To stock or do not stock

Like the Boy Scout motto, "Be Prepared"
You never know when or why you might need a food supply, place to cook, place to sleep, or any of the essentials that a travel trailer can provide.
And there may be some events where you just need to hook up and get out of town!

Yes, we keep it stocked and ready to go, except for any foods that won't hold or refrigerate well.

In the season I am pretty much already stocked up and ready to go. We live out of four or five of those ACTION PACKERS (LOWES) and these get added just before we hit the road.




I can put all of these across the back of my front deck on my OFF-ROAD POPUP. I also have a couple of the 7-gallon Aqua-tainer totes to capture our gray water and a couple of fresh water 5-gallon totes.


We also carry one of those 32-inch fire pits we can situp closer to the patio... I usually hide a couple of logs under the firepit to use for the first nite if we get in late and haven't found the firewood stack yet.


I carry one of those folding two wheeled carts too. Sometimes water is pretty far away from the camp site... I can drag off gray water and bring back fresh water hehe...


Everything else is pretty much stored in the floor area and cabinets of the POPUP trailer during the season.

Our clothes and Cole Road Trip goes in the truck bed. My 22-inch HDTV goes into the trailer floor area. I carry a 5-day ICE CHEST in the bed of the truck loaded down with ice with a 4-inch deep closed box with lid sitting on top of the ice for things we don't want to get water logged.. meats etc...

My back seat usually gets loaded down with groceries from a WALMART when get close to the camp site...

This photo shows my truck bed pretty much filled up for the camping trip. Actually between the 5X8 Front deck on the camper and the truck bed we can carry some serious camping supplies - all covered from the elements...




Load this area down and cover with tarp...


This is pretty much our routine.

My OFF-ROAD POPUP trailer is also our POWER PLANT when we lose power at the house. I run Extension Cords from the trailer into the house to run the important thing like HDTV and fridge and a couple of lights. The 120VAC fan on the fireplace is important too haha... Will run our trailer battery bank down to around 12.0VDC over night and then re-charge back up the next morning using my 2KW generator for three hours - just like we do when camping... A great PLAN B to have at home. SOmetimes we runout of gasoline for the generator but can always suck out gas from the cars when this happens. We only have one local gas station with emergency power here in our county.

Roy Ken

We stock our RV in late March and remove all food stuffs in late November, hopefully before our first hard freeze. We keep clothing in the RV, ready to go ALL the time. Our bedding/linens/towels, etc are brought in, washed, dried and packed into the space bags and stored in the RV.

When spring arrives, we will re-stock with everything we need and clothing and are ready to go in about an hour. Thereafter, 10 minutes to grab meds, phones, laptops, perishables and we are out the door.

Our pots and pans, utensils, shampoos, televisions, etc. are left in the RV over the winter. I was bringing in the body wash, shampoo, and that type stuff, but forgot it one fall. It was fine in the spring, so I started leaving it or I would forget it. It's never full, so plenty of room for expansion. The pots and pans, utensils, plates, bowls, etc. are washed on the first trip of the year, just in case any critters have made their way in there.

From mid-March through October we are stocked and ready to go, and since TT is stored in our backyard always plugged in, we can be on the road in a moment's notice. Since most of our trips are without hook-ups we keep our FW & WH tanks filled all season as well.

We have used, and will use again if needed, our fiver for hurricane evacuation, but we don't keep it stocked with food and clothing. A hurricane is not like a tornado that occurs quickly with little warning. One has hurricane warnings days ahead of the hurricane actually striking that allows you ample time to load up and go. When you evacuate stay off the interstates though. Plot your escape on secondary roads, if possible, as they will not be grid locked with traffic.

For everything that has to be taken to the RV before departing for a trip - 10% of the items will be forgotten, and have to be purchased on the road.

Keeping the RV stocked minimized the chances of forgetting something important.

I always kept clothes in the TT before we went full-timing. The wife didn't.

One night I had to postpone going to bed and drive her to Walmart so she could buy underwear, which she had forgotten to pack. And since it was a COE park, we had to park the truck at the gate and walk over a mile back to the campsite.

In Texas, we tend to do things differently than some places. We would stock the rig in September, and clear everything out in early June. Because late June, July and August are simply miserable for camping with daily temps over 100. We have camped every Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb and Mar since we got our first TT.

We also stock the trailer at the beginning of the season and empty at the end of the season including bedding and towels etc. Just bring perishables and personals and can be ready to go in 20 minutes.

Agree with rk911... Most of our camping trips are 2-3 day weekend trips. The easier it is to get ready, the more often we will go.

The nice thing about an RV is that it's a great secondary shelter if you ever have a catastrophic emergency such as a home fire, hurricane, earthquake, etc. We leave ours stocked with everything but perishables all the time. We could move into it without any preparation at all, and have at least 10 days provisions.

wbwood wrote:
For the most part, everything is in our RV... the only thing we really pack up before a trip is clothes, personal electronics/cameras and food. Sometimes we might take food with us...sometimes we also wait until we get to our destination...depends on where we are going and for how long.

I keep clothes in the rv but the wife will not because she is afraid some one will see her in something she wore at the last campout. Duh....I can't remember what she wore and I don't know how some one else could. I sure do not remember what other people wore. Now if they were naked then I might remember....