Travel costs comparison

When we try to figure out the budget for a RV trip we have two plans:
We Budget on $225 a day if traveling up to 8 hr per day. Which roughly works out to 2 tanks of fuel and a RV site for the night.
If we are doing a slow easy RV trip we plan on $160 per day. 4 hr drive, 1 tank fuel and RV site. If we stay at a site for more than one day our costs go down. However if we try to blast across the country to get to someplace for a particular date our costs go up fast.
That's just us
Soup

DJK555 wrote:
As a follow-up to my post on a travel trailer trip across Canada I'm interested in hearing your thoughts and seeing actual records on the cost of towing a travel trailer across Canada vs driving a smaller vehicle and staying in hotels/motels. We would be towing a 24 Komfort with a F150 Ecoboost. Thanks in advance.
David

I think that you could do the calculation yourself fairly easily (and more accurately) if you make a couple of assumptions.

If you assume that you already have the RV and use your TV as a daily driver, you can exclude the RV costs (capital cost, maintenance and insurance etc.), then it becomes a simple cost comparison of your "at home" eating costs vs. restaurant costs, gas mileage cost (difference unloaded vs. hauling the RV) and hotel costs vs. campground costs.

If you whole hog and compare not owning an RV vs. owning one, then it becomes an ROI (return on investment) exercise, which would invariably show there is no financial return owning an RV, but it's not why the folks here own RV's! The other "non financial" factor, as mentioned earlier, is the comfort and convenience factor using an RV

I agree that one needs to include the cost of the RV/trailer, but this varies drastically... 15K spread out over the 8-10 years that I keep my trailers doesn't amount to very many nights in a hotel (or meals out), and the TV is the exact same one I would use on the drive either way.

I don't have actual costs, but for me I'd bet it would still be less expensive to do the drive with the trailer.

Recent trip costs.

OP asked for recent trip costs for comparison.

DS and I drive to Saskatchewan from Vancouver Island at the beginning of June. We drove in the Santa Fe, spent a couple nights with family and three nights at a Monastery ($180 per night 3 meals included).

Other than the Monastery, we had 4 nights in motels (3 Travel Lodge, 1 Holiday Inn Suites) Hotel costs were $99.00 to $129.00 for the Travel Lodge with a free breakfast and $200.00 for the Holiday Inn. We did not prebook any of the accommodations. All were clean and comfortable.

It cost between $50.00 and $60.00 per tank of gas and we got 600 km per tank.

If we had taken Mobi (27 foot class C), the ferry would have cost $45.00 more each way. It costs over $100.00 to fill the fuel tank, but I only get a bit more than 300 km on a tank. So fuel costs would have been 4 times as much.

One last important point. The trip we took required long days of driving. I find it more tiring to drive a motor home than the Santa Fe. My son has not yet driven the motor home and he needs local experience before driving long distances on strange roads.

For this trip I think money spent was about the same. The increased fuel consumption balanced out against the hotel costs. The days at the Monastery were set and would not have changed even if we did have the motor home.

It was a holiday, eating out is part of the fun of travel. We did not eat a single meal in a chain restaurant. We did travel with lots of healthy snacks, water and juice.

We have done to trip to Calgary from home in the motor home several times when we had more time for our holiday.

Executive wrote:
Driving a car...Better fuel mileage. Have to unload suitcases each time you stop. Have to eat out three times a day. No room to move about. Bed bugs bite.

Just a word to the wise... check the internet for stories of bed bug infestations. They are everywhere! Doesn't matter wealth, hygiene, location. They are in high end dressing rooms, as well as Walmart. They hide in movie seats, and virtually anywhere people and cloth meet. You can pick them up and bring them into your private RV bedroom. The are hard to get rid of (spell that expensive) and not hard to diagnose. All you need is a DW who reacts to the bites and thinks she is going crazy, 'cause she only gets hives in the RV!

Not tellin' on anyone, just passing along a public service announcement. I CAN happen to you!

Traveling with an rv or traveling with a car and staying in hotels is just not comparable. We do both regularly for a variety of reasons.

If anyone needs to rationalise the cost of doing both on an extend trip or vacation, I'd say just don't take the trip because you will be forever second guessing.

Speed limit across the top of Superior is 90 kph - just sayin .
Costs can't be determined because we all put different values on most of the things that have no price tag.
how do you value the cost of your own bed ? bet it is different then me.
as others have said lugging /living out of a suitcase - your value?
etc etc.
cheapest ?
safest ?
never get out of bed.

If the entire trip is going to be on the Canadian side, the car will be the cheapest hands down.

A friend of mine has a similar setup to yours, except his RV is a fifth wheel. Towing it at 120 km/h last fall going up around Lake Superior he got nearly the same mileage as my Class C did.

fla-gypsy wrote:
To accurately calculate the per mile cost you would have to include the actual cost of the RV and/or tow vehicle into the equation. Probably won't like the answer but sleeping in your own bed and knowing whats in your food is priceless.

While I agree with you most of us have RV and tow vehicle already, so kind of a moot point as far as cost.

Then some drive a Prevost or Newell so if you add cost in could be 5k to 10k per night. Others might only have a 5k camper 5k truck dropping cost considerably.

I guess same could be said about motels. I have seen some motels that were 20k a night and some for 59 dollars a night. Do you factor in cost of car? Car could be 300k to 15k as well.

I guess it all boils down with how you prefer to travel. All my friends prefer fly/car/motel while I prefer camper/truck/collies. I don't even figure cost because regardless that's how I will travel.

Is there a motel forum?

On a short weekend trip I might fly/car/motel if long distance. But not on a vacation.

For me, it depends on the type of trip. If I'm in a hurry (to visit family, usually), a car and hotels is cheaper. If I can relax and average no more than 150 miles or so per day, then the RV is the choice. If I'm really short of time, I fly, since I'm 3 days from anywhere even by car.