phoenix2013

Good morning gals, The East Coast Rally is just around the corner. It looks like a great turnout with lots of wannabees as well as the old faithfuls will be there. Mom is battling some congestion and I had her in the ER last Friday. Seems to be better today and seeing our primary care doc today. She is not up for traveling and therefore regretfully I will not be able to join you this year. Janet Church is going to lead the RDBE meeting and I am very grateful for her help. She is going to be a busy lady all week with her own presentations. Heidi Springfield will not attend due to work commitments, I was hoping you could hear from her first hand how she has logged 2000+ miles piloting their rig during the last several months. Janet may be able to give you some inside info, or maybe Heidi will send an email about her adventure! I hope you all have a wonderful week, meet lots of new friends and learn about the HDT lifestyle especially from the drivers seat perspective. Our membership grows with every rally, Bring some of your questions to the RDBE meeting and get answers from those who have been there and done that! Miss you all and keep on driving:) Hugs, Davena Szmyt RDBE#1 ddshjs on the forum

You will have fun in Hutch, welcome. I was curious so I found the post you referred to, interesting reading http://peelouttahere.com/heavy-duty-towing/do-you-think-you-have-enough-truck-or-why-we-chose-a-heavy-duty-towing-vehicle/

There is only one scenario when you might overload the front axle RVing with an HDT. Single it long, load it to the hilt and run it bobtail. This is the truck that would overload the front axle by a few hundred pounds, it's a 770 (the longest and heaviest of the Volvos), it was singled long, had a pretty heavy bed and garage and an internal overhead hoist and it would overload the fronts when loaded with two motorcycles and ran like this, bobtail. The minute the owner would hook up the fifth and put 5,000 pounds on the hitch, the problem would go away. If it was singled mid I don't think there would be any issues in any configuration.

Welcome, if you are committed to use an HDT for RVing getting a truck first would be a good move. Yes indeed they are so well equipped for commercial long haul trucking that you can use these for camping as is. You really do not need the second axle of a tandem setup. It is unlikely that you could "dream up" any setup of body and load that a single axle couldn't carry (19,500 pounds). With single axle you also bring it's classification down and it's easier to "persuade" the powers to be that it is a class 7 single axle vehicle, which can help with registrations, insurance and local ordinances.

This is fun !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dah!

The automatic numbering (edit function) does not allow for return spacing, I'm sure you know how to deal with it. Looks like you started something, Jack, folks are taking a peak and someone was editing me as I was editing myself, bravo.

We bought a high mileage truck to keep the initial investment down. 5 years old with 836,000 miles for $27,000. With a truck like that a good inspection is a must which we had done by a Volvo dealer. They also did a dyno to check the quality of the engine and the tranny. About $800 total with an understanding that if it didn't pass I was out $800. Dyno passed but the truck needed about $1,500 of various fixes which the seller agreed to have done by the Volvo dealer. We had the truck for 8 years and it now has close to 900,000 miles. Over those years we had around $15,000 of repairs, Three big chunks $5,000, $2,000 and $2,000 which we had done on the road and others which we had done in a more "leisurely" way while sitting at home or in a campground. I don't mind fixing things, or having it fixed, it's part of life. If that freaks you out, an older HDT is not for you. Repair on these things are more expensive that on a car or a pickup, because the repairs are expected to outlast a pickup or two. You are playing with "big toys" now. But all in all I am still way below the price of a new pickup puller and I have a "real truck". The reason I wanted a "cheap" HDT because my plan was to outfit it with a fancy deck and drom which was going to put the whole thing between $50K-$60K. So far I'm "on the money".