Pleasure-Way Eulogy: Selling a Small RV

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Change is constant. Each season of life inevitably transitions into the next, and windows of opportunity eventually close. So, an essential strategy for happiness in retirement is to group your experiences into the optimal stages of life, when they will be most feasible and rewarding. 

Pleasure-Way Small RV with campfire

In a recent post here, drawing from the book Die With Zero, Chris expanded on this concept of “time bucketing.” He concluded by writing “…the only reason the finances matter is to enable better living out the personal part. There is no prize for dying with the most toys or the largest bank account. Money is a tool to enable you to do what is important.”

My wife Caroline and I have spent the past decade and a half trying to live out these principles. 

A case in point has been the Pleasure-Way Class B RV we purchased used in 2009. It quickly became a prominent feature of our early retirement lifestyle. I wrote extensively about it in articles here such as One Solution for Cheaper Retirement Travel: A Small RV, Choosing a Compact RV or Camper for Retirement Travel, and Traveling in a Small RV.

We bought the Pleasure-Way (also referred to here as our “rig,” “van,” or “camper van”) a couple of years before I left my corporate job, when we had visibility to our early retirement lifestyle. Our son had just left for college, we had a good handle on our retirement finances, and we anticipated the time, energy, and good health to enjoy retirement travels.

A Long Trip It’s Been

And enjoy retirement traveling we did, putting 97,000 miles on our van over the next 15 years!

Owning this small RV has spanned the period from my working years to our Medicare years. In our first trips I still had a full-time software management job and would run conference calls across multiple time zones early in the morning from the cockpit of our rig while Caroline slept in. 

campervan at sunset

After a few years, I retired, and after a few years more, Caroline did. With more free time on our hands, our road trips became more ambitious. 

We downsized our family home in Tennessee and relocated out west. And the van was instrumental to that move. We lived out of it, and various airbnb’s, for about six months while deciding on our ideal mountain town in the southwest

Altogether we’ve taken many dozens of trips in the Pleasure-Way, spent hundreds of nights in its comfortable bed, and prepared countless delicious home-cooked meals in its galley.

But, as noted above, the seasons of life change. In recent years we’d begun to feel our physical limits for camping in and operating an RV. At the same time, our van’s maintenance requirements increased significantly.

Sadly, a few weeks ago, we parted ways with our beloved Pleasure-Way. It has now passed on into the hands of capable new owners who we hope will care for it and love adventuring in it as much as we did.

Hitting the Road in 2009

We bought our van in 2009 near the floor of the Great Recession. As my working years wound down, I’d been dreaming of a more comfortable, fully self-contained RV based on our previous ownership of a pop-up camper van, then a truck camper. 

Van Interior

When we first encountered the Pleasure-Ways, made in Canada, we fell in love with them. They’d let us hit the road in a fully self-contained motorhome that was almost as easy to drive as a pickup truck and could park in many standard parking spaces. 

Pleasure-Way was, and remains, a premium brand in small Class B RVs. We especially loved the efficient floorplan of our rig with its multiple bed configurations, and the warm, natural wood cabinetry. 

The spacious wide-body design was another feature that would not be available in later years as the narrower Sprinter chassis took over the RV market. Though our van was a small RV, we had ample storage throughout with more than a dozen interior cabinets and two large external storage compartments.

In the evening we could relax in the plush interior, enjoy music and movies lounging in the power sofa that converted to a king-size or two single beds, and prepare our favorite meals from the generous refrigerator using the two-burner stove and microwave/convection oven.

The fully private bathroom was rare in this size RV, and we could even enjoy a hot shower after a long day of travel or play.

All The Good Times

Owning a small RV facilitates so many flexible and varied trips.

Darrow and Caroline with Van

Our shortest excursion was an overnight in mid-winter, leaving home in the evening and rising pre-dawn to see the migrating birds at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge near us in New Mexico. Our longest continuous trip was about six weeks on the road touring the Pacific Northwest. 

Eventually we visited all four corners of the country in our Pleasure-Way: Maine, Key West, southern California, and Washington state.

We’ll never forget our countless adventures exploring the west in our home on wheels: breakfasting with friends on a rainy morning in Glacier National Park; driving California Route 1 across cliff faces a thousand feet above the sparkling Pacific Ocean, punctuated by whale spouts far out to sea; huddling around campfires watching the Milky Way spread across the night sky from properties in Colorado and Arizona; climbing westward out of Death Valley with the iconic 10,000-foot eastern Sierra escarpment emerging into view.

