One very intriguing idea of travel for our family is being able to take several weeks or a month, and drive across the entire United States, in a motorhome. The idea of hitting the open road, with no real time frames or commitments, seeing lots of our countries National Parks and tourists destinations, and saving money on nightly accommodations…right?
A simple, economical way to pull off such a trip would be to pack up the van with our tent and camping gear, and set up shop each night at affordable campgrounds. The downside would be the inconvenience of setting up and tearing down a tent each night. Plus all the loading and unloading of associated camping gear back into the van. The whole time is money thing enters into my mind, and factors into how much fun would that really be, especially for me.
Another option would be to purchase an affordable pop-up trailer and pull it across country. However, the idea is not all that appealing when you think about the setup required (less than a tent though), especially when traveling with little kids. It’s feasible, but maybe not ideal. Though the cost is affordable, with A-Frame and pop-up trailers running around $10,000 new and far less for used. Spread that cost out over several years of trips versus staying in hotel rooms, and eventually the economics may start to make sense.
Going to an efficient mid-sized motorhome/RV is an option, but the cost can escalate fast depending on what style you want. In addition, gas mileage starts to go down the larger you get, and you need larger campsites each night.
Growing up, I was most appreciative when my parents had a mid-sized RV that was REALLY nice, and we had several fantastic trips in that vehicle. My sister and I were able to casually sit in the back of the motorhome, playing games or watching portal televisions while my parents sat in the cab driving us to our destination.
The two real big problems with owning a motorhome of our own is the initial cost to purchase one and then storage of the vehicle when not in use. Our Home Owners Association will not allow recreational vehicles to be stored in the driveway and must be kept in a garage. The space required to store an RV at our house would not be possible, especially considering the size of the vehicle, meaning we would have to pay for storage when not in use.
The economics of RV ownership quickly tip the imbalance where it makes more sense to just drive and stay in hotels.
However, renting a RV may be an affordable option, depending on the size of your family and trip specifics.
Our family has been considering renting a motorhome for a cross-country trip, and has started researching the options. There are several national companies that offer RV rentals in the United States.
Apollo Camper
In addition to these, we found there are local dealers that rent out their fleet for guests to use.
So lets take a quick look at some numbers of renting a motorhome versus staying in hotels. Our family specifics are needing to sleep five. Some assumptions would be traveling for 3 weeks during the summer. I opted for June 17-July 9, 2015 to run a comparative example.
Unfortunately, Apollo does not offer any availability near Ohio. When running examples for their Indiana pick-up location, they show no availability, no matter how far out of dates I look for in their system. Other local places do not tend to show availability as far out as next summer.
Looking at Cruise America, 5 passengers for 22 nights equates to a base rate of $3,058.00. In addition, mileage runs $0.34/mile, with an initial budget of 2,200 miles at $748.00. That equates to a nightly rate of $173.
I think 100 miles per day is a low allocation. Just traveling from Cleveland to California would be roughly 2,500 miles each way. A cross-country trip I could foresee easily getting close to 7,500 to 10,000 miles. This would quickly escalate the cost to $250+/night. Ouch.
The real kicker is this cost does not include gas or campsite fees. This means a cross-country tip renting a motorhome for 3 weeks could quickly approach $300-400 per night.
No wonder so few people go this route of travel. Packing up the van and staying at $100/night chain hotels is easily a more cost effective approach to cross-country travel, at least for the specifics of a typical trip for our family.
Rental companies do offer deeply discounted one-way repositioning RVs, which often reimburse you even for gas. You are required to pick-up and drop-off at the listed destinations and during a certain time frame. In addition, you need to figure out getting back home.
I suppose we would really have to look closer into the the options, because using a typical scenario, it does not appear to be the most economical to rent a RV to make the trip possible. At those kinds of costs $5,000+, it could be better to just buy some type of recreational vehicle.
What has been your experience renting a motorhome?
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Source: InACents
