Onboard generators

Toy haulers have bunches of room on the roof for solar panels. If you don't need A/C you won't need a generator with an adequate solar system.

Sorry, I guess I should have put more facts into my original post.

Currently we have a rather large pop-up, and a portable generator that we bought last year, but never needed to use. I could pick up another Champion 3100/2800 inverter and a parallel kit for probably around $700 give or take. With two generators, that would give me 5600 running watts. We had to use it the other day cause we had power out at the house for a few hours. Something I couldn't do with an onboard genny.

We've only dry camped in Montana once and didn't need to worry about the A/C. Everywhere else we have gone in the past, at least electric at the site. With a different RV set up, this wouldn't be something so limiting.

With two generators, that would give me 5600 running watts. We had to use it the other day cause we had power out at the house for a few hours. Something I couldn't do with an onboard genny.

Plus, we would have to store it offsite so that would be a tempting piece of hardware for someone to want to steal.

Every toyhauler we've purchased has come with the generator already installed by the dealer. So that's something you could negotiate in to a purchase price. When we switched to a traditional 5th wheel, it only came with the prep and we had a generator installed by a third party referred to us by Cummins as it was about $1000 cheaper than the dealer doing it. As you mentioned, it is not cheap. The plus of the toyhauler built in generators is it can use the fueling station with gas. We now have a propane one so it will be a bit more of a pain to "refuel".

The #1 reason we have the generator is for air conditioning. We do a fair amount of warm weather boondock camping in higher elevations (aka the sun is pretty intense) so it was a must for us as we leave our dogs in the trailer when we leave the site. If we didn't need the AC (ie camped in cooler temps or in areas with lots of shade) we could totally get by with a basic solar system and maybe a cheaper gen as a backup.

#A for me with both of my toy haulers.

A couple of questions for you:

1. Do you dry camp?

If yes, then you'll need a generator.

2. Do you run your AC much?

Again, you'll need a gen.

Having said that, if you're starting scratch and trying to economize, you could apply those same funds to a good solar system, four batteries, and a portable gen.

Since we added solar, we rarely run our gen. We run it for about 20 minutes before bedtime if we've been sloppy with our power usage during the day. We also run it any time we're using the air conditioners.

Happy shopping!