A dilapidated FEMA trailer - My first RV

[liaft]

Since this was the first RV I ever bought, I decided that this would be the most appropriate forum to post in.

I was reading a post about a guy who wants to dry camp in New York City for the winter. Having done something similar in the Washington D.C. area, I decided to share my story.

It is almost a year since I bought a FEMA trailer and decided to live in it while traveling for work. Even though I had done a lot of research, nothing could prepare me for what I was about to experience. I was on a business trip and was bored out of my mind when I noticed a used car lot that had some various campers on the lot. My wife and I had talked about buying a travel trailer to go camping. We even bought a truck for its prodigious tow capacity. The dealership I ran across had an old beat up Winnebago from the 1970’s, a bunch of FEMA trailers, a small pop-up in decent shape, and a fifth wheel stock trailer that had been converted into a camper. The 5’er smelled like it hadn’t been cleaned out properly before the conversion took place. I warned the salesman that I was only there to browse, not to buy, and he let me roam around unmolested. It was a great way to pass a few hours and I learned a lot about campers. It’s one thing to go to a showroom and see brand new merchandise with salesmen acting like vultures, it’s another to see what breaks and how it wears out without interruption.

None of the FEMA trailers were in good condition. Some of them had leaking roofs with holes in the floor. Others reeked of filth that smelled worse than the 5’er. All were missing appliances or other parts and had some sort of damage or another. One had a door that wouldn’t close no matter how hard you pushed on it. In another, the toilet and bathtub had fallen through the floor and were laying on the ground beneath the trailer. I asked the salesman how much the campers were going for. I don’t remember the prices for the other campers, but $1,500 for each of the FEMA trailers stuck in my mind.

Christmas came and I went home for the holidays. It wasn’t the best Christmas as we were already up to our eyeballs in debt. The traveling for work paid well and we were beginning to make headway against our bills. While at the home office for the holidays, I found out about a part of the contract that, if I qualified for it, I could potentially make extra money. Rather than be directly reimbursed for my travel at 100% cost for hotels for up to 100% of budget, I could agree to accept 80% of budget for hotels and 100% for food without any receipts. They would just pay me the money. Thus, the cheaper I could live, the more money I could pocket.

The seed of an idea implanted in my brain and germinated. The more I thought about it, the more it grew. I did a lot of research about RV’s, dry camping, FEMA trailers, and formaldehyde. I knew it would be a lot of work, but I knew I could make a lot of money if I was successful. It was a risk. I was scheduled to go to Washington DC in the spring, but first I had to go back to Missouri where the campers were. I spoke to the wife about my idea and she said it was up to me. My idea was to buy a FEMA trailer, perform repairs while working in Missouri, and then when I went to DC, stay in the camper to pocket some hotel money. The whole idea hinged on my ability to fix the camper before going to DC because I could not find a hotel cheap enough to break even at 80% budget unless I wanted bed bugs.

I traveled back to Missouri in early January, driving the truck this time and expecting to be working there for several months. This would give me the time I needed to fix up the trailer, provided I could find one in salvageable condition. I had even arraigned for a free place to work on it. So, I went to the dealer on an off weekend and began looking closely through the trailers. I immediately ruled out all the ones that had been lived in as they were in the worst shape. Some of them even still had the previous resident’s contents such as clothes and bed linens.

After looking through all the trailers carefully, I found two that I thought were salvageable. After more inspection, I decided on one. The issues with this trailer were: one missing wheel, missing house battery, missing propane tanks, missing power cord, missing propane pigtail, a couple of soft spots in the floor, some front end damage, and a door that wouldn’t close. I negotiated with the salesman and he replaced the missing wheel and let me take some parts from the one with the sunken bathroom. The deal was finished and I took the trailer to the free parking spot I had found and got the door to close by removing the rusted and seized up latch and securing it with a bungee cord. The very next day, my company decided to pull me out early and send me on to D.C. At this point, I didn’t even have a brake controller for the truck and I was looking at traveling cross country through the mountains with a trailer that I hadn’t been able to do any cleaning on, never mind repair. To make matters worse, I had less than 36 hours to get there and there was a major storm being formed by the polar vortex that was going to chase me across the country.

