5th Wheel RV in Truck Stops

Unfortunately the ELD mandate is creating a lot of "truckstop roulette" situations now days. When I've been RVing, I focused on Wal-Marts. Most allow and welcome RV's, and they are more plentiful than truckstops in most area's, and probably safer too. You don't have to worry about new truck driver recruits still learning how to back using your RV as a potential target.

 

Two things:

One, the truck drivers don’t make the rules governing a truckstop / travel center.

Two, outside of a few like Iowa 80, there aren’t any that are attractive enough to which to take family.

A camping unit is just that. Needs a campground. One needs 30A/50A electrical service, fresh water and waste plumbing. Cooking, bathing and cleaning.

No, I don’t want to listen to your cheap contractor genset at a truckstop. Or be greeted by the greywater smell you dumped from kitchen and shower. Etc.

The $70,000 pickup and the equally-if-not-more- expensive trailer would indicate to me that the owners can afford ground rent. Bright enough to shop recipes and prepare meals (including lunch on the road). The point is to get away.

I’m third generation (age 60) at owning aero, all-aluminum travel trailers. A lifetime. Over twenty years since I got a CDL.

The days of pleasant Interstate travel disappeared around 1980. Today, with masses of sub-normal IQ immigrants, it’s a hazard. None can pass an RV any better than they can a big truck. A long day on “vacation” is a wearing & stressful day. Especially anyone dumb enough to leave a leaf spring suspension and drum brakes on the RV as equipped. They all need torsion axle and antilock disc brakes.

Plan that days trip the night before. Break it out into legs to accomplish. Two hours to a rest area for fifteen to thirty minutes. At four hours, the mid-day break and meal. A good time to use a truckstop for fuel. And plenty of parking away in the back. The schoolboy truck drivers waiting for the lunch bell all crowd into the truckstops from 11-14:00. Best to get there ahead of them.

Have a firm destination. Reservation. The old rule I first heard in the 1960s is just as valid today: 300 miles or 3 o’clock. That’s when to stop. A travel speed of 55-65/mph is the limit for braking distances, and altogether higher than what a pickup or 5’er can handle in re an emergency double lane change.

“Stupid RV’er” for the others around here are the ones who are passing your governed 65-mph truck. Who think under 200’ ahead of you coming down the entrance ramp at 47-mph is sufficient. Who get ahead of you on a downslope. Etc.

At an average travel speed of 47-52/mph (including breaks) it’s six hours or so to cover 300. “Faster” isn’t better. Saves nothing. Risk increase is unacceptable.

As 5ers are unstable and ride like crap, avoiding truck traffic is a priority. Alternate routes can be better. Then, the use of an app like “Truckers Path” may be useful for fuel, etc.

For those who complain about fuel prices with their RV, or paying ground rent at an RV Park, maybe they should have planned better. Stupid RVers, like stupid truckers, create most of their own problems. A badly spec’d rig and the refusal to change solo driving habits (which can underwrite vacation travel) are to blame.

Having a finance note on the trailer AND on the tow vehicle when retired makes no sense to me. Could have been otherwise.

When I travel, and wish to use a truckstop for overnite, paid parking is best. Access, visibility, and a record.

I also use the CAT Scale fairly often. Tow vehicle tire pressure and hitch adjustments. Big, if one wants a good performing vehicle. Ask the fuel desk to help with a split-axle weighing.

 

Not trying to be negative here, but you guys don't have to battle that HOS clock like we do. Sometimes wrecks, unknown construction zones, and traffic jams spoil our planned stop location and we have to stop at un-planned truck stops. If your in the only space left, we can be fined for having to violate HOS and travel to the next truck stop. You guys can drive all you want if needed. We have been slam dunked with regulations piled on top of regulations we have to follow.

I have been RV'ing, and I would never stop at a truck stop to sleep. Too many Wal-Marts, USACE parks, private parks, Etc. that are far more comfortable, quiter, safer, and easier to get into. Get a Next Exit book! In trucking, sometimes our "legal" parking stops can be 80 miles or further apart, and there's a lot of competition for those spaces. It's nothing more than simple common courtesy.

 

it's obvious you don't even have a clue now

 

Have you even bothered to READ this thread or is it beyond your vocabulary. SORRY I USED A BIG WORD.

 

You sound like the Democrat how's your sister Hillary

 

It admittedly pisses me off to see RVs, etc. in the truck stops. There are probably five KOA/GoodSam type places to every one truck stop, there is NO shortage of RV parking.

And Walmarts. Even the ones that bar truck parking usually still allow RVs to park.

Besides, why would you want to? High idlers, malfunctioning air governors popping off every 15-30 seconds, reefers and rigmaster type APUs starting and stopping all night, the stench of human waste, and often times, moon craters all over the parking lot.