docj
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Posts posted by docj
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1 hour ago, Chalkie said:
Ahh, OK, the last time we drove by an RV dealership I saw far more towed RVs than motorized ones. The same could be said for what I see on Market Place and Craigslist around here.
According to 2021 RVIA data, motorhomes account for <10% of all RV sales. Although MH's are a lot more costly than most towables, they account for only a smaller sliver from a numeric aspect. https://www.rvia.org/historical-rv-data
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27 minutes ago, sandsys said:
Because local has to pay for retail space, utilities for that space, furnishings for that space, and people to staff that space. Warehouses are cheaper and workers there don't stand around waiting for customers to arrive.
If you think about it, a hundred years ago local stores didn't have all that much stock and customers ordered through the Montgomery Wards or Sears catalogs to get what they wanted. Today, most local stores have only a limited selection of what is available in the marketplace and many of us use Amazon and other online sources to obtain the specific things we want to buy.
Maybe the model that no longer works (if it ever did) is having large stores distributed through out the country each needing to have a fairly broad array of merchandise to sell. Large areas of retail space staffed with competent sale staff is expensive. Has anyone been in a Dillard's or Macy's lately to see the paucity of customers on a weekday afternoon? That's a clearly unsustainable model.
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11 minutes ago, Ray,IN said:
I do think the height of the 40+' diesel pusher market is passing into history now, and with it the birth of the smaller MH's as seen in Europe. My reasoning is the increasing population and finite public resources. The change from traveling without a reservation to our present state helped form my opinions.
I agree but there's still a considerable resale market for the ~10-20 year old "relics" of that period. Considering that it's impossible to get a 40' DP with a >12 liter engine at virtually any price, let alone less than half a million $$, buying an old one for $50-100k seems like a bargain even when you factor in remodeling costs.
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15 hours ago, Chalkie said:
Rents around here have skyrocketed, even ours to some extent, and if we weren't so close to our medical and shopping would almost consider moving. But to where?
Here in Rockport there are enough RV sites to keep the prices down. But with apartment rentals going up, the RV site prices will surely follow. We're glad we own the site we have.
As for medical and such, we have good docs for our basic needs; when something more is needed we drive to Houston which is less than 3 hours away. Not a perfect solution, but we've made it work. -
On 7/31/2022 at 9:38 AM, Chalkie said:
And based on some FB groups I am in there were a whole of people getting them to live in.
Our town of Rockport TX has a very high percentage of residents living permanently in RV's and this isn't atypical from what I can see around here. There is a serious shortage of housing and rents for nice apartments are >$1500/mo which prices out lots of folks. The use of RVs as permanent housing is an issue I rarely see addressed in the press.
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We can definitely identify with most of the reasons Scott cites. I'm glad to see that we are not the only ones who feel the way he does about #4. After >70,000 miles of RVing over >10 years, it's difficult to think of another place we really want to explore, especially with fuel prices where they are today. We haven't yet made the decision never to drive the coach again. We're hoping to be able to take some trips around TX later this year (if it ever cools off) but we know that our days of traveling 2,500 miles to Canada are probably over.
But our situation is a bit different than many in that 7 years ago we purchased a site in an "ownership RV park" in Rockport TX and have been using it as a winter base ever since. We have ~3,000 sq ft of property on which my wife has a structure that provides her with a "world class" sewing center and which also gives us storage so we have a place for all the things that don't fit into a motorhome. We have lots of outdoor patio space and just enough garden to be attractive without becoming a burden. The community, itself, isn't a "resort" it's really just a place to live; we have few rentals an don't have expensive to maintain things such as swimming pools.
So far we are content to live in our MH; we're so used to it. I'm currently in the process of shoe-horning a 48" OLED TV into it! Having the outdoor space and sewing center make it much easier to find room to "get away from each other"! LOL We haven't yet decided where we go from here; we could always put a "park model" on our lot and continue here, but that wouldn't really give us more space and would probably have a lot less built-in storage. As long as we can climb the couple of steps into the coach, it's not such a big deal. So far our health has not played a factor in these decisions but at our ages, one can never be sure. We'll just have to play it by ear!
