Years ago, when I was reporting from a coastal city in South Carolina, I learned the classic definition of a boat: a hole in the water down which you throw a lot of money.
RVs are like that. Like boats, they hold out a promise of freedom, of self-sufficient travel and of being unshackled. For most, they’re a way to vacation; for a comparative few, they’re an alternative lifestyle. But the overall reality is that mostly they sit in a driveway or storage yard, their insides vulnerable to mold and invading rodents, their outsides bleached by rain and sun. The romance of the road is much like the siren call of the sea, a hazy aspiration that quickly founders on the shoals of high fuel prices, constant maintenance and the realization that you’ll never spend enough time on the thing to justify its price tag.
Turns out others are coming to the same realization. My AOL newsfeed (yes, I realize I’m dating myself) just ran a story from Cheapism headlined “19 Reasons Why You Really Don’t Want to Buy an RV” which a) is surprising because AOL isn’t where I turn to read news about RVs, and b) nineteen reasons? Really??
But yeah: 19 reasons, which is an odd number for an industry that usually likes round figures. It’s also odd because the list could readily have grown to 20 if not for an inexplicable omission, but more on that later. What’s worth noting about this litany, however, is that roughly a third of its red flags have to do with the daunting economics of owning RVs, from their “insanely expensive” sales tags to the “minefield” of rampant up-selling and scare tactics at dealerships to pricey insurance premiums. Throw in “RVs are gas guzzlers,” “RVs depreciate like crazy” and “upkeep is expensive, too,” and it’s clear that boats aren’t the only money pits awaiting the unwary.
Other Cheapism reasons not to buy an RV are critiques of RVs themselves, rather than of a decision to purchase one, familiar to any RVer: they can be “terrifying to drive,” can leave their users feeling cramped, suffer from shoddy workmanship and can be exhausting to set up and break down between long days of driving. And, let’s not forget, “One word: sewage.”
What’s surprising, in a cost-weighted analysis, is the article’s failure to look at the steadily rising cost of campgrounds and RV parks. Although one of its 19 reasons is the observation that “you can’t just park an RV anywhere for the night,” the brief explanatory text warns only of the limitations for penny-pinchers of overnighting at Walmart. That’s like writing about the cost-saving benefits of tossing an anchor into open waters for the night, ignoring the price of harbormaster and docking fees that inevitably will become part of the overall calculus.
On that score, then, it’s worth noting that campground fees have roughly doubled over the past three years. And, as with the upselling and scare tactics Cheapism cites at RV dealerships, RV parks increasingly are layering on additional charges, including reservation fees (!), site lock fees, nonrefundable deposits and cancellation fees—and all that’s on top of the industry’s widespread adoption of dynamic pricing.
Nor is that the top of the pricing escalator. As recently reported by RV Business, RVers seem surprisingly open to the idea of having their electricity consumption metered and paid for separately, with a full 50% of respondents to a survey averring that such a charge would be “only fair for everyone”—presumably the sentiment of pop-up owners looking at motor coaches with two air conditioners. But while metering is commonplace for long-term sites, charging overnighters for their electricity use would be groundbreaking. It also would result in minimal if any change in baseline site rates, amounting to an overall increase for pop-up and class A owners alike.
Back in the day, outsized cars used to be called “land yachts,” so that moniker can’t be hung on today’s even larger recreational vehicles. Which is a shame, because those RVs indeed have become land yachts in every sense of the word: holes down which a lot of money can be thrown. It’s unfortunate that campgrounds are making that hole deeper.
Renting Dirt 