Our van handled well for an RV, but it was no sports car. High winds and twisty mountain roads demanded prudence. My two hairiest drives in it were the descent into Kings Canyon National Park and the 6,000 feet of switchbacks up Horseshoe Meadows Road to the Cottonwood Pass trailhead above Lone Pine, California. Neither is advised for the faint-of-heart RV driver!

Making Memories

Some of our most memorable experiences were camping with friends who had their own rigs or were just tent camping. There is something magical about seeing familiar faces in remote places and sharing a few adventures, meals, and campfires together.

RVs can promote family ties. One summer when my father was failing but still able to travel, I picked him up in Waynesboro, Virginia. We drove south on the Blue Ridge Parkway to its end in Cherokee, North Carolina over several memorable days. The spacious van with bathroom and kitchen was more comfortable for him on the road. It was our last big adventure together.

In the early years, we did many laps across the country between Tennessee and Arizona to visit our son in college. Living out of our comfortable rig in a local RV park, we could enjoy a leisurely visit to his college town with most of the comforts of home. 

The Price of an RV Lifestyle 

At first glance, RVing might seem very frugal because there are no hotel bills and you fix your own food. But RVing is more about the lifestyle than saving money.

Do it so you can be flexible while traveling, sleep in your own bed, and eat your own food, not because you’ll save loads of money over the long haul. You probably won’t. For starters there are the costs of depreciation, maintenance, fuel, and campgrounds.

Optimizing RV Travel

In my first article about our van, I wrote that “To really save with an RV, you must drive a relatively small one, use it for lengthy trips, and minimize camping costs where possible. A small RV really shines for long-duration, low-mileage trips.

For short, high-mileage trips, you are probably better off staying in hotels and eating out. The breakeven point is around 250 miles. So, if we average less than that per day, we do, in fact, save money by traveling in our van.”

I found that our small van was optimal for trips of about one to three weeks in length.

Challenges of RV Ownership and Travel

Shorter trips were overshadowed by the effort to pack and outfit the van. I typically planned on an eight-hour day to get the van ready—filling tanks, checking fluids, testing systems, packing. And half a day to unpack and clean up afterwards.

And that doesn’t include the seasonal effort for winterizing. It’s a lot of work.

Very long trips would get uncomfortable after a while. The interior of a small RV, efficient though it might be, is about the size of a large walk-in closet. We would eventually find ourselves getting a motel room just to spread out. 

Some days reality would set in. As wonderful as it was to take a hot shower after a hard day in some remote spot in the mountains, I would question whether the cost in dollars and time to maintain a vehicle with such creature comforts was really worth it? Answer: probably “yes” in the early and middle years when we were taking many long trips. But  probably “no” in later years when we used the van less.

At least in our case, the capital cost was impressively low. Small RVs are in high demand and really hold their value. We paid $47.9K for ours in 2009 and sold it 15 years later for $34.5K. Even given that today’s dollars are worth less, that isn’t much depreciation: less than $1,000 per year.

Three Questions to Ask Before Buying an RV

Would a small RV be right for you? I’ll offer three questions to help you hone in on the right answer:

Are you psyched for a hundred nights of camping?

I would not consider one of these vehicles unless you plan to use it extensively. The cost in time and money is too high otherwise. Instead, you could rent an RV for a few trips, to see if this mode of travel suits you.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Renting a Campervan or Small RV

Are you up for maintaining a house on wheels?

The effort to maintain an RV is substantial. Just think about how much attention your house needs: weatherproofing, electrical, plumbing, gas, and so on. Then factor in that all those same systems exist in a modern RV but are lighter weight and thus less durable. They’re also more compact and thus often harder to get to. Unless you’re handy at repairs, you may find yourself constantly running to your local RV mechanic or else driving a vehicle that isn’t fully functional much of the time.

Are the people who hang out in campgrounds your crowd?

RV camping has a certain vibe that may or may not suit you. Although there are high end, and expensive, RV parks, they are not the norm. In general, this is an unpretentious, budget crowd seeking to maximize fun and freedom and minimize expense and overhead. If fine dining, luxury accommodations, and glittery entertainment are your goals on vacation, then head for a big city instead.

Why We Sold 

Why did we sell a vehicle that we loved so much and had provided so much joy over the years? Mostly because things change, and the equation that had worked so well for us was no longer holding true. We were using our camper van less and it was costing us more.

The Van Was Aging….

For example, after yet another repair this spring I went through and added up our receipts for this year and last. We’d spent a shocking $8,500 to keep the van running over this period. New tires, a differential leak, timing belt, rodent damage, and a couple of engine codes relating to pollution control and fuel systems headlined the repair list.

