Each September Harrisburg, PA hosts what is billed as America's Largest RV Show. I spent 3 days at the 2003 show and can safely say that if it is not the largest, I see no need to travel to see anything bigger. Security personnel told me that the venue, the State Farm Show Complex is 0.7 miles from north to south. With added outdoor displays, on the west side, it was also about 0.5 miles wide. Three days was just enough time for someone who had a clear mission in mind to make good use of the show; if you are attending to see it all, plan to miss a lot even if you spend the entire 5 days there. Fortunately, I had a clear mission for my visit. I was joined for a day and a half by my sister, Dottie, and her husband, Bob, who had a very different mission. This is an account of how useful the Harrisburg Show might be to others with similar questions about their best Rving options.

The Missions

I have spent just over 2 years perusing the Internet, attending regional RV shows and visiting local dealers in my quest for the ideal RV for me. I intend to buy a used 2004 model year Class A gas motorhome in a few years and to become a fulltimer shortly thereafter. My research has helped me to narrow my choices that far, and a bit farther. I want something in the 32-36 foot range, on a Workhorse chassis. I will not have a stick home so I need good basement storage, considerable clothing storage (I will cover warm and cold climates each year) and enough food storage and fluid capacity for extended boondocking. I want 2 slides and do not want the kitchen to be on a slide. My budget calls for a rig that would have a 2004 manufacturers suggested retail price of $130,000 or less. (That assumes that the first owner will have bought it at between 70 and 75% of suggested retail price.) Since I will be in the "used" RV market, it occurred to me that it would be foolish to narrow my choices down to a particular brand and floor plan. I won't be able to custom order my rig and I don't want to be chasing that needle in the continental haystack. Using the suggestions of folks from this board and others, I found that at least 6 manufacturers made one or more product lines that seemed to have good reputations and might fit my needs. Finally, I have to admit that I went to the show with a clear first choice of manufacturer and floor plan, based on the few that I had been able to tour previously.

Dottie and Bob had quite a different mission. They have an elderly travel trailer that they have used for weekends and vacations for many years. Looking forward to traveling 6-10 months a year in retirement, they wanted to find an almost-full-time travel trailer. Several visits to small RV shows had left them feeling that only a really big show was going to have something to interest them. They made some discoveries that amazed them and changed their plans altogether.

The Advantages of a Really Big RV Show

Even large RV dealers cannot consistently stock every model and floor plan offered by the manufacturers that they represent, much less provide a close-up look at just about every cabinet color, option, and upholstery scheme available in each. A buyer could spend weeks on the road visiting dealers and still not see what can be seen in three days at a big RV show. Even at Harrisburg not all manufacturers had every floor plan for every product line on site. But, since most have several product lines that repeat their basic floor plans, if, for instance, you cannot walk through the model 34V floor plan in their middle-of-the-line product, you can almost certainly walk through the model 34V in the low or high end of the line. But, keep your wits about you; that 34V with $35,000 devoted to what is "standard" for their top of the line is going to look heavenly compared to all other 34 foot models you will see that day that really are within your budget.

When you visit an RV showroom the sales rep wants to sell you what's on hand. The manager desperately wants you to buy from inventory because holding inventory is costly. Result? Either or both of them may actually badmouth the floor plan that you like but which is not on the lot. At a show as big as the Harrisburg show, you will come as close as humanly possible to having everything available for purchase, which minimizes the temptation for the sales reps to "steer" you toward current inventory. That said, as the show wears on, more and more rigs sprout "SOLD" tags, and the reps begin acting more and more like they would on the home lot. Lesson: go early to avoid the "inventory bias", even if you do not intend to buy at the show.

