Recreational Vehicles

Frugal living is often a difficult pill to swallow. Most Americans are raised to be unnaturally materialistic. How many styles of fork do you need? Isn't one pair of comfortable shoes enough? This is the result of marketing, successfully, to sell stuff we don't actually need. If you can reduce your stuff then living in an RV starts to become possible in the real world.



There are many types of RV. A friend of mine lives in a tiny truck camper shell, while working for minimum wage part time in a job that keeps promising to hire and pay him properly, real soon. Its been something like 4 years of that ever-extending promise. The thing is tiny, just enough room to sleep, and sit up from sleeping. It fits over the back of his work truck. My friend is a mechanic and machinist, so can keep the truck going forever, essentially. What he doesn't have is a real paying job so he can't upgrade or park it in a proper space with trailer hookups etc.

 

We've discussed the merits of mobile living and I'm learning a fair bit about the upsides and downsides. I get to hear all about the dirty little secrets. For instance, you can price shop your mobile home space rental, but the electric hookup and rates are unregulated so you find out you're paying several hundred a month for turning on your lights and running your fridge. That's not very nice. Most mobile home parks do this, and they get a well deserved reputation for being run by @$$holes. Sigh.

 

It's a shame because there's an opportunity there, to provide upscale services,  higher rents, code of conduct that's properly enforced, and proper maintenance of grounds and facilities so everything works right. Imagine a mobile home park with a good restaurant that delivers? And well kept, very clean showers and laundry room and a really nice clean swimming pool. Or manicured garden and BBQ area? They had that at a nice apartment complex I stayed in, in Rocklin years ago. Back before the economy tanked. If something like that existed (they do), it would be a viable franchise.

And 6 mpg!

Like with scooters, the markup on RV's is ridiculous. The big bus-sized ones are often $300K, which is really quite a lot of money for something that's probably around $45K in materials and labor to build. They can get away with this because most people who buy them have just sold their house in retirement, tax free, and know how much money they'll need, so can spend plenty "travelling", and tend to go the budget route. For whatever reason, they figure they can live for weeks at a time in an RV cheaper than a motel and eventually get to spending entire summer and many winters in places with good weather. Places with fantastic views. Places worth spending time in.

 

So what about used ones? A used RV varies in price quite a bit. Buying one that's been neglected after a few trips, after the owner gets cancer and dies and his widow sells it off to get rid of it, that's the best kind to get used. They often need some outside work, some corrosion repairs, some paint, but the interiors tend to be untouched so require few real repairs and can be turned over quickly for a profit or lived in. The worst ones are the ruined engines, broken suspensions, wrecked plumbing and electrical, damaged cabinetry, and a wracked (twisted/broken) frame that's been cracked and leaking rainwater inside the walls where its been sitting for 5 years growing mildew and dryrot. That would be the worst case. An RV that's scrap, like a house with termites. Any RV for sale which advises bringing a "tow truck" to haul it away? Yeah, better be a serious mechanic. My friend is. Thinks that he might be able to buy distressed RVs, fix them and sell them. I think he's right. Done economically, they can be resold for a reasonable sum rather than the unreasonable one a new one goes for, with fewer complaints or demands.

 

Around here, RVs are snatched up cheap, big ones to rich people. Small ones go to the pot growers. They upgrade from the tent or lean-to or ramshackle (from where we get the word "shack") after a successful sale of a good crop to the Bay Area drug dealers. They upgrade into a camper van, sometimes a camper shell on a truck. Often these are bought as cheap as they can get. Repaired just enough to live in, and jury rigged together with cheap construction materials like scraps of siding fished out of construction site waste, caulking compound and flashing to cover the leaks. Most of what I've seen was really ugly. These are not the efforts of people who care about their work quality. Anybody who thinks nice things about The (North San Juan) Ridge is someone not to hire or do business with. Rather the same with Chicago Park. Ever since Peak Oil screwed up the affordability of commutes and shut down so many businesses in Sacramento, dropping this entire region in the sort of poverty that caused so many locals to drop into growing pot, which remains a crime, to survive. Rich people still buy RVs to snowbird or escape the summer heat for the high country, or get a different view, but the poor skeezy trailer trash and pot growers buy RVs and trailers as cheap as they can get, and stay high or drunk as long as they live, which is often surprisingly long. Not much HIV around here so the local STDs don't seem to kill like they used to.

 

I've already written about trailers. And those are fine, provided you can turn around. An RV can be a truck, a van, a bus with a house on the back. It is self powered. Some have the engine in the front. Some in the back. Most have a generator. I would get really tired of hearing that run when I'm trying to sleep. Most RVs have poor insulation. They don't have to, but that insulation removes living space from the interior, and part of the point of an RV is you go where the weather is nice and there's a pleasant view. Top Gear says that British people buy more caravans and RVs than any country in Europe, so must enjoy this. He also pointed out that you can buy a fun hatchback instead of a pulling vehicle and spend the difference on a really fancy holiday in a hotel. Which is absolutely true.

 

So why would you want an RV anyway? Well... in a situation where you've had a housing bubble, one that's resulted in an unstable economy with low wages, low job security, govt with high taxes but apparently no services to your own ethnic group, racist and sexist hiring practices for the few jobs left, and growing instability in laws and taxation meaning settling in one place is asking to get hit with life altering and ruinous bills you can't predict and prevent success? Something like reality. An RV could be your best bet to stay away from the crazy, move on, and be somewhere else. 

 

An RV can unhook from the water, sewer, and electrical, top off the gas tank, and go somewhere better. This will seem attractive once you get stuck in life that makes you unhappy. Sometimes leaving really is the right answer. There are many places where abusive employment is the only kind, and poverty and exploitation are considered normal. There's a good reason people are leaving. Flee the trap. Your elders built it to hurt you, to enslave you. Flee. A house on wheels is a statement of freedom, just be sure to move it from time to time.