RV Insurance

[Holland]

Trying to figure out what the annual costs of what a 35 ft class a RV costs to own?What is the average cost for RV Insurance? What are the annual maintenance exenses? How much do you spend just to own it? Not talking about taking it on a trip. Just the additional costs to owning it.

 

[sheridany]

It pays to shop around on insurance but it’s not cheap. I would say it will be around 1k to 1.5k annually for a 35 ft depending on your history, additional vehicles being covered. You can go to progressive.com and input your data to see what they quote.

As far as annual maintenance expense, that really depends on if you are doing it yourself or having a shop do it and it also depends on gas vs Diesel engines as there is typically a cost difference.

The annual service for my Freightliner coach at a Freightliner shop was anywhere from 800 to 2000 depending on what was needed in that year. California has high labor costs so depending on where you live, it might be a lot cheaper. Then you you add in batteries, tires and any house items needing repairs in a given 5 year period, it starts to add up.

it’s a great lifestyle but not necessarily cheap unless you do all your own work, which would be the most economical way to go.

 

[Holland]

Thanks for the info much appreciated.

 

["EZ"]

I have Allstate in Georgia with $3000 extra personal belongings coverage and pay about $600 every 6 months for a 40' diesel pusher. I'm 58 with a clean driving record. Lots of variables to figure insurance rates.

 

[eZAK]

I've have no experience with class 'A's But you might want to try an RV club that offers discounts. I'm a Good Sam member.

 

[Msdpok]

Have a Freedom Elite and hold full coverage 100/300 everything included is listed! Safeco is a liberty mutual company

 

["EZ"]

Have a Freedom Elite and hold full coverage 100/300 everything included is listed! Safeco is a liberty mutual company

Is that for 6 months or 12 months coverage?

 

[Msdpok]

12 months

 

[Retired]

A large factor will be the value of your rig. A 20K Class A will not be near as expensive as a 100k Class A to insure.

Its hard to compare apples to apples when discussing insurance.

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

Its hard to compare apples to apples when discussing insurance.

Frequently, it is more like apples to radishes to walnuts!

TJ

 

[CaptainGizmo]

Too many variables to even start to suggest what to expect.

Insurance?
Every state and county is different.
Usage and mileage
Storage
Size
Options
Cost of repair vs total replacement
Windshield deduction
Deductible
Etc

I could tell you to budget $2k a month in California and that wouldn’t mean a thing to you in Montana.

Everyone will tell you the same. Best to maybe search for a longer thread that applies to your state and you may get more accuracy.

Maintenance is impossible to predict as well.

Sorry to be vague but I’m being honest.

 

[Kevin D Pem]

The price of maintenance depend a lot on what you drive in with. The more you look like you have something, the deeper you will need to dig.

Just saying

Do my own work, I like it, it keeps me busy, ALL THE TIME!!!

 

[Rich-MLsRV]

Insurance for our RV is ~$2K / year. I think insurance in CO is expensive. When our son moved to Indiana his car insurance was 1/2 of what he was paying in CO.

I think ownership costs for 1st year will be higher. Items to consider
- Purchase Sales tax - Depends on your situation.
- license plates - Depends on your situation. In CO this was $1200
- deferred maintenance. Our RV was at a dealership unused for about 9 months. The dealer knew very little about Newmar RVs :-( For us probably a net plus. The dealer had not performed any maintenance but had no idea what options were on the RV. Turns out the RV had lots of options the dealer was unaware of. They were interested in just selling the RV since it had been on the lot for so long. We were fortunate to purchase just before COVID hit in March. For us this was about $2500 in work on the Freightliner chassis.
- RV inspection. Worth the investment so you know what you are getting. This was very important to us since the dealer was not a Newmar dealer and we were new to class A RVs. ~$1K. We found an inspector that was very familia with Newmar's so we learned alot while the couple performed the inspection.
- Outfitting the RV - For us this included tow bar setup, TOAD braking system along with the small items like sewer hoses, water hoses, electrical cords, rugs, cabinet dividers , ... ~$13K. The list just goes on
- Upgrades - Our batteries were end of life so I decided to install Lithium batteries. Certainly we could have stayed with lead acid but this is something I wanted to do. I did the work myself. Cost for purchasing all the hardware including tools was ~$6K
- Warranty - You'll need to decide whether you want to purchase a policy to cover big ticket items. I was quoted around $10K. I decided to "self insure" and put the money in the bank for possible future big ticket issues.

I do think our expenses next year will be much less as I think we have the RV outfitted as we want. There will always be the annual items that need to be taken care of.

We decided to purchase used. We looked nationwide and ended up purchasing in Florida. I found prices varied widely across the country. Some dealers were willing to negotiate and other weren't. Pays to do your homework and don't get attached to a particular RV when negotiating. I am thinking we looked at ~15 Newmar RVs from 2004 to 2018.