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2 hours ago, Kirk W said:
We are back to wearing them when in stores and such as well. While the majority of people seem to be without a mask, casual observation seems to indicate an increase in numbers of people wearing a mask here in the Mesquite, TX area. Nothing scientific about that and I haven't counted people or anything but it sure seems that way just lately.
Funny, you should mention that. I recently made a similar observation about people in Rockport TX where we live.
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15 minutes ago, RV_ said:
Glad you dodged the recently increasing strains. It sounds like you are doing all you can as well. Stay safe bud!
I no longer care about being just about the only one in a store wearing a mask. Our kids reported that having COVID, even after having had shots, wasn't a pleasant experience. If wearing a mask helps reduce that risk, I'm all for it.
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25 minutes ago, RV_ said:
All we can do here with our family is continue to mask and limit our indoor interaction with the maskless.
That's what we continue to do. My wife and I each have had 4 shots and/or boosters. In April/May we managed to fly to see kids and grandkids and spent nearly a month in their homes. We were pleased to report that we didn't contract COVID during or after the trip, but pretty much all of our kids did a few weeks thereafter. Of course, they all have school-age children and are constantly exposed to what they bring home.
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We've been full-time for >10 years and have all the complexities of a MH owned by a MT-LLC, an SD mail service domicile and property we own in TX. We purchased a new car in 2020 and had absolutely no trouble getting the manufacturer's lowest interest rate despite all of this. FWIW we also bought a vehicle in 2014, even before we owned the TX property and has no trouble.
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5 hours ago, Dutch_12078 said:
I agree it would be nice to have Starlink car units, and hopefully that's in the works for future release. All we did when our free 6 months were up was to a negotiate a deal with XM for the "Mostly Music" plan that gave us two vehicle coverage for the normal rate for one. They usually renew it at the same half-price deal, but sometimes I have to make the "Cancel me" call to get it renewed.
We use our Pandora subscription to provide music while we drive. We pay for the premium service which has no advertising. The phones connect to Bluetooth seamlessly in both cars. In addition, we can get news by opening YouTube TV on the phone and listening to one of the cable news stations. We subscribe to both Pandora and YouTube TV anyway so why pay extra for a different "in vehicle" music or news provider?
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On 7/2/2022 at 9:37 AM, Dutch_12078 said:
The last report I saw said the vehicle units would be too big for passenger car use, but ok for RV and large truck use.
I hoping that they eventually will figure out something for cars; it's about time that new cars stopped coming with XM Radio hardware. I wonder what percentage of new car buyers keep their XM subscriptions after the free 6 month are over?
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Even though your rig is fairly old finding replacements shouldn't be a problem if you can get the numbers. I had no difficulty finding replacement bags for the eight on my 2000 Beaver.
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We have Coachnet; they proved their value to us in 2019 when we were stuck in axle-deep mud on Canada Day in a rural corner of Prince Edward Island. The owner of the RV park suggested the name of a local heavy wrecker and we were extracted from the mud in less than 2 hours! After that I'll be a Coachnet user for life!
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On 6/12/2022 at 8:53 AM, DJohns said:
I remember in 1973 when gas went from .25 to .50 per gallon. Everyone was upset. now 49 years later fuel is 10 times higher. I think wages,houses etc are about 10 times higher than back in 1973. Point is fuel being $2.30 per gallon it was way behind the inflation curve. This is also affected by the current administration and what is going on around the world. Us consumers are caught in the middle and can't do anything about it.
Actually, prices today are 6.6x the prices in 1973 according to this inflation calculator posted by the Federal Rerserve Bank: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator
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1 hour ago, RV_ said:
🤷♂️Yeah same thing with EVs. The most vocal folks have likely never even sat in ow let alone even test driven one, then tell me who has had one for two years now that my reports on it are not true based on their reading something from cherry picked sources. Those same people also rarely if ever post a positive about what they have no personal experience with using or owning. 😉🖖
I hope you aren't directing that at me. I haven't posted anything about EVs in a couple of years. At present an EV doesn't fit into my lifestyle, finances, etc., but I'm not ruling out that maybe, in the the future, a city-EV might work as one of our our vehicles. But unless things really change, I foresee the desirability of retaining an ICE-powered vehicle for the foreseeable future. And, since I'm unlikely to be driving for ~>10 years, that probably means I'll have one for the rest of my life!
