Thoughts on manufacturers

ron.dittmer wrote:

camperdave wrote:
I ruled out Jayco and Bigfoot because they all have basement storage. Which is nice in some ways, but it raises the house relative to the drivers cabin which I do not care for. I didn't like that you couldn't see out the front window from the couch or dinette.

I know what you mean. But for me it was all about the over-all height of the rig including the a/c unit. Our rig clears our 9'-11.25" tall garage door opening by 1.5". Our house floor is only 1.5" higher than our Ford cab floor, and our interior ceiling height is less than most other makers. I think the company Phoenix USA had originally marketed their products many years ago as a big class "B". They are officially class "Cs" but scaled down significantly compared to most others.

We didn't know anything about a basement design versus non-basement design back when we bought our Class C and we didn't have any height issues for storage as we store it outside under a large oak tree to keep it out of the sun.

Our coach height to the top of the A/C is 11'3", which even at that height is way lower than many 5th wheel and Class A rigs. Within that 11'3" overall height we also have good ground clearance all around including all of the coach structure with no support system components hanging lower than the coach walls. The under-loaded E450 springs also prevent any front-to-rear coach sag.

We don't like the ~4" step up from cab floor to coach floor, but this is low priority for us in light of the tremendous amount of equipment that we can store in the seven outside storage cabinets .... such as a full size shovel, a beach umbrella, fishing poles, a full size propane outdoor fire pit, spare 5 gallon and 2 gallon propane tanks, a portable generator plus a gas can for it, a BBQ plus gas canisters for it, a man-sized large outdoor lounge chair, two folding lawn chairs, many tools, five wood leveling steps plus extra boards, all sewer tubes plus extra valves, a 12 ton high-lift hydraulic jack, 100' feet of fresh water hose plus spare fittings, and the stock 30' electric hookup cable plus a 50' extension for it. The spare tire is stored separately up in between the frame rails right behind the rear fuel tank.

This kind of storage capacity is priceless in a 24 foot Class C. We don't need a view forward from the coach when traveling and we park sideways to the view when camped. We sometimes wish we could retrofit a swiveling front passenger seat (but can't because of the floor height differences) ... but this would be very rarely used anyway.

Small but mighty is what we wanted in a non-slide double queen bed Class C and so far it has delivered. That's tough to find and we're glad we're not shopping today for that combination.