I didn’t wait for morning. I went straight for the auto parts store to pick up the brake controller I had priced out earlier and then went to the local big box store where I picked up a deep cycle battery, an air mattress, and an artic sleeping bag. I then went and hooked up to the trailer, installed the battery and brake controller, and hit the road at 5PM with a winter storm warning in effect. Less than 20 miles down the road, I had to pull off and fix a wheel bearing which cost me an hour. As I got back on the road, snowflakes mixed with rain began to fall. For the next 10 rain and snow filled hours, I only stopped for fuel as I pulled the world’s ugliest trailer through a half dozen states with no plates and only a bill of sale to show I was legal. I never got pulled over. I got to West Virginia before the weather really caught up to me and it began freezing rain. I managed to get through the mountains before the roads got really treacherous. I was fortunate to do so as west of the mountains saw snowfall measured in feet whereas I had crossed the eastern boundary of the storm where only freezing rain was expected. At 3 in the morning, I pulled off into a Lowe’s parking lot. I wasn’t tired, but the roads were getting bad. I crawled into my sleeping bag and slept until daylight. By then, the road crews had cleaned up the ice and I was rolling again. I made it to Maryland by noon the day before I was due to arrive having negotiated DC traffic and the beltway. I was pleasantly surprised by how much room people gave me. I wondered if they were being considerate or if they were afraid the trailer would explode if they got too close.

I landed at a truck stop that had a fenced in lot and asked permission to stay the night. I was told by the manager I could stay as long as I wanted. Expecting him to suddenly come up with a deadline, I told him I was working in town for several months. He nonchalantly said okay and walked away to yell at a cashier. I was stunned. I spent a total of ten days at that truck stop where I learned a lot about dry camping. My first priority was heat and security. I bought a new lock/latch, two propane tanks, and a pigtail and prayed that the furnace would work. The burner ignited and the blower pushed warm air, but the sudden stench was unbearable. I took apart the furnace and found a mouse’s nest in the ducting under the blower. The feces and urine in the nest was being cooked and the resulting fumes were being circulated with high efficiency. I cleaned out the mess and got the furnace running. Over the next few days, I cleaned out the camper. I ate and showered at the truck stop, using the facilities as needed. As I cleaned, I found a bird’s nest in the stove hood exhaust and another mouse’s nest inside the bottom of the oven. The entire trailer was cleaned with bleach. Every wall, floor, and surface was sterilized. On day four, the battery died. It died in the middle of the night. I know it died because my inverter started shrieking at 1AM. I hooked up the trailer connector to the truck and started its engine to charge my battery. In the morning, I shut down the truck and was shocked to see almost a half of a tank of gas gone. To make matters worse, the battery hadn’t even taken on much of a charge. I knew that this was not a sustainable solution. After work that day, I went to Harbor Freight and picked up an 800 watt generator for $100 and a 14 gauge extension cord for $20. I lopped off the female end of the cord and wired it straight into the panel. My 50 amp charger worked out to 600-700 watts consumption, so I knew the setup would be enough for charging the battery only. During the next few days as I worked on the trailer, temperatures plummeted to single digits with high winds and I went through ten pounds of propane and a gallon of gas a day. Since the pipes and hot water heater were empty, I would shut off the heat while I was gone and the arctic sleeping bag let me drop the thermostat down low at night. After ten days, I found out why the manager was so willing to let me stay there.

The truck stop was right next door to the Maryland State Prison Release Center. I was told by the parking lot attendant that the manager had noticed that when there were campers in the parking lot, crime went down. I decided to leave. Like, immediately. I had no reservations when I showed up at 8PM at a small family campground that was closed for the night. Having never done a night check in, or any kind of check in for that matter at a campground before in my life, I just parked it. I found a place I could plug in and went to sleep. At first light, there was a knock on my camper door and I met Andrew. I was to learn later that he was a son of the campground’s owners and one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life. He got me checked in and I had just enough time to back into a spot before getting off to work.

