Forum Discussion

Explorer

Nov 02, 2016

Attacked on the highway: Rebuilding, lots of questions.

Hi everybody,

I am Steven and my wife is Nancy. We were here for a short bit a long time ago. We're back in hopes of starting a discussion with folks that are more experienced and knowledgeable than we are so that we can get some input and feedback to help us evaluate our options.

Long story short, we went semi-retired / full time work camper. We were into it about 3 months and headed to a winter work camper job when we were attacked on the interstate. In an episode of unprovoked road rage, another driver threw an object into our front driver side wheel well, shredded our tire and caused us to have a roll over wreck. Our truck and travel trailer were a total loss; as well as about half of our personal belongings.

We had pretty good insurance, things have not been worked out completely yet and of course there will be some monetary loss… but we will be made nearly whole. Close enough that we may have a chance to start over again and get back on the road. That is where we need some information to help us figure things out. Last time we got lucky, and with a lot of hard work, we were able to pick up a 20 year old “unicorn” truck at auction from a city in Idaho and a 20 year old single owner travel trailer which had been maintained in immaculate condition. I don't know if we can get that lucky again in finding older model stuff in great condition so now we are looking for information about getting a newer vehicle/rv/trailer on the cheap.

One of the options that we have is to go to safe harbor with relatives in Illinois. The other option is to go to Las Vegas, NV and stay for a couple of months and see if we can find a good deal to get back on the road.

Are there any big winter RV shows in Las Vegas, NV or nearby? We are looking at Vegas because it is a fairly central location in the southwest and is fairly close to Quartzite, AZ. We've both been in Vegas before and we have heard “urban myths” about how after conventions of various types the vendors will sell inventory super cheap instead of having to send it back home.

What we are curious about is if anyone has ever experienced this, is it true or just a myth? If it is true, what kind of savings could be found…. is it 5% off or 50% off? Something else that we want to throw into the mix of the discussion as well: We are not financial planners, but I keep my ear to the ground; there are some folks that supposedly know their stuff and claim we are heading for another big bust like 2009. Assuming that is true, to the folks that were involved in the market after the last bust, can you tell us if after the bust was it easier or harder to pick up an RV on the cheap. Were folks buying RVs to get into when they lost their homes or were they selling off RVs to try and save their homes?

One other thing, when we were setting up before we noticed that there were a lot of private sellers with nice big 5th wheels for sale cheap. We are assuming that is because you have to have a special vehicle to tow them, making them more of a unique item that only specific people could purchase. Because of our needs, we are not looking for anything huge...we actually prefer something less than 26' long. We have seen some smaller 5th wheels in that size. To handle a 5th wheel that size, should we be looking at 3/4 ton or 1 ton trucks? What is the ball-park price range to get a 5th wheel hitch installed and will *any* 3/4-1 ton trucks handle a 5th wheel or are there special requirements for a 5th wheel setup?

Last but not least, when we got started we were residents of Idaho and I structured everything so that Idaho would be our domiciliary state. I was just starting to learn about that subject and read that there would be advantages to changing our domiciliary state to Florida or South Dakota. As a hypothetical, since we are currently still legal residents of Idaho, if I purchase a vehicle in Nevada or Arizona, would I register the vehicle in the state of purchase or the domiciliary state? Or even though we are not currently legal residents of South Dakota or Florida is there a process where we could go ahead and change our domiciliary status to either one them and register it there? The reason that I had not made the change to the domiciliary state yet was because I had read, maybe incorrectly, that it was best for tax purposes to make these changes at the beginning of a new tax year. But since we are starting from scratch is that a move that should be made now if we are able to get back on the road?

We greatly appreciate any pointers on places to look, call and research whether it is websites or someone that you had dealt with directly.

Thanks.

EsoxLucius
Explorer
Dec 08, 2016
stevennlv wrote:
...stay out of New Mexico...
Ridiculous.
stevennlv
Explorer
Dec 07, 2016
OK, the dream is delayed but not dead.