RV sales reps come in all degrees of sophistication and experience. Your visit to the sales lot is a gamble that you will find someone knowledgeable on duty. At the big shows almost every dealer has brought virtually the whole staff (more about the down side of that later) as well as a manufacturer's representative. Grab the manufacturer's rep and you will get well polished, but useful, pitch for her product line. You will be in an ideal position to take notes, walk a few yards and ask the competitor (whose product has just been trashed by the first rep) his side of the story. At that point you should plan on finding a nice quiet table where you can sit down and try to sort out what you have heard, rest your weary feet, have a cold lemonade, and prepare some follow-up questions for one or both of them. A topic like sidewall or roof construction could occupy you for a week, using this method, so budget your time. The more homework you do before the show, the less likely you are to succumb to sensory overload before you can get some straight answers.

While you are having that lemonade break, try out another of the advantages of a big show: networking. Folks who are already active Rvers do this all the time in campgrounds, at rallies, and in the Walmart lot. For those just getting started, the show is a bonanza of opportunities to talk with veterans who are there to trade up or down, find aftermarket products, or just see what's new. The Harrisburg show managers provide lots of picnic tables (with umbrellas!) where it's simple to strike up a conversation with your neighbors. Don't be shy; ask people what they now own, what they hope to own, and why. You will never run out of Rvers who are willing to share their experiences. Finally, the Harrisburg show immediately follows the Harrisburg session of the Life on Wheels Conference" so you may run into a particularly knowledgeable segment of the Rving world.

Free seminars are another big draw at RV shows, and the Harrisburg show provided about 30 excellent options, many repeated so that visitors could, in theory, manage to attend every one of them. I will have to return next year just to attend seminars; my mission began to consume every minute once I realized how rich the vendor offerings were. Seminars included topics such as Rving with pets; exterior care of your RV; travelogues; tow vehicles; diesel mysteries; electrical systems, and much more.

Finally, one large arena was taken over by more than 200 vendors doing brisk business in aftermarket products aimed at Rvers. That's more than 10 times the number of vendors that I have seen at the smaller shows that I have attended. Product demonstrations, such as the use and care of convection ovens, can be particularly useful.

What I Did at the Big RV Show

In three days I was in every Class A motor home at the show that met my basic criteria at least once, and I was in most of them two or three times. (Since I would have had to tour twice as many rigs if I had not already decided on a chassis, I highly recommend getting past that before you attempt this.) The first stop was a tour of the 34 foot RV that has, for the last year, been my best idea of what I want to own. I have toured the 2002 and 2003 versions of this model, so this was a refresher course. Here I began what would become my routine for every manufacturer's display.

I picked up the brochure that had the floor plans for every model in the product line. (Most manufacturers have more than one product line, so I did this more than once at each stop.) Walking into each model, I went first to find the weight sticker. This is the required declaration of gross and net vehicle weights and a computation showing the CCC (Cargo Carrying Capacity) of each rig. The sticker is supposed to be affixed to the inside of a cabinet on the interior of the rig. Because there are many good sources of information on CCC and its sister computation NCC (Net Carrying Capacity) and their importance I will not try to duplicate them here. I was looking for rigs that would leave me at least 1500 pounds of CCC, for one person (plus a standard poodle). Many fulltimers suggest that closer to 2000-2500 pounds is needed, so I gave bonus points to rigs that were in that range. For every model, I wrote the CCC on its floor plan in the brochure. Some rigs flunked out right there. As you approach the upper length limit of what the manufacturer builds on a given platform, CCC drops significantly. Most lines had at least one model that had a CCC of 750 pounds or less. Unless you plan to live on cornflakes eaten off of paper plates and soaked in reconstituted powered milk, you will need a lot more than that even for occasional vacation use.

Overloading a rig is a serious safety hazard. The sales rep will tell you that the published CCC is a "worst case scenario" and that 750 pounds will probably turn out to be closer to 3000 pounds on the rig that you order. They will even offer to take a list of the options that you want, call the factory and get an estimate of the resulting CCC for your rig. Others will tell you how little 5 full grocery bags weigh, and how little two suitcases full of clothing weigh and invite you to conclude that 750 is enough for fulltiming use. If you stick around long enough to ask, "But what about my tools?" they might estimate the weight of your tools at 50 pounds, and smile. (My brother-in-law the engineer and do-it-yourself enthusiast will probably tote 10 times that in tools.) In either case, walk briskly for the first few steps and then sprint to your next stop.