But when I then reviewed our usage over the same period it came to only five trips. And only two of those were of substantial length. The other trips we could have just as easily stayed in motels. It would have cost us less and been more relaxing. 

You might think, when not using a camper van, you can just store it parked with little risk or expense. But that is not the case. Engines degrade when not used. Metal parts rust. Rubber parts harden and crack over time. Then there is wear and tear from mother nature. At various times we had damage from birds, wasps, and rodents. The latter incurring a repair bill of nearly $1,000 due to stripped wiring.

Even if a small RV is in good repair, there is the question of reliability. A nearly 20-year-old vehicle is statistically not going to be as reliable as a new one because so many of its systems are approaching their mean time between failure. The threat of spending a portion of our next meticulously-planned vacation getting our van repaired, or cancelling the vacation altogether, began to weigh heavily on my mind.

We Are Aging

Then there is the question of our own state of repair. Camping is an adventurous and strenuous activity compared to staying at home. That’s part of the appeal. But with our bodies getting stiffer and less resilient, the realities of keeping the van running while on the road—performing repairs and maintenance on the go—get more sobering. Last spring, I hurt my back crawling under the van to perform an inspection and had to postpone a much-anticipated trip. 

As mentioned, a small RV is optimal for week-long trips or longer. But our interest in such long road trips is waning. As the list of memorable trips above shows, we’ve done a lot of them. But Caroline finds it harder to sit for extended periods, and I find driving the van long distances, especially in heavy traffic or urban areas, to be more and more stressful, and dangerous.

All of these factors added up to make owning a camper van less attractive to us now.

How to Sell a Used RV

Selling a small RV can be surprisingly quick and profitable if you invest the right effort. Well-maintained rigs are in very high demand because of the cost differential to new units, which are generally priced over six-digits and beyond.

Get the Vehicle in Good Shape

For starters, if you want the best price, make sure all systems are in good working order. Nothing deflates a buyer’s enthusiasm like knowing they will be facing a large repair bill immediately after taking possession.

I noticed a crack in the windshield right after I listed our van. But I was able to get the windshield replaced, fully covered under insurance, before the buyer took delivery.

Know Your Vehicle’s Value

Next, do your homework. You can get low and average retail prices for almost all RV makes, models, and years at J.D. Power. You can also look for comparable prices on various RV for sale websites.

I’ve never been one to fish for higher prices when selling my things. I price to the market and look forward to a quick, smooth transaction. In this case I listed our van for the average retail price, plus a couple $1,000 to account for the excellent condition and all the accessories I had thrown in with the deal.

Market Your RV

I used RV Trader to advertise our van as it had the highest traffic when I checked those statistics. I chose their premium package, which cost about $300. That gave me featured photo ads throughout the site, one video, fifty photos, and one year online if needed to sell our rig.

Good images are absolutely essential to sell such an expensive item online. Buyers need full confidence that they are seeing the entire vehicle inside and out with nothing hidden from them. Make sure your vehicle is clean. Stage it on a bright day in an attractive location and turn on all the interior lights for the inside shots. Use a wide angle lens inside to capture the most detail and lend a feeling of spaciousness.

Next write a compelling ad to communicate the many benefits of owning your RV. Then close with an exhaustive list of specifications and features.

Close the Deal

When you start getting inquiries, be friendly, responsive, and transparent. Treat people how you’d like to be treated during a major financial transaction. Nobody is going to buy an expensive RV without complete confidence in it and you.

Following the steps above, our rig took less than one week to sell. After I’d received a half-dozen inquiries, a couple in a neighboring city who knew what they wanted, and had been looking for just what we had, came to inspect our rig. They returned the next day with cashier’s check in hand to drive it home.

Stages of Retirement

Michael Stein first described the three phases of retirement in his book The Prosperous Retirement. He called these the “Go-Go Years,” the “Slow-Go Years,” and the “No-Go Years.”

My picture of these phases is something like this: in the Go-Go Years, you have free reign, the energy and money, to pursue all the activities you missed in your youth and career.

In the Slow-Go years, you still have those goals, but you are more limited in what you can accomplish due to energy and health issues.

Then in the No-Go Years, health issues and the aging process leave you mostly restricted to your home and short outings in the nearby environs.

Our Next Stage: From Go-Go to Slow-Go

Though I hope the stages are long for us, I view the sale of our camper van as the beginning of the end of our Go-Go Years that started with my early retirement at age 50. During this phase we pursued all our travel dreams with minimal need to compensate for our health or energy while on the road. There was no question in our minds that we could deal with whatever arose and enjoy most of it.