I stayed at that campground for the next five months and made quite a bit of money. I fixed up the camper and learned a lot about RV’s. I had to lop off the threaded end of the sewer pipe and attach the standard lugged connector. I had to troubleshoot and repair a hot water heater that wouldn’t stay lit. It would light, but then go out after a few seconds. (It turned out to be the controller board.) I had to install a toilet kit. I had to repair the plumbing several times due to freezing of the pipes. One of the repairs I had to replace the whole kitchen sink faucet as ice had cracked the plastic inside it. The toilet’s brass ball valve exploded one really cold morning. The white hose froze up more times than I can count. I learned to leave the faucet dripping and on really cold nights, I would shut off the water and drain the system. As the weather warmed up, I had to clean out no less than four wasp nests out of the air conditioner before I could run it. I also had to install a proper power cord as the 14 gauge wire was only good for 15 amps. I went to the local home improvement store and bought 25’ of 6 gauge power cord and a DIY RV plug. I now wish I had bought 50’ instead. I modified the ducting system to improve the HVAC efficiency. I repaired the damage to the exterior of the trailer. When my wife came out to visit me at the end of May, the only thing I had left was to fix the soft spots in the floor. Two of the soft spots had become holes and I put down some plywood over them to prevent me from putting my foot through them. My wife’s idea of camping was staying in a 4 star hotel instead of a 5 star. When we first started talking about the whole idea, she wanted a Class A diesel pusher and nothing else. After a while, she was willing to look at an Airstream. I kept showing her trailers online and at dealers and her expectations became more in line with our budget. When she saw the trailer for the first time, she said it was still ugly. Staying the first night in it, it then became comfortable, cozy and “not bad” overall. Her last morning of the visit, it was absolutely pouring outside. As we began to get out of bed, water began pouring through the ceiling onto the bed. It turned out that one of the roof spars was rotted out and it picked that particular moment to give out. When it did, the rubber roof dropped almost a half inch pulling the caulking away from the molding where the roof and front panel joined.

I was laid off of that job in June, so I am now off the road and the trailer is stored away as we talk about our plans for it. I never did end up fixing the floor or the roof spar. I simply jammed enough caulking into the gap to stop the leak as I didn’t have enough time to do a proper repair. Our future plans for it are to gut the trailer: wall panels, ceiling, floor, subfloor, insulation, everything. Then, totally redo the interior and add holding tanks. It’s not so much as we need to, but want to. It is a project that will give us a nice camper for only a little money and a lot of work. With the money that I made while up in DC, I will still be far, far ahead financially. This camper has paid for itself and then some. I think it was the best $1,500 I ever spent despite not having the title.

Yes, you read that correctly. I don’t have the title. The very day after I bought the trailer, the guy I bought it from committed suicide. He also happened to be the owner of the dealership. I have gone to the DMV in an attempt to fix it, but it appears that there was never a title issued in any state for the trailer and the family of the owner isn’t willing to help. I filed a complaint with the Missouri DMV, but since the dealership is closed and the owner is dead, there isn’t any recourse unless I hire a lawyer. So, unless I can get a certificate of origin from Gulfstream, I am S.O.L. on a title. Fortunately, I live in South Carolina where they do not require titles or plates for trailers, so I am road legal. I would prefer a title and plates, but such is life. There is a law here that says you can rebuild a trailer and get a new title issued with the current model year. There’s a lot of criteria to meet, but it’s doable.

So, that is the story of my FEMA trailer. Hopefully, someone will gain some knowledge about these things.

[Bobbo]

oops, wrong thread

[liaft]

Roy&Lynne wrote:
What a great story. Do you have any pictures?

Yes. Here are some of the before pictures. Before as in before I cleaned it. Well, some of them, anyway. Some are from while I was working on it.

[JiminDenver]

I agree, quite the adventure.

[Roy_Lynne]

What a great story. Do you have any pictures?