painless and we drove off with our new camper. What was nice is that right next door is a hitch installation company that Western Camper deals very closely with. Western Camper was able to do a "turn-key" installation and delivery, and we got the hitch and trailer by dealing with just one company. We didn't have to worry if we were getting the correct hitch, brake controller or wiring. Western Camper, Tim and K.C., our sales reps, took care of everything.

So my main recommendation when you are getting ready to purchase an RV is to deal with a dealer that has an ethical reputation and a good track record. When you are talking to a dealer that you aren't familiar with, ask for references. This is a major purchase and partnership that you're going to have to live with for a long time, unlike an automobile, which you trade off more often. There are also many automobile dealers to choose from if you don't like one. When it comes to Coleman, there are only two major dealers in this area, one in Fort Worth and one in Dallas. So you need to be sure of your decision.

Here are some other tips if you're considering some of the bigger units, such as any of the self contained units. This is a whole different ball game and there are lots of "games" that the dealers, unfortunately, have been known to play. Here are some tips that I found out on the web:

• Extended warranties are big business and very profitable for the dealer - Check them out on the web first or at least before making a decision. In the past, you had to buy your extended warranties from the dealer.  Now you have lots of options and plans to choose from.
• If you don't have at least 20% to put down on the units costing $100,000 and up, wait - You'll be what the industry call "upside down" in no time on your unit. You'll owe a lot more on the unit than it's worth. In case things don't work out and you need to sell it, you'll be in trouble and will probably have a take a loss.
• A general rule of thumb to consider - On units selling over $100,000 range, the normal discount is around 18-25% off list. Units under $100,000, the discount averages 10-15%. Of course this all hinges on dealer and manufacturer promotions and incentives.
• Don't make an immediate decision - This is a "life-changing" decision, go home and sleep on it to make sure it feels right.
• Purchasing a used RV - Be sure to pick up a copy of the N.A.D.A. Consumer Recreational Vehicle Guide. This will become your "bible" and your trusted friend. If its a motor home, be sure to insist on having a dealer go over the mechanics and operational systems.