The Learning Process:
Our
learning process on Class-A RV's started with our looking at a lot of
RV's, new and used on a number of RV and Auto sales lots. Now, this is a
painful process to a certain degree as you have to listen to, and
eventually reject a lot of dealers. Remember, they all want a fast
sale, and when you push back, they lose interest, so you really have to
play their game up to a point by feeding them words they want to hear
like:
"We want to get into RVing, and have decided on a
Class-A, but we don't know a lot about them. Could you show me a few,
and explain why I would want this model?"
"We have looked at a few, but we don't know a lot about this brand!"
"We just came into a little money, and we are looking in this price range"
"I
don't see exactly what I want. I really would like for it to have - - -
- - -- - -. Here is my phone# and email, could you check around for
me, and let me know if you see what I want? Oh Yeah, could I have your
card?"
I could go on and on, but you get the drift
here. You need to talk to a lot of them, and take the time to learn
about the differences in brands, models, potential problems and
drawbacks, and pricing. You need to make an informed decision. These
things cost a lot of money, and you don't want to make the mistake I
made (more on that later).
The second thing we did in
our learning process was to take advantage of eBay. There are always
hundreds of Campers and RV's listed on eBay, by private owners as well
as dealers. And, the listings have pictures as well as a lot of
detailed data.
SO, I recommend that if you do not have an eBay account, get one.
eBay allows you to search for and find items (RV's) and add them to your own personal "Watch List".
I
went on line once a week, and reviewed what I had listed, and I did not
hesitate to call the individual or dealer, and draw out whatever new
information on what they were selling. Each one would brag on their
unit and tell you what was better about theirs than any others I might
mention. A Great learning experience.
I also went to
the NADA site (NADA.COM), on the web and went through the tedious
process of entering the details on any RV I was interested in, and
printing out the pricing which included the 4 values they provide;
- Low Retail Base,
- High Retail Base,
- Low Retail w/Options, and
- High Retail w/Options.
These are supposed to be the range of the potential value for
the RV that you entered the Data for, but there is another number that
the NADA data does not include, and that is the approximate
discount off of Retail that the dealers work with in making a deal.
This discount is
generally 10% to 12%,
in a normal economy, and can be higher if; the economy is down, the
model you are looking at is not a popular one, the manufacturer has gone
out of business (this has happened a lot over the past year), the unit
you are looking at is not in good condition, or has obvious repairs
needed.
My First RV Purchase:
After
about six months of looking on lots,dealing with dealers and individual
sellers, I was comfortable enough to start making offers.
Helen
and I decided we would find an older unit in pretty good condition, and
use it for a year to confirm that this is what we wanted to do. We
figured that either way, good of bad, we would fix up the easy things on
what we bought and after a year, sell it ourselves, and then get
ourselves a new unit that fill our personal requirements.
I had made several offers and not closed the deals, when I finally found a
36-foot 1996 Pace-Arrow Vision in the Tampa FL area that looked good and was reasonably priced according to everything I could find out about it.
The
only problem was that I was a little "car-poor" at the time with 3
vehicles in the driveway. One of them was a Ford Explorer that I had
run up a lot of highway miles on, over it's 5 year life, and although
being in great condition, and looking great, it did not get very good
gas mileage, thus it was proving to be very hard to sell.
In
my negotiations with the owner of th RV, I casually offered to trade
him the Explorer, and to my surprise he asked for pictures and details.
I sent what he wanted, to him, and he counter offered a price including
the Explorer. We negotiated for a couple of days, we closed the deal,
and I sent him a deposit.
The next week, Helen and I packed some linen, some food in a cooler, and a few other necessities, and hit the road to Florida.
Inspecting the Pace-Arrow:
We
arrive at the sellers house, and - - - - - well the RV did not look as
good as the pictures, and Helen and I went into a spin with the seller,
but - - - we finally we calmed down, walked around the block, and
decided to give the unit a thorough inspection before we made up our
mind.
We spent the next hour climbing all over the RV,
and considering it's age, it was actually in pretty good condition.
What had made it look worse was that the owner had let it sit for
several months and it had gotten dirty, and there were a number of easy
to fix cosmetic things on the inside, all easy to repair.
On
the plus side we had the seller concerned enough to offer us a nice
discount off of the agreement, and we finally went to the bank and
closed the deal.
Driving my new (used) RV home.
I
had planned and mapped our return trip in great detail, and we felt
comfortable pulling away from the sellers house, and finally onto US-95
North.
We were somewhere just south of Jacksonville,
when I decided to get some gas, so we checked my travel package of maps,
phone numbers, etc, and we saw that we were coming up on a PILOT Stop.
So,
we took the appropriate ramp and at the Stop sign, I lookedy and
instead of a giant Truck stop, here I am at a facilit slightly larger
than your neighborhood gas station. Well, I was committed now, so I saw
that I could pull around the station and line up for a pump (barely)
where I could get my gas, and still get out of the station and back onto
the road.
