Photograph courtesy of Christopher Hodapp
FIGURE 2-11: A truck camper or camper shell slides on and off of your pickup truck, and may be just the entry-level RV for you.
The better camper units have hydraulic lift jacks that flip down and extend to the ground; these jacks raise and lower the shell to install or remove it from the back of the truck. Push the button, and the shell is lifted high enough to clear the tailgate end of the truck. After the shell is on the back of the truck, tie-down straps, brackets, and turnbuckles are used to secure the shell from falling out on the road or bouncing around. Less-expensive models use a manual cranking system to do the lifting and lowering.
You can buy a new truck camper for as little as $6,000, but they can run well over $50,000 depending on the options and features you want. The biggest ones extend over the top of the truck’s cab like a Class C’s cab-over hump, and these days some even have a slide to increase the usable interior space after you’re parked. An interesting variation is made by Northstar Campers (www.northstarcampers.com) — its truck camper incorporates a pop-up roof.
The most useful truck campers have a kitchenette with a sink, refrigerator, cooktop and microwave, dinette table, and enough seats for everybody; a toilet with at least a privacy curtain; and even a shower. You get many of the same amenities you’d find in any other trailer, including a furnace and a water heater powered by propane (technically, liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG), as well as an air conditioner. Typically designed for two people, some truck campers’ convertible places allow you to sleep as many as four. (A handful of designs claim to sleep six, but that’s unlikely unless at least four of them are under the age of 10.)
Chapter 3
Decisions, Decisions: Knowing What You Need
IN THIS CHAPTER
Chapter 2 gives you an outline of what’s available in the RV world, which is pretty much any size or price you can imagine. But which one is right for you?
In Part 2, we discuss the nuts and bolts of researching a brand, choosing a dealer, checking a warranty, and finding the resale value. But in this chapter, we’re more general, helping you narrow down the class and type of RV to suit your needs. We cover some issues regarding pulling or being pulled, in terms of motorhomes versus towable trailers. We help you consider how much space you need and which amenities you can’t live without.
When you’ve made decisions about the subjects in this chapter, you’ll have narrowed the field quite a bit, enabling you to feel less overwhelmed by the number of companies and models out there to choose from.
To Pull or Be Pulled, That Is the Question
The first big question you have to answer when you’re in the market for an RV is: Do you want to tow a separate vehicle, or do you want to use your vehicle to tow your RV? (Or are you going to try to go it without a separate vehicle altogether? Before you go that route, check out the nearby sidebar, “RVing without a separate vehicle.”)
CAMPING TOAD-FREE
In the beginning, RVing in a motorhome can look very attractive, and you may think you can get by without a car. Maybe you think you can try to structure your travels in such a way that, for example, you always stop at the grocery on the way to the campground. Okay, fair enough.
We’ve seen lots of people in smaller Class C and B+ motorhomes camping without a car. On rare occasions, we’ve seen them have to pull up stakes from a full hookup because they had to go somewhere, and on the whole, they seem to take it in stride.
The thing is, you just can’t foresee everything that may happen when you’re on the road, including the truly oddball stuff, like when our dog, Sophie the Power Poodle, got dreadfully sick and we had to find an emergency animal hospital in the wilds of Montana.
You also can’t anticipate the fun things, like finding out the pretty little town you’re in is having a wine festival that you really want to visit. Of course, the pleasure of a Class B or small Class C is that you can more easily find a place to park it when you head out for that festival. But if you’re planning on a Class A and you’re thinking you’ll be able to find a place to park it in that pretty little town, well, we don’t envy you.
These are the scenarios you need to play out in your mind. Yes, when you’re driving a coach, other options for transportation are usually available: Maybe you can take the occasional Uber or Lyft, and you can always rent a car for the duration of your stay, which is very easy to do in popular camping areas (on the other hand, it can have its annoyances — Enterprise won’t deliver a car to you in the middle of Yellowstone).
The fact is, Americans are very used to absolute freedom of mobility. This country is very spread out, the popular camping states are even more spread out, and it’s difficult to function without access to a car, particularly on a long journey. Be honest with yourself about your priorities and how much hassle you’re willing to put up with in order to leave your vehicle at home.
Before we started RVing, we knew that some people in motorhomes towed a car. Both Class A and Class C motorhomes can tow a car, which they often call a toad (towed, get it?), although RV magazines often use the term dinghy. What we didn’t know until we started RVing was how many people in motorhomes tow a car. We’ve never seen any reliable stats on this, but in the summer months, in hot camping areas like South Dakota and Wyoming, we were seeing about three-quarters of the large Class As towing a car. On more than a few occasions, we’ve seen Class As towing both a car and a very large pleasure boat behind that, just like the Southern Pacific Railroad.
We’ve met people driving Class As who were totally on top of this issue of towing a toad from the moment they bought. Lots of these guys have chosen rigs like a Dynamax Super C with a Cummins engine specifically for its remarkable ease of towing heavy loads. But from personal experience, just talking to other campers, we’ve gathered that an amazing number of people don’t really think through this issue at the buying stage. If that sounds familiar, this section is for you.
Go big or go home: Opting for a motorhome or fifth wheel
Motorhomes and fifth wheels tend to win on sheer size. These two categories are the rigs of choice for full-timers. As a rule, you just won’t get that kind of space in a standard travel trailer. Some trailers mimic the feel of