To Tote a Tote or not to Tote

I have an older Thetford tote. While on a week long camping trip, I need to empty the gray tank multiple times and the black maybe once. I hook the tote to my bumper ball and tow it to the dump station.

The alternative is to break camp and drive your RV or tow your TT to the dump station when needed.

It gets me out of helping cleaning up after breakfast or dinner.

Get a Barker with pneumatic tires.

General observation from campgrounds from Maine to Florida to Texas to California. Class A/ Class C rigs/folks seem to be able to pull in the slides and drive to the dump. Folks with 5ers and TT seem to be the ones using totes more often.

I have a 27 gallon Thetford. Wish I had bought a Barker Blue-Boy due to how dumping the Tote works.

Anything over 30-32 gallons is too much for most of us to move easily from the dump on the rig to the truck/ road. 27 gallon tote when full weighs about 230 lbs.

It takes three trips to the dump station to empty my 37 gallon black tank and my 37 gallon grey tank. If my rig wasn't such a pain to setup with no automatic levelers and chinese puzzle box packing with slides on both sides - it would be easier to take the TT to the dump than use the tote. A smaller tote than 25 gallons would require a fourth trip, and that would definitely be worth packing up and towing the rig to the dump station

I think a 4 wheel model is much easier to use than a 2 wheel model.

We end up using our tote about four to seven times a year. The hassle also forces me to spend $200-400 per year on campgrounds with sewer connections rather than ones without.

The COE campground closest to our doctors and grandkids is where we use it the most. There isn't a sewer connection CG with 50amp power which is critical for Texas summer temps (Apr 1 - Oct 31) closer than 40 miles.

If I could solve that issue - i.e. get the DW to change doctors, or daughter move - I'd get rid of the tote.

We normally can go a full week without dumping, but for those situations where it doesn't work out, we carry a small 6-gallon Tote-n-Stor and a 7-gallon repurposed water jug. The Tote-n-Stor is normally used for black and/or grey waste, and the ex-water jug only for grey waste. One or two "dump runs" is usually enough to get us to our destination date. The two containers easily fit in one storage bin along with our waste hoses and fittings. If it was more of a problem for us, we would have a larger capacity tank of course, but this setup has worked well for us so far with minimal inconvenience.

I finally broke down and bo9ught one. We do a lot of state parks and few have sewer.

You can get a Barker 22 gallon on Amazon for $117 delivered.

Its a good unit. Some of the are really poorly made with inadequate tires.

Just be sure the campground actually has a dump station before filling the tote.
Many years ago, I bought a 15 gallon tote. I used it once, at home, to clear the tanks while winterizing.
After that, it occurred to me that the RV parks/campgrounds we are most likely to use either have full hookups or no hookups, no dump station, and no garbage service.
After the tote sat under the workbench for five years, I sold it in a rummage sale for $15 just to get it out of the way.
With no place to dump it while camping, IMO the thing was useless.
Plan ahead.

Someone gave me one because they never used it. Three years later I had used it one time and I gave it back because his son bought a TC and he thought it might work for him.

We had one that we purchased for use at a SC state park that we frequented and our girls were small and we bathed them in our shower/tub. The other places that we frequented either has sewer or good bath houses. It sat at our house beside our 5'er parking spot. Friends purchased a popup and were using a 5 gallon bucket for their kitchen gray water. We gave them the tote and they are using it.

Great when boondocking when we had a 24ft TT. With our 5th wheel we have enough holding tank capacity to go a week to 2 weeks depending on how conservative we are if we boondock. We rarely boondock so with full hookups no need for a tote.

As you can tell by the few posts already, it's a mixed bag of ideas. The final decision has to be your's. But here's what you need to consider buying one and using it, vs never having one:

1. How big are your holding tanks and how often do they need to be emptied?
2. What type of RV do you have?
3. What type of camping to you primarily do and how long?

If you only camp at places with full hook-up, you will never need a tote. You can empty your tanks right at your campsite.