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On 4/2/2022 at 10:10 PM, Vladimir said:
Not a fan of Google, nor Tesla.......BUT in the interest of truth....the pedestrian was killed by Uber.
Tesla auto-pilot has also been involved in a fatal accident albeit not with a pedestrian.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/18/1073857310/tesla-autopilot-crash-charges#:~:text=Press-,Tesla driver is charged in a deadly crash involving Autopilot,killed two people in 2019. -
22 hours ago, oldcodger said:
One reason the state of Texas can't issue license tags and titles on the spot is as of 2021 the population of Texas is almost 30 million and the population of South Dakota is less than 900,000.
I, for one, enjoy being part of the small population of SD. When we have needed to interact with a human, they have been pleasant and helpful. Last year we went to Sioux Falls to renew our licenses; total elapsed time <1 hour from "in the door" to "leaving with new license in hand."
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37 minutes ago, hemsteadc said:
My RV technician would have to have his 8 yo child do it. It's in the framework with about a foot of crawlspace.
Mine was pretty awful, also. I've read that some people disassemble some of the cabinetry.
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29 minutes ago, hemsteadc said:
I hope I never have to replace mine because it would be very difficult.
The first time it was replaced I did it myself. This time, being 10 years older, I paid an RV technician to do it! 😁
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We, too, have a kitchen sink in our slide and our original hose failed long before yours did (at around 10 years). The hose installed by the manufacturer was a "corrugated" one, with a relatively thin wall. I replaced it with the same diameter hose intended for use in outdoor ponds. We recently replaced it because of a buildup of sediment, but we didn't have any leaks in >10 years.
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We've had Starlink at our homebase site in Rockport TX for about 6 months and it has been great. Until then our only internet connection was via cellular. We typically get 150-200 Mbps download speeds although they can drop suddenly and the past 24 hours have been particularly rocky. Some people blame that on yesterday's satellite launch, but that's not it since it takes them many weeks before the satellites are in position to be used. But it's a lot better than what we used to have. We've not going to take it traveling since I don't want to lose my "slot" in our cell. Furthermore, we have the older round version with the permanently attached Ethernet cable. No easy way to get it back out of the ~50 feet of conduit it is sitting in.
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PLEX is a free media server that you can easily install on your laptop. It can index all your downloaded video and music files so they can be accessed by the PLEX Roku app. I assume there are similar PLEX apps for Firestick and Chromecast. We don't bother to record video but we do have >300 CDs stored that we can access using PLEX. We use those to supplement what we can get from Pandora.
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18 hours ago, k4rs said:
We ran into a similar situation when we bought our first lot. No luck with any of the big banks, so we applied with a small bank in the community where we were purchasing. The loan was approved in a couple of hours.
As for insurance, we had our full timer policy on the 5th wheel, but no additional coverage for the lot. Later when we put a park model on the lot, we obtained a regular home owners policy.
Six years ago we purchased our lot at a park in Rockport TX. We have fee simple ownership of the property and have erected a 2-section structure--a heated/cooled sewing center and a storage shed. The park's developer had arranged for financing through a local community bank. We started with a 3-year term note and then converted that to a fully amortized one.
As for insurance, that turned out to be more complex than I had thought. Fortunately, Roxanne at Miller Insurance was able to come up with a package that works for us. We have full-timers insurance from Progressive that provides adequate protection when the motorhome is present, but I wanted coverage for liability, structure and contents when we are away. Roxanne arranged that.
Buy local they say
in General RV Information
Posted
I'm sure you know this, but when you price something on Amazon, it may or not be supplied by Amazon, itself, or one of its "marketplace" vendors. Sometimes that isn't always easy to figure out. My experience is that a significant percentage of marketplace items are priced above other sources. Never assume Amazon has the cheapest price unless you've compared it to other sources.
Lately, I've noticed that the delivered prices of heavy items on Amazon are being increased to cover shipping costs. That's not surprising, especially since Amazon would allow me to return those heavy items at no cost to me.