How do I know what I'm looking for?
My husband and I are looking to purchase a RV in the next 1-3 years. At that time we will have one kid in college, one on her way out the door and one about 8-9 years old. Once we purchase it we a...
Forum Discussion
Unless you plan to pay something on the order of $150,000 to $250,000 for a fiver, as a permanent living unit it might be a big step down from a mobile home permanently planted in a trailer park. It will also be relatively cramped, because the HUD rules that let RVs be built substandard relative to permanent housing also limit the size (nominally 400 sq ft). Within that space, unless you have something custom built to carve an additional bedroom (not just a bunk) out of the living area, either parents or adolescent are going to find themselves without a private place of their own. Look at New Horizons as an example of fivers that are custom built, and built closer to permanent housing standards than are most mass production RVs.
The largest fivers, and most complete with respect to standards for permanent housing, will usually be too big for the kind of truck most people consider as a daily driver. Minimum might be Ram 4500, F-450, but more often people hauling large fivers move up to Class 5 (like F-550) or Class 6 (Freightliner Business Class, International Durastar) or even larger trucks. My cousin uses a Freightlined M-2 to move his fiver back and forth between Michigan and Florida, lives in it about 6-8 months (has house on a lake in Michigan).
But then, you don't actually need the truck until retirement, when you start moving the fiver around. Truck technology, and market conditions, will be changing quite a bit in the next 8-9 years, driven by progressively more severe fuel economy standards already scheduled for that time frame. A big enough truck bought now could very well be functionally obsolete by the time you start using it.
I do not expect similar technology changes in the RVs, there are no mandates on the books (at least for towable RVs) and the industry has been pretty conservative about construction basics since changes in how RVs are built often require extensive new investment in the plants that build them.
An alternative to the fiver would be a home built into a 45-foot motorcoach, but the prices could go up by a factor of 5X to 10X compared to a high quality fiver, and you would have a motorcoach sitting idle for five years, which is not good for it.
The largest fivers, and most complete with respect to standards for permanent housing, will usually be too big for the kind of truck most people consider as a daily driver. Minimum might be Ram 4500, F-450, but more often people hauling large fivers move up to Class 5 (like F-550) or Class 6 (Freightliner Business Class, International Durastar) or even larger trucks. My cousin uses a Freightlined M-2 to move his fiver back and forth between Michigan and Florida, lives in it about 6-8 months (has house on a lake in Michigan).
But then, you don't actually need the truck until retirement, when you start moving the fiver around. Truck technology, and market conditions, will be changing quite a bit in the next 8-9 years, driven by progressively more severe fuel economy standards already scheduled for that time frame. A big enough truck bought now could very well be functionally obsolete by the time you start using it.
I do not expect similar technology changes in the RVs, there are no mandates on the books (at least for towable RVs) and the industry has been pretty conservative about construction basics since changes in how RVs are built often require extensive new investment in the plants that build them.
An alternative to the fiver would be a home built into a 45-foot motorcoach, but the prices could go up by a factor of 5X to 10X compared to a high quality fiver, and you would have a motorcoach sitting idle for five years, which is not good for it.
