Advice for new RV’ers

[Madarieta7]

My wife and I just bought a brand new travel trailer for the first time and are looking for tips, tricks and advice for newby’s. Anything from essentials to buy, tricks for storage, what to do, what not to do etc etc??!! Any and all advice is much appreciated. Thanks

 

[Kevin D Pem]

Welcome, we have more advice than you might care for

 

[DKRITTER]

Beer lots and lots of it!

 

[FL-JOE]

I noticed you purchased a 2021 RV. The best advise I can give you is to start changing your expectations immediately.

We all end up with different experiences with automobiles as far as their quality and reliability goes. It is just natural to expect a similar experience when you spend $30,000, $100,000 or even $500,000 on your first RV. You have to try to "lower the bar".

Things are going to break on your shinny new RV. There will be constant maintenance and upkeep that will need to be done. The manufacturing quality control isn't anything like the automobile industry. This, plus the fact we haul these things crashing up and down bad roads which is like putting a residential structure through a series of small earthquakes, is the reason you will need to be really handy with tools or willing to take it back to the dealer on a regular basis.

I'm not trying to discourage you from RV ownership. We have been full timing for almost 11 years and have truly loved every minutes of it. I have come to realize though that many RVers can never get over the fact that their rapidly depreciating investment keeps needing repairs and maintenance. For many the trade off is not worth the reward.