Here is where I should mention that an RV
has a totally different turning profile than a car, and that your RV
povits on it's rear tire. (See my other Blog donsrvinfo.blogspot.com for
details on this penomenon and how to handle it.
SO, I
pulled past the pump, and made my turn to line the RV up. I suddenly
heard a screeching sound and looked back and immediately slammed on the
brakes. It seems I had just tried to move the concrete and steel
protection post that you see at most gas stations near the pump, with
one of the side compartment doors, which by the way is made of thin
aluminum. The POST WON and I now had a concave baggage compartment
door, with very little paint on the bottom part.
Added
salt to the situation, came when the gas station manager came out
laughing, and telling me that it looked lik his post was OK, so there
would be no extra charge for cleaning my paint off of his post. He then
went on to tell me that that happens every week or 2 to an RV, so he
was used to it.
Helen and I humbly filled up with gas and left to continue on our trip home.
We
crossed into Georgia and stopped at a nice campground for the night. We
actually had a good night, everything on the RVworked for us, we had a
hot dinner, and sat outside with a bottle of good wine to celebrate our
new lifestyle, even if the RV was somewhat bruised, so to speak.
The
next morning, over a hot breakfast, we cheerily decided that "this was
the life", we had learned a valuable lesson, and finally hit the road
again.
I should mention here that it turns out that
probably 75% of US-95 was under construction, and we were seeing more
Orange cones along both sides of the road than we had ever seen before
this trip.
We had driven an hour or so, and we were
nearing a bridge. The Cones had funneled all traffic into 2 narrow
lanes with a speed limit of 60-mph, when we saw a bridge ahead. Then
about 1000 feet before the bridge, the speed dropped to 55-mph, and
there were construction people and equipment everywhere.
I
slowed down, and stuck to the right lane, but was noticing that the
double-lines on my side and the white line on the passenger side were
barely wider than my tires, so I backed off some more as I approached
the bridge.
Suddenly, my mirror filled with a very
large Tractor truck with a wind cowling on it, and the Truck's right
tires were right on the double lines. I looked to the other side, and
the cones were right in the white line. This meant that my RV itself was
wider than the allowed lane width.
My immediate choice
was, Truck or cones, or brakes. IfI chose Brakes the RV directly behind
me would hit me, If I chose Truck, it would either hit me, or hit the
bridge, so I took out 8 cones (yes, Helen and I both counted the thumps)
while the Truck passed me like a bolt of lightning, and obviously
speeding. I pulled back to the left immediately, but I didn't stop,
basically because there was no place to stop without getting hit in the
rear by the Class-C motorhome behind me, as I mentioned.
By
the time I crossed the bridge, I had decided that I was not stopping
until I got to the next Rest Area on US-95. Well, it turns out that
Georgia doesn't believe in Rest Stops, I guess, because the next one was
in South Carolina.
As I drove to the Rest Area, I had
previously noticed that the Class-C was always a mile or so behind me,
so by the time I did stop, I was expecting all kinds of terrible things
to happen.
I finally pulled in to the Camper parking
area, and was getting out my tools to work on whatever damage I had to
the RV, when the driver of the Class-C RV pulled in and the man and
woman came over to our rig.
They looked at the damage,
turned to us and started laughing. They said that when I hit those
cones they were obviously not made of rubber, because they exploded into
a million tiny reflective pieces of orange and white plastic and that
flew everywhere. While continuing to laugh, they said they drove
through this beautiful cloud in time to see 5 construction workers
jumping over the end of the bridge abutment.
Helen
said "Oh my God, were they hurt?" and the other woman said that
"probably only their pride, the ground was on the other side of the
abutment, and was at the same level as the road, so it looked like they
just jumped and rolled away out of surprise more than anything."
They
continued on in to the rest rooms still laughing at us, and we surveyed
the damage. It came down to, a piece of the front fiberglass fender
missing, a door mutilated on the battery compartment, and a cracked
piece of fiberglass right in front of the door. Luckily I had the two
best car body tools for this type of job with me; A drill, a
pop-riveter, and a roll of Duct Tape.
Helen fixed lunch and I performed a makeshift repair job. We had lunch, and finally hit the road again, on our way home.
We got home, unloaded the RV, and finally relaxed enough to survey our experience. And, it had been an experience.
We
opened a bottle of Chardonnay, sat down, and went over the whole
experience, slowly and in detail. Our own laughter started, and by the
time we got to the bottom of the bottle of wine, we calculated that the
most expensive thing we had to do to the RV was repair the results of
our trip, so we went to bed!
It turns out that we did
fix the RV, and we used it for over a year and had many great times in
it. We also sold it for a small profit and went on to buy the
WRONG NEW RV.
That's another story.