It’s different now. Every travel opportunity is balanced with questions such as: “We were there five years ago. How much do we want to go back?” or “Do I really have the energy to pack up my life and get on the road for an extended spell once again?” or “Why don’t we just grab a motel for a few nights instead of dealing with the camper?”

I’m hoping this change doesn’t mean a complete end to our road trip adventures. But future ones are likely to be shorter and rely on rentals such as RVshare and airbnb. We will no longer shoulder the cost or overhead for living on the road in our own mobile home. 

And we are likely to take a few “big-ticket” vacations now that involve airlines, car rentals, and hotels. Hawaii tops our list for that kind of conventional trip.

Final Thoughts 

I don’t regret a single minute of our years owning and traveling in a small RV. Our Pleasure-Way enabled a degree of freedom and self-sufficiency in our early retirement that I’d always dreamed about.

I’ll never forget that feeling of launching out our driveway fully stocked for a long trip knowing that we had everything we needed to live comfortably on the road for weeks, and able to set our own itinerary while underway.

Driving the backroads in a small RV can be the most scenic, flexible, and comfortable way to travel. These magical vehicles evoke a wonderful sense of togetherness with your partner. Many were the smiles we traded at the fun of “playing house” together again. And the joy of waking up in our own warm and cozy space, looking out at the stars or mountains or trees or sunshine, will never leave us.

But just because you love something, doesn’t mean hanging on to it is the right course of action. Doing so could even spoil some of the positive memories if you’re not careful. I am deeply grateful for all our good times in the Pleasure-Way. But hanging on tightly to something that no longer suits us will not make more good memories. 

We could have kept our van, watching it go downhill and cost us time and money each year. But we don’t need a museum piece. How much better instead to pass it on to somebody else who can enjoy it and love it as much as we did. 

Bon Voyage, Pleasure-Way!

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[The founder of CanIRetireYet.com, Darrow Kirkpatrick relied on a modest lifestyle, high savings rate, and simple passive index investing to retire at age 50 from a career as a civil and software engineer. He has been quoted or published in The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Kiplinger, The Huffington Post, Consumer Reports, and Money Magazine among others. His books include Retiring Sooner: How to Accelerate Your Financial Independence and Can I Retire Yet? How to Make the Biggest Financial Decision of the Rest of Your Life.]

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10 Comments

  1. Darrow, I just read your post while savoring my morning coffee in our RV, listening to the waters of the Uncompahgre River in Colorado tumble over the rocks below our campsite. Alan and I are more than 2,000 miles from our house, yet we are “home.” I found myself nodding in agreement to nearly everything you said. Despite our love for this lifestyle, we know there will come a time when we’ll no longer be interested in it or able to pursue it. For now, we’re enjoying every single minute and memory.

    The sale of your Pleasure-Way must have been a bittersweet transaction considering how long you’ve owned the van and how many memories you and Caroline have made with it. But retirement is fluid, as is life itself. Our preferences and abilities change over time, and your post excellently details your transition. Best wishes to the two of you for many happy and memorable adventures ahead – no matter what form they take!

  2. We’ve had four camper RV’s in our lifetime, staring with two VW Vanagon Westfalia camper vans and then moving up to a 30’ C class and finally a 35’ A class “luxury” RV. We traveled all four corners the US visiting virtually all the notable parks and landmarks and many other lesser known locations with our young kids or as a couple. In the very early years of our marriage we traveled by motorcycle and car camping along the way so even basic RV’s seemed luxurious.
    Often in retirement we have considered another RV as we have very fond memories of wonderful trips and experiences. But when we thoughtfully consider buying, maintaining, storing, driving and living in an RV again we realize we likely wouldn’t be able to relive the glory days of our past RV life.
    Your thoughts and conclusions directly parallels our own, the cost and effort was no longer deemed acceptable. We still travel as a couple, a lot really, mostly by minivan and hotel and I get my adventure traveling fix riding around the country on my motorcycles but now I also stay in motels and hotels rather then camping. A concession to my 74 years of life.

  3. Excellent post, all the pros and cons are spot on. I was shocked you did so well on resale, good job! I would have thought 15-20K given the mileage and age, you did GREAT!

