Renting your RV
Just heard about this, know nothing about it. Someone told me there are companies that will take your RV, and you'll just get a check every month. Anyone have good experience with this?
Forum Discussion
A buddy of mine is an electrician and he was in hot water after the 2008 downturn and having trouble making payments on his Class A.
The agency he used seemed pretty reputable, kind of the equivalent of the property management companies that people use for real estate rentals.
The agency fielded all of the questions about how to work the inverter or how to fill the water tanks, stuff like that. They also did inspections before and after every trip and had a guy on staff full time to fix things.
His take-away was that the place rented out his RV enough so that he could make his payments. It was pretty impossible for him to use his own rig, because it was usually booked out.
After he got back on his feet and didn't need to rent it out anymore, it took him about a year to replenish all the cookware and stuff that disappeared and to fix all of the wear-and-tear damage.
He says that he'll never ever do this again, and he'd probably just sell it if he were in a bind like that again. It's paid off by now, so that probably won't be an issue.
I think he got lucky.
On the other hand, I had to rent a used Class C years ago when my kid graduated from the University of Wyoming. We were expecting a December graduation, but we got lucky and shaved six months off the date. But Laramie is such a small town that everything was already booked out. We got creative and rented a Class C from a place in Denver and drove it up to WY.
The rental was in pretty good shape, but it was very bare bones. It wasn't equipped for boondocking, so we bought a beefy extension cord at the hardware store and ran it around the back yard through a doggie door so we could plug in and have power to run the furnace. Even though it was the end of May, it was literally freezing and it ended up snowing and burying us in for a few days.
The rental didn't have many blankets or pillows, and luckily we didn't need to cook. We've rented condos in places like Maui before, and they were usually turn-key, but this rental really assumed you were packing ALL your own stuff.
The owner lived in New York and stored it with the rental service year round. When they were ready to travel, they'd fly out and use Denver as their starting/ending point. Who knows what they did with all of their gear, because their RV really wasn't outfitted.
Anyway, my lessons from my friend's experience and our own experience as renters is that the RV rental business isn't suitable for private parties. Leave it to the big boys like El Monte RV. They've got the process figured out and there aren't any emotional ties to the rental units.
The agency he used seemed pretty reputable, kind of the equivalent of the property management companies that people use for real estate rentals.
The agency fielded all of the questions about how to work the inverter or how to fill the water tanks, stuff like that. They also did inspections before and after every trip and had a guy on staff full time to fix things.
His take-away was that the place rented out his RV enough so that he could make his payments. It was pretty impossible for him to use his own rig, because it was usually booked out.
After he got back on his feet and didn't need to rent it out anymore, it took him about a year to replenish all the cookware and stuff that disappeared and to fix all of the wear-and-tear damage.
He says that he'll never ever do this again, and he'd probably just sell it if he were in a bind like that again. It's paid off by now, so that probably won't be an issue.
I think he got lucky.
On the other hand, I had to rent a used Class C years ago when my kid graduated from the University of Wyoming. We were expecting a December graduation, but we got lucky and shaved six months off the date. But Laramie is such a small town that everything was already booked out. We got creative and rented a Class C from a place in Denver and drove it up to WY.
The rental was in pretty good shape, but it was very bare bones. It wasn't equipped for boondocking, so we bought a beefy extension cord at the hardware store and ran it around the back yard through a doggie door so we could plug in and have power to run the furnace. Even though it was the end of May, it was literally freezing and it ended up snowing and burying us in for a few days.
The rental didn't have many blankets or pillows, and luckily we didn't need to cook. We've rented condos in places like Maui before, and they were usually turn-key, but this rental really assumed you were packing ALL your own stuff.
The owner lived in New York and stored it with the rental service year round. When they were ready to travel, they'd fly out and use Denver as their starting/ending point. Who knows what they did with all of their gear, because their RV really wasn't outfitted.
Anyway, my lessons from my friend's experience and our own experience as renters is that the RV rental business isn't suitable for private parties. Leave it to the big boys like El Monte RV. They've got the process figured out and there aren't any emotional ties to the rental units.