We got the last check out of the insurance for the personal property. It was only for $7500. We filed for $13k in losses. We had $10k in coverage. All I can say is that you can never have enough documentation and you need to read your policy *closely*. Don't rely on agents to tell you the stuff you really need to know. Our policy had limits of $3k per “category” and $500 per item. So the computer we had just paid $1700 for was only covered for $500. And all electronics for only $3k; which we maxed out. Our policy also did not cover stuff outside the trailer; even stuff mounted to the trailer. So no coverage for the generator, hitch, bike rack or bicycles.

We submitted about 235 pictures and nearly as many receipts and invoices for every little thing we could find records for; all the way down to grocery receipts and some purchases of electronics we lost that were up to 5 years old. Even with all that documentation we still only recovered for about half the value of our losses. And the adjuster kept telling us over and over how most people don't have this level of documentation. I hate to see what they recover. One of the things that we did not recover anything for at all was her grandma's antique diamond ring, even though we had a picture of her wearing it in high school and recently as well, because we did not have a written appraisal for it. (Make sure that you get written appraisals for *everything* valuable!)

But, on the upside we got enough back to rebuild. We've got a truck, we'll take delivery of the trailer soon. After we run up to Boise and pay the taxes / title / registration we'll have about $8500 left over to live.

What we don't have is a long haul towing vehicle: Yet. We have a dang good project truck that still needs about $5-7K worth of work to make it a good long haul tow vehicle; which will put us in to it for about $15-17k. In the mean time it is a perfectly good around town vehicle and for short tows; like moving the trailer across town.

Some questioned why I bought the SUV I did instead of something lower miles for $17k up front that was ready to go. Well, that would have left us with an operating budget of $1500; which is just cutting things to dang close.

The SUV we have has already had 11 pages worth of repairs and services done to it by the dealership; most minor, some major and a lot of it at *their* cost. They actually had to eat the cost of a brand new radiator, plug wires and AC belt because of mistakes in their used car department and them not catching stuff before they put it up for sale and the dealership having already quoted me a price in writing. So I bought it for $9300, put $1000 in services in it and got about $2000 worth of work for free.

We will be staying in Vegas for about 6 months to a year. We'll get jobs and save up for the rest of the work on the truck.

There is a work camper job here in town that is perfect for us if we can get it after we get the trailer. It's out at the shooting range. Worst case scenario we rent a space somewhere in the valley.

By the time I'm done with the truck I will *definitely* overhaul the tranny and replace the rear air shocks and maybe one or two other things. I picked the SUV I did b/c out of the over 500 cars that I looked at on line and the over 60 that I looked at in person this is the only one that I looked at in our price range where the power plant was in great shape. It's a good project truck that will make a perfectly good around towner until we finish overhauling it from end to end. And, if it's taken care of this power plant can go 300-500K miles without being rebuilt or replaced. So, I figure that even with the worst math 17k for a vehicle that will long haul tow for 150K miles is not a bad deal. We just didn't have the budget to do it all at once. But, we'll still be able to get back on the road. It will just take a bit to do.

In the mean time we both walked away and we've still got each other. We also won't have to touch any of the sellable stuff that we left in our storage bin up in Boise as an “insurance policy” in case we fall on our butts out on the road and need to go back up to Boise and rebuild.

Watch your six, stay out of New Mexico, you can never have enough documentation and you probably need more insurance than what you think.
dwayneb236
Explorer
Dec 01, 2016
Just further proof that you should never post anything in here as people will attempt to ridicule you and question your very health issues. They can be rude can't they?
Good luck on your issues. Hope it all works out.
stevennlv
Explorer
Nov 30, 2016
wing_zealot wrote:
So you have food allergies and have to eat organic food. Fascinating.

Not particularly. It's happening all the time to more and more people due to all of the horrible **** we are doing to our food supply and the food supply of our live stock.

In my case, as with many people, I have no one but myself to blame. I abused my body for decades. I smoked, I drank, I ate processed food and I took too many supposedly healthy "supplements" to count.

And now I have Crohn's Disease, Cialiac's, Chronic Pancreatitis, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and Food Intolerance, all at the same time; which has nothing to do with the fact that we were in a roll over wreck.