  4. I took a slightly different approach. I have really enjoyed much traveling and camping out of our pickup. I got a shell on the bed and a foam “mattress” for the floor. This “RV” was my western vehicle. I lived full time in Ohio and had a summer home in Utah, The summer home was really just an old mobile on a lot with water, septic and electric. We traveled the west from there – Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, AZ, CA and Nevada (my current full time residence).
    I moved from Utah to a summer cabin in the Sierra of CA. I still own the “RV” but have not traveled for the last couple of years. Of course the small truck makes for a good car.
    I have considered a Pleasure Way, and even small tent trailers. But having mountain homes and traveling from there (camping in the truck) has been more to my liking – but those days are done. I still own the cabin though – but even that is becoming a lot of work. Owning one home requires effort, owning two requires at least twice the effort.
    Thanks for stirring the memories.

  5. Our RV trips have been some of the most memorable adventures of our lives. We’ve had 4, a Class C, Class A, Airstream trailer (still have) & recently bought a fancy Class B camper van. Yes … we now have two RVs. The purpose of the van is for touring trips where we don’t stay in one place long and we are driving more. The trailer is more for chill and longer parked trips. We recognize the phases of life and in our mid-60s we still have the energy to do it. Enjoyed the post and can relate to it.

  6. We’ve had a similar experience, but a bit ‘larger’. We sold our home and purchased a 40′ Diesel pusher motorhome and lived in it full time for 15+ years. We loved that lifestyle and were quite comfortable in our mobile 1 bedroom apartment. Towards the end of that journey, back in Aug 2017, we purchased a townhouse down in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and spent some time down there away from the motorhome, but still considered ourselves full-time RVers. But then come Aug 2021 and we bought another home in Lead, SD. By the next year we put the rig up for sale, but it took them a year to sell it. I told them I’d be happy with $60k, but the thought they could get $90. So it sat. Every few months they’d lower the price again until finally they sold it for $59k. 8^(

    Anyway we are so thankful for that chapter of our lives, but just like Darrow and his wife, we began to feel the passage of time and realized that it was time for a new chapter. Now we are snowbirds and spend half the year at our place in Mexico and the other half in our home in South Dakota. Still loving life!

  7. Darrow, it is good to hear from you! Thank you for taking the time to write this. I am approaching retirement at 50 on much the same terms as you did, so your insights are invaluable. It’s like having a looking glass into future possibilities from a very reliable and practical guide, and is much appreciated.

  8. Agree on at a point its time to just get a hotel. As we watched our friends and neighbors get various RV’s and then as years went on they used them less and less, so we even borrowed a couple times to check out. But Every time I ran the numbers it said the cost dont match up. While it may be a blast. We can take our Offroad 4Runner or Rzr side X side and stay at hotels and save money to have more trips. A little sad but true especially we we get older also.

    As a aside, could I ask a question off topic. In Your Jan 2024 portfolio post, you said you were planning on just getting down to just 2 Vanguard balanced funds to totally simply investments. Could I ask what those funds are? I looking at same thing. Not sure if I want international exposure and lots of their funds choice have that now so smaller ways to get just balanced US funds.

  9. Hello Darrow. Thank you for your post – I have been following you from almost the beginning – your van / early retirement thoughts have for years been a big inspiration to me.

    I am really sorry to hear you feel it is time to give up your Pleasure-Way. Perhaps I am naive, at the age of 61, but I feel like I have another 20 plus years of van life ahead of me. When you say, “our van’s maintenance requirements increased significantly”, my thought is time to get a new van, not time to get out of your van lifestyle!? You repeatedly come back to this them in your post – no longer wanting to deal with your old van. Perhaps a new and larger van is your answer?! – not kicking to the curb a lifestyle you have loved for so many years?

    With respect to the cost of trips, we typically do not pay for campgrounds (the iOverlander app is great for finding free camping, and works in remote areas without cell service), and having an RV with solar power and without energy sucking appliances allows us to forego the need for electrical hookups or needing a generator.

    Length of van / RV trips you recommend is 1 to 3 weeks? – why so short for someone retired? How about 3 months where, based out of Denver in my example, I do an extended road trip out west, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah. 3,000 miles, 3 months, no hotels, minimal camping. I would encourage your readers to think bigger and longer is very reasonable and cheap. Yes, I agree with your rough rule of thumb, if you are driving more than 250 miles per day, the van life approach might not be best for that trip.

    Perhaps a larger class B motorhome would be a good choice for you, given your frustration with the lack of space in yourPleasure Way? Although a concern I have with many class B motorhomes is that most of them require electrical hookups, which means more expensive, crowded, and less desirable camping spots.

    For those of us in the “Go Go Years”, I think it is super important to keep the “Go Go” as long as we can – “use it or lose it”.

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