Some Thoughts on Full-Timing - Weight & Stuff
This is the third installment in this series. If you missed the first two you can catch up on them here: https://braysaway.ghost.io/ghost/#/posts
We'll cover both "weight" and "stuff" in this article since they are closely related.
First up is weight - I know a lot of RVers who rigorously monitor their vehicle weights and a lot who have never had their rig weighed. I've attended 3 rallies now since buying our 5th wheel and there have been presentations about managing your vehicle's weight at all of them as well as a vendor who will weigh your RV for you ... for a price of course. I've also spoken with several RV Techs who were pretty adamant about knowing your weights!
Overloading your RV or truck can cause serious problems including frame issues since the truck and RV are built to handle only so much weight. I’ve been told that if something breaks down and you take it back to the manufacturer for repairs, they are going to weigh it first thing and if you are overweight, the repairs may be on you! The second thing is that being overweight can get you in legal trouble if you get into a wreck. Knowing your RV’s max weight and truck’s max weight, towing ability, cargo weight, etc. is very important. The manufacturers' websites have a lot of good data on weight limits!
I recommend you have your rig weighed initially and then again if you make significant additions like a big solar upgrade that adds a lot of weight. You should also weigh your rig in it's "down the road" configuration. Meaning, if you usually have a full tank of fuel, 1/2 tank of water, a generator, some bikes and 3 adults be sure you weigh it that way! Also, try to have your rig weighed on one of those scales that shows your weight wheel by wheel. This way you can calculate the exact weight on each tire, axle, the pin box, truck tires, etc. You need to be sure that your RV isn’t over total weight, the axles aren’t over their max, and the tires aren’t over their max. If you can't find that style scale, then the standard tractor trailer scales may have to do. Just be aware that you have to park your rig correctly on the scales or the weights may not be accurate. You want to be as centered as you can on each of the pads. The one I used once had three sections - one for trucks front axle, one for trucks back axle and the back one for both trailer axles. To get the pin weight correctly, you'll need to weigh the truck individually also so you can subtract for the pin weight.
Once you have the weights, you can calculate how much is on each axle and tire if you used the wheel by wheel style or at least the weight on both rear axles if you used the tractor trailer scales. There's plenty of help online for calculating pin weight and total RV weight so I'll defer to those videos for that. I made an Excel spreadsheet with the weights on the front wheels of my truck, back wheels, pin weight and then on each individual tire on the RV. Then I added them up by axle and calculated the total RV weight. I then added all the max weights for each axle, tire, truck load, and RV and could determine how we were doing and how much overhead we had on each item. The next time I get weighed, I'll input the numbers in the spreadsheet and all the calculations will update for me. (see top photo)
During this process I also discovered that the driver side of our RV was nearly 800 lbs heavier than the passenger side! That side has the kitchen slide out with refrigerator, pantry, and stove and the bedroom slide out. Now, we move some of the weight out of the pantry to cabinets on the other side and are more cautious with our weight distribution.
Our Reflection 337RLS has a max weight of 13,995. The first time we weighed the rig, we were within 200 lbs of max and we thought we were already traveling light! Because several thousand pounds were pin weight, our two 6000 lb axles have overhead and each of the individual tires had plenty of overhead even though the total RV weight was very close to max. Luckily, the truck has plenty of load capacity left that I can use.
This is all before we decided to add some solar upgrades so we had to do a few rounds of purges. After our first couple of trips, we took a hard look at what we had with us that we never used and put that in storage. We took over 200 lbs of clothes out of the RV! I didn't realize that clothes weighed so much! We also decided that the glass doors on our shower were a bit ridiculous and a simple curtain would be better so that pulled another 55 lbs out. We emptied out most of the stuff under the bed and bumped out cookware we hadn't used.
Now for "Stuff" – As alluded to above, “stuff” can be an issue when you start full-timing! You are going to want all the amenities and changes of clothes that you had at home but there just isn’t as much storage in an RV and weight is an issue. We conducted 3 rounds of purges over the months after we completed our first 3 trips. Each time we returned we looked over all our stuff and purged what we hadn’t used in the last 4-6 months. We also change out our clothes seasonally, so we aren’t carrying heavy winter cloths when we don’t need them.
As a guy doing a lot more of my own maintenance, I wanted a lot of tools with me but those are some of the heaviest items we have with us! I conducted a couple of rounds of purges on my tools as well and then I recently bought a large toolbox for the Ram 3500 and moved almost all the tools and spare parts over to it. It feels less secure, but I probably moved over 200 lbs from the RV (which was also already pin weight on the truck) to being direct weight on the truck and not on the RV at all. Looking at the weights and weight limits of the truck, I knew we had plenty of overhead on truck. I hope that this has opened some weight so we can do the solar and battery upgrades we need to do more boondocking on our trip to Alaska. See more discussion about those upgrades in the solar section.
Hopefully, if you are considering going full-timing you can learn from our experiences above and not make the rookie mistakes we did! Watch the weight and stuff you bring aboard the RV!
