Hello, my name is Rick. Been a Lurker off/on for about a year now. My Wife and I live in the Dallas area. The more I learn about doing a HDT conversion the more practical I am finding it to fit our lifestyle.
As we examined our current lifestyle and the lifestyle we want to live. We learned that we did not want to give up the Sticks & Bricks. We want to travel for a few months, return home for a few months and repeat. We are both about 40 and see ourselves semi-retiring. We are both self employed and can work from anyplace with an Internet connection. It is important to find a rig/setup that can handle the miles we will do since our home will still be our home base and we will return frequently.
Our first thought was a Class A Diesel Pusher, Bus Conversion or Kingsly Coach. Everything else we looked at I felt we would have to replace at 50k miles or less. I have to admit that spending more for a RV (depreciating asset) than I did for the House (appreciating asset) gave me heartburn. While I don’t mind spending money for quality, at heart I am a cheap skate.
So this leads us to believe that a used Bus Conversion was going to be our best solution. Best bang for the buck. Well rewind 2 years, in a weak moment I ran for City Council and won. The practical side of thinking kicked in and spending the $$$ on a bus did not make since I am kind of tied to the house for the next 3 years and traveling for extended periods of time would not be feasible. But we did not want to wait to do some traveling; we knew that we would just have to do shorter trips.
Well I already owned a 2001 F250 PowerStroke. So we decided to purchase a 5th wheel for the time being that could be pulled with the truck we already have. We decided on a 30ft unit weighting 8500# (dry). After a few long weekend trips we quickly realized that 5th wheel was not a bad way travel. We did not need a toad since the tow vehicle can do that duty and were already driving the truck daily anyways. And we can take the dog with us!
All this to say that we quickly learned that a 5th wheel would work just as well or better and at a fraction of the cost. Did I mention that we are cheap? We know that our current trailer is not a long term solution. I quickly realized that trailers built to the standards that I am looking for are going to weigh over 16000# and as we all know no 1 ton truck is safely going to pull/stop that weight. So I started to think about a MDT, but I was not sure how comfortable one would be. I sometimes will drive 600~800 miles a day with the 5th Wheel.
I saw a HDT pulling a 5th wheel and thought why not? I found this forum and started reading and digesting. The more I learned to more it seems to make sense. The wife agrees (I feared she would think a HDT was too big and would not want to ride in a “Big Rigâ€). The wealth of knowledge here is unbelievable.
Right now my biggest concern is the toad. I don’t want to have to depend on the HDT for transportation when we arrive where we are headed. I have ruled out triple towing due to length and not legal in all states. Deck loading a Smart is a good idea but I do want the flexibility of having something with 4WD like a jeep. So then the issue is the length of the HDT if I deck load a jeep or something. Also there is the feasibility of getting something like our 350Z on the deck if we wanted to take that with us instead of a Jeep. So now I am leaning towards a toy box hauler 42’ to 45’ I figure. It means a longer trailer but much more flexible in the toad we want to use.
So just like this intro is long so is the journey that has got us to thinking about a HDT setup. I still have a few things to figure out but I am sure that they questions I have can and will be answered here.
Thanks!
Rick