But has everything to do with why we chose the full time RV life style in the first place: I pretty much can't even be around a lot of artificial **** at all, like a neighbor who smokes or the burger you had for lunch with 22 artificial chemicals in it; just the very smell of which can cause me to start to vomit. (If you like, at your expense, I can copy and send you a copy of my 4K pages of medical records.) So out of the cities and back to nature it is.

And I'm pretty much forced to shop at only a handful of extremely over priced stores that cater to my food needs.

A business right around the corner from one of those store was fire bombed. As were two other location of the same franchise on the same day.

I could have been in the area at the time. Sounds like a good place to not be to me; wise ass.
wing_zealot
Explorer
Nov 30, 2016
So you have food allergies and have to eat organic food. Fascinating.
stevennlv
Explorer
Nov 29, 2016
Just for the folks following along:

Yes, we spent a wad of cash getting out of ABQ and some questioned why.

I have told many folks repeatedly that my humble opinion is that you should stay out of NM entirely.

FBI investigating devices that detonated at 3 Albuquerque Starbucks locations

One of those locations was about 2 miles from where we were staying and very close to one of the organic grocery stores that I have to shop at due to food allergies.
stevennlv
Explorer
Nov 29, 2016
Gotta love, love, love "cyber monday"!!!

67 items replaced at amazon.

Got most of the big ticket stuff like the geny.

Maxed out the az credit limit ($1500).

But, got an *extra* $300 worth of stuff ($1800 total) b/c of the cm sales!

So, basically I got my geny for free.

It will be waiting for us in Boise when we get up there to register the truck and trailer.
stevennlv
Explorer
Nov 29, 2016
Found the manual.

For what I'm setting up all my napkin math is pretty much dead on. I need a WDH for our TT. Air ride needs to be allow to rise to height before adjusting the hitch drop and needs to be on for what I want to do. When I have the TT on it I need to be in tow mode.

There's a towing adjusted maint sched and lots of other goodies in the manual.

It looks like I did a good job of matching tow vehicle to TT.

And from the forums I've looked at the 2004 model year seems to have fewer issues than some other years. (Ya know how it goes, some years are lemons and some are peaches.)

Looks like I'm heading in the right direction.
stevennlv
Explorer
Nov 28, 2016
hawkeye-08 wrote:
Long read, but finally finished. We had 2008 Yukon XL Denali and one of the things I did not like was the AWD. It had no selector for 4WD, etc, just had full time AWD. I don't know if the 2004 is the same, but it impacted mileage and I almost got stuck once with just one front tire spinning (G80 locker in back, open diff in transfer case and open diff in front). I think the computer was supposed to apply some braking, perhaps it did and that is why I did not get stuck, only almost.

Follow the owners manual for how to setup WDH with the air shocks, some say to have it off, others on, it depends on the vehicle.

Sounds like you will be traveling with full water tanks often to have affordable water to drink (assuming you can filter for what you need to)..

Stay positive, glad you're on the mend.

I'll look to see if there's a selector.

Anybody have any more input on WDH + air ride? I'll do some googles, thanks for the heads up. On the last truck I had it *had* to have both at the same time to make it all work.

The new one does not have a paper manual. Nobody keeps them, which drives me nuts. But I think on one this new I can get a digital over at mygmc.com if I create an account.
hawkeye-08
Explorer III
Nov 28, 2016
Long read, but finally finished. We had 2008 Yukon XL Denali and one of the things I did not like was the AWD. It had no selector for 4WD, etc, just had full time AWD. I don't know if the 2004 is the same, but it impacted mileage and I almost got stuck once with just one front tire spinning (G80 locker in back, open diff in transfer case and open diff in front). I think the computer was supposed to apply some braking, perhaps it did and that is why I did not get stuck, only almost.

Follow the owners manual for how to setup WDH with the air shocks, some say to have it off, others on, it depends on the vehicle.

Sounds like you will be traveling with full water tanks often to have affordable water to drink (assuming you can filter for what you need to)..

Stay positive, glad you're on the mend.