If you do not have full hook-up, and if your tanks are smaller (under 30 gallons... like mine), then the need to dump will be greater for longer stays. Once they are filled up, you'll need to dump them. So now, you have 2 options:

1) break camp and move your camper .... whatever kind it is ... to the dump station and drain your tanks. Once done, they you go back to your campsite and have to set-up all over again. That may mean going through the entire process of leveling the camper again, putting down the stabilizer jacks, setting up your television satellite system again or cranking up again your batwing antenna, reconnecting your power, water if available, and extending your awning again.

or

2) use a tote, drain your tanks and cart it to the dump station. Depending upon how often you do this, and how big your tote is, and how big your holding tanks are, it may take a couple or 3 trips. But which is easier? Dragging a tote every other day, or breaking camp every other day? YOU have to decide this.

Here are some things you need to consider if you decide to get a tote.

If you can find a tote that has more capacity than your black holding tank, get it! Nothing is worse than having a tote that is smaller than your black tank and you over flow the black tank. If the volume of tote is bigger than the black tank, you will never over flow it and have to experience cleaning up a very nasty mess.

There are many who say a larger tank is too heavy. The fact is, the larger ones all have wheels. And, unless you are parked in sand on a beach, you will probably be able to pull it (even a 42 gallon tank) by hand. If you find yourself down hill from the road, (or on sand), it is very easy to simply tie a rope to the tote handle and tie the other end to the hitch of your truck and pull the tote up to the road. I've done this a couple times in the last 15 years when the ground was extremely muddy after a very heavy rain and the mud was just too much to pull through by hand. It worked, was very simple, and I didn't have to break camp.

Next, the handle of the tote (those with wheels), fit over the ball of your hitch on your tow vehicle and then to tow it to the dump station. It's NOT like you have to pull the thing a half mile by hand! Shoot NO! Let your vehicle do the work. That's why the handles are designed the way they are.

Cleanliness and smell? If you rinse it at the dump station, they never smell... simple! Enough said! I've had the same (and only) tote for about 15 years now, and it does not have smells at all. I used it last night even.

Traveling with the tote? Don't know what kind of configuration you have, but I carry mine in the back of the pick-up truck. My truck has a shell, and it rides very nice there. There again, it's always rinsed, inside and out, and never smells.

Here are some things you need to watch for with your selection of totes. Water always runs down hill. If the top of the tote is higher than the bottom of your sewer outlet on your camper, you are going to have a difficult time draining your tanks. Not impossible, just a bit more difficult. The tanks in the camper ARE going to be higher than the tote, but the outlet may be lower. When this happens, you just learn how to lift the hose and drain the last bit out of it. So you want good connections at the trailer and on the tote.

I have found there are two kinds of totes. Those that load from the top and empty from the bottom (like Barker) and those that load and empty from the same place (Thetford). My in-laws purchased a Thetford and I hated it. It loaded from the bottom with a hose permanently attached. When the hose tipped to the ground, it immediately ran and made a mess, but that's how it had to be unloaded (nasty!). The Barker has a slide valve. You attach the hose, and then pull the valve and let it drain.

One thing you DO NOT want to get is one of those smaller 15 gallon type totes that do not have wheel and you have to pick them up. Those ARE heavy! And even if you get the type that has only 2 wheels, you STILL have to lift one end to move it and that CAN get heavy. On 4 wheels, there's NO lifting anything, just pull it.

I use my tote at home too. Because we park the camper in the drive way, and do not have a sewer hook up for the camper, I empty my tanks in the tote and dump in my septic tank. The cover on my septic tank is removable. I can pull the tote with my riding lawn mower. It works great this way.

One more thing to consider. If you slip the handle over your tow vehicle hitch ball, the handle can flip off. I found an easy solution for that, and I've never lost the tote, and it's been towed well over a thousand miles in the last 15 years from campground to dump stations.

These are the things you need to consider. The biggest factor being... do you want to break camp to empty your tanks or not?

During Easter week we had 6 ppl in our 5'r down at Lawson's Landing. I was really glad to have a 42 gallon blue tote. Made two trips (about 1/2 mile) to the dump station during the week. With that many ppl for that many days, stuff tends to get spread around the campsite fairly well. Having to break camp would have been a real pain.

It is kind of a spectacle as you putt down the road between campers with your wagon-o-doodies (as labeled by the Wife). :-) Several kids wanted a ride until I told them what it was. I also got a couple of requests for "pick-up".

If you get one, make sure that the outlet on the trailer is always higher then the tote when you set up the trailer in your site. Doodies don't go uphill very well and disconnecting the hose can be, let's say, "messy".