Next, it was time to do a little math. If the wheelbase to length ratio was .50 or better, the rig remained in consideration. The manufacturers make this more difficult than necessary by quoting the wheel base in inches and the length in feet and inches. Unless you know your "twelves tables" to a very high degree, take a calculator.

If the rig met my CCC and wheelbase standards, I sat down in the pilot's seat, adjusted it so that my feet could easily use the gas and brake pedals and then adjusted the steering wheel for ease of operation with my hands in the 8 and 4 o'clock positions. (The old advice to grasp the wheel at 10 and 2 o'clock is not very useful for a big wheel and those who have taken their drivers' education within the past 10 years or so are all being taught the 8-4 so-called "pull push" steering method instead of the old 10-2 "crossover" method.) If you are less that about 5'10" (I'm 5'6") or have short legs in proportion to your height you will find that some rigs simply do not fit. If the steering wheel was jammed against my stomach that rig was out. I am aware that there are extensions available for pedals, but I had plenty of good options without retrofitting. Taller people or those with particularly long legs in proportion to their height need to make yet another check at this point. If the slide behind the driver's seat is "in" can the seat be moved back far enough to provide comfort?

Knowing that not every knob and switch would be within easy reach in the cockpit, I tried next to judge how much maneuvering it might take to adjust the wipers, tune the radio, or reach the toggle switch for overdrive. Do this wearing the seatbelt so that you can replicate driving conditions. I found that the cockpit designs that provided some degree of "wrap-around" configuration had significant advantages since they brought the outlying locations closer to the driver. This issue might not disqualify a rig, but it certainly could adjust its rating. Before leaving the cockpit area I moved to the co-pilot's seat. Virtually every model provided some sort of computer workstation arrangement there, with phone jack, outlet and a sliding tray to hold a laptop. Because I want to use a mouse with my laptop, I noted which models would have to be retrofitted to provide a work surface large enough to accommodate one.

Next I did a quick tour of the interior storage, concentrating on kitchen and clothing storage. Rigs with drawers that slide out from beneath the dinette and the bed got bonus points, as did those with two sliding pantries. Fit, finish and materials for cabinets and drawers were noted as good, fair or poor. In addition I noted something that really cannot be assessed just by looking at floor plans, the usefulness of bedroom storage to me. I have a strong bias in favor of drawer storage over closet storage. Bathroom fittings came next, with bonus points for china commodes, residential height commodes, and showers with a seat.

While I was making my tour of each rig, a sales rep would appear, of course. Rather, I should say, someone from the dealer would appear. Most manufacturers had just one dealer at the show. For manufacturers with the widest variety of product lines this could mean that the dealer had brought the entire sales force, plus the bookkeeper, the parts supply clerk and a mechanic or two, all wearing identical badges. Some also had hired "hosts" who might just be the retired parents of the bookkeeper. Those who arrived early, I asked to show me where the weight sticker might be found. I got more than a few blank looks on that one, and several people simply darted off, presumably to find someone who could speak RVish. By the time the next dealer type arrived, I was usually done in the cockpit. Some braver souls started to hunt for the sticker on their own, opining that perhaps it might be in the engine compartment or in hidden code on the price sticker. I could be reasonably sure that a real salesperson had arrived when I got the question, "If we can make the deal you want today, are you prepared to buy today?"

In fairness to the salespeople, I tried not to waste their time, since the answer to that question was definitely no. I did need some information and didn't feel that five to ten minutes of their time was too much to ask. I did not, however, explain that if I bought that rig it would be three years from now.

