July 1, 2015

We're driving home from Florida in our new-to-us 43-foot Sandpiper fifth wheel, and I need fuel outside Chattanooga.

If you’ve ever pulled something long through Chattanooga, you know there isn’t much that’s easy to get in and out of. I spot a gas station and think, “I’ve been driving this thing for a month. I can whip it in there.”

I don't successfully “whip it in there.”

Those concrete barriers at gas stations exist to protect the pumps from people like me. On this day they do their job. I never touch a pump. I catch a barrier instead, and it wipe out everything four feet and under across a 10-foot span of our RV. Axles. Part of the slide. The siding.

We’ve been living in this fifth wheel for about five weeks.

Frustrated, but pushing forward, I drop it at a repair shop 45 minutes from our hometown to get it fixed. I figure it will take about a week. Maybe two.

Three weeks in, I call to check on it and they tell me it won't be weeks.
It will be months.

This RV is our home.

So we have a decision to make. Put our tail between our legs and buy a house after five weeks of trying to live on the road, or go all in.

On August 4 we take the last of our savings, buy a 38-foot Newmar motorhome, and move everything over.

By early October (3 months later), the fifth wheel still isn't fixed. So we launch in the motorhome anyway. Thanksgiving comes and goes. Still not fixed.

Then, on December 9 they call and let us know the Sandpiper is ready. I drive up to take it with me and they tell me their guy has to pull it out of the bay.

You can't make this stuff up...as he's pulling out, he tail-whips it into the side of the bay and tears the ladder off the back. Four guys standing there yelling stop, and he never hears a word of it.

The manager looks at the dangling ladder, shakes his head, and says
“Pull it back in, boys.”

January 5, 2016

The fifth wheel is finally fixed. Six months and four days after I hit a concrete barrier at a gas station. Over $7,000 in repairs.

We immediately put it up for sale.

The assumption almost all of us start with

Buy from a good dealer. Buy close to home. Build a relationship with their service department. Then, when something breaks, you’ve got a place to take it.

Repair = Dealer. One path from broken to fixed.

I believed that completely in 2015. Eleven years on the road later, I’ve never seen that path hold up when it mattered most. Not for us, and not for the people we camp next to.

The part nobody explains before you buy

Your RV isn’t one product. It’s dozens of companies’ products bolted into a box by one more company. When I hit that barrier I didn’t break one thing. I broke half a dozen things from half a dozen suppliers. The holdup for six months was a piece of siding that had to come from Forest River.

The shop wasn’t slow. The shop was stuck. They were waiting on parts from people who didn’t know my name, didn’t know my RV was my house, and had no reason to hurry.

Then there’s the other trap. Many shops won’t order a single part until your RV is parked in their lot. So your home sits in a row of other people’s broken RVs for two weeks while a box ships, and you’re paying to stay somewhere else the whole time.

Here’s my hot take. RV service doesn’t feel broken because there aren’t any options. It feels broken because we keep pushing every problem down the same path. The dealer isn’t the repair system. It’s one path through it.

The 8 paths

Somewhere in the last decade I stopped seeing one path and started seeing eight. Which one I take depends on what broke, how fast we need it, and who actually works on that thing every day.

1. Do it yourself. More falls in this bucket than you think.

2. Remote help. RV Fix puts a real technician on the phone or on video who walks you through the repair while you hold the screwdriver. Great for the jobs that sit one step past your comfort.

3. A mobile tech. Water heater, air conditioner, fridge. One person, one visit, and you never move the rig. RV Help & RV Fix are both places to find one.

4. A specialty shop. Axles, leaf springs, suspension. Those don’t have to go to an RV shop at all. A trailer and suspension shop can have you in and out in two or three days instead of three weeks in line plus two weeks waiting on parts.

5. The manufacturer. More than 80% of RVs are built around Elkhart, Indiana. If your repair is big, taking your RV to the company that put it together is often faster (even with the long drive) and no more expensive.

6. A component service center. Lippert runs their own service centers in California, Alabama, and Indiana. Half or more of what’s in your RV is already a Lippert part, so it’s in stock, it's not marked up like a dealer or shop, and their techs see that exact failure every day.

7. An independent shop. The mom and pop places. Sometimes wonderful, sometimes stuck on the same parts problem the dealer has.

8. The dealer. Still on the list. If you’ve got a service department you trust, use it. Just don’t let it be the only number in your phone.

What I’d tell myself in 2015

1. Match the path to the repair, not to your habit. The question is never “where do I take it.” It’s “what kind of problem is this, and who fixes that kind of problem fastest.”

2. Price the downtime, not just the repair. Before you hand over the keys, ask whether your home will sit on their lot while you wait on parts, or whether you can order first and bring it in when they land. A cheaper labor rate stops being cheaper the second you’re paying to sleep somewhere else for three weeks.

3. Specialist beats generalist. When it comes to suspension, frame, solar, and anything else that takes real expertise, sometimes it’s worth the drive and the inconvenience of taking the RV to the manufacturer or a certified repair center instead of someone who does generic RV repairs.

4. Eight paths feel different than one. When people tell me their biggest fear about RV life, it’s almost always some version of “what if it breaks.”

It’s going to break.

The fear isn’t really about breaking. It’s about being stuck with no options, and that part is fixable today, before anything goes wrong.

My attempt at “whipping it in there” cost us over $7,000 and six months.

The money was the wreck. The six months was me believing there was only one way to fix it.

Turns out there are at least eight, and the time to figure out which one you’d use is before anything breaks.

Until next time, see you down the road!
— Nathan