Fortunately daytime show attendance on Thursday and Friday, while brisk, was not keeping all of the salespeople busy all the time. Friday evening must have been a busy time, though because by 10 AM Saturday many rigs that were available when I left at 5:00 PM Friday were sold. In spite of rain, the Saturday crowds were probably twice as large as Friday's and many rigs had sales reps sitting at the table pricing out options for serious buyers who were hovering nearby. Lesson: take some time off to get to the show before the weekend crowds if you want the full attention of the sales reps.

When I had done my "once-over" and taken more notes on the floor plan brochure, I was ready to ask the sales or manufacturer's rep what I should know that should put their product at the top of my list. Actually, that is a question that you should not ask until you have done some homework and told the sales rep what some of your priorities are. Why waste anyone's time discussing Workhorse vs Ford chassis, if you have already made that decision? And, I made it clear that I was mostly interested in facets of the product that are not amenable to retrofitting. (Remember that I will be buying a used rig.) I may swap out the existing refrigerator or mattress for something better, or replace the conventional oven with storage drawers at relatively low cost. I was interested in inflexible differences between manufacturers or between product lines. If I had to do this trip over, I may well have skipped this phase of the product review.

What I Learned at the Big RV Show

From the manufacturers reps' I learned what kinds of follow-up questions I want to ask experts such as those provided by RVers Online. What should really concern me about the roof and sidewall structure, for instance. Is the support for some slide-out sidewalls really no better than cardboard? How much difference does the space between the interior ceiling and the roof, and how it is insulated and ducted, make? Which claims about ease of retrofitting interior items are believable? Just let those factory reps know what other products you are considering and they will supply you with hair-raising "facts" about the competition. Most sales reps do not know enough about their product, much less the competition, to raise any salient issues of this kind. More research ahead.

Next, my review of variety of makes and models on site convinced me that there were at least six well-regarded manufacturers and at least twice that many models that I will seriously consider buying when I enter the used market. If you are considering the purchase of a new motorhome this should give you pause about narrowing the field prematurely. The advantage of spending several days at a really big RV show is that you are less likely to just fall for a floor plan and start ordering options. Moreover, it is much easier to walk away from a sales rep at a show than it is on a dealer's lot!

Some details are worth sweating and some are not, and "show fatigue" can blur the distinction.. Remember my initial "first choice"? I toured it first, as I said. As I toured other makes, I noticed that it was much easier to enter and exit almost every one of them. That was because all the others had three steps instead of two and a hand rail on the right interior as you exit; it did not. As my feet and back grew more tired, I grew more irked about those two missing items and started to move old Numero Uno way down the list of contenders. Once reinforcements arrived (remember Dottie and Bob?) fresher minds realized that steps and handrails can be retrofitted relatively easily. In contrast, a sweat-worthy detail that I had missed altogether was pointed out by another "shopper." As you enter some rigs, there is an exposed control panel for electrical systems or leveling devices, or both, immediately on your left (just beyond that interior hand rail), typically on the side of a kitchen cabinet. It is located exactly where a child would place a hand to steady himself entering or leaving the coach. All of those controls should be both shielded or otherwise out of danger of accidental activation. Rocker switches could even be activated by a boisterous dog!

After the Revolution: What Else I learned at the Big RV Show
It is not all the lawyers that will be slain first, it is the RV sales reps if I have my way about it. As I mentioned earlier, there is a definite downside to having the dealers bring the entire sales staff, plus, to a big show. Exposure to so many dealer reps in a short period is sure to put even the most cheerful shopper into consumer whiplash, or worse. In three days I spoke with at least 30 dealer reps. Now I make my living selling houses, so I am not particularly bothered with the barrage of "closing" language that salespeople may aim my way. It was the flood of ignorance and inanity that took my breath away.

Here is a baker's dozen of my favorites:

1. Yes, the under-counter maple slide-out cutting board is unique to our product. Even better, when you remove the cutting board altogether, you can slide our custom ironing board into the slot, lock it in place with this clip, and iron while you watch TV.

2. That kitchen wastebasket assembly is patented, you know. No one else can do that.

3. What is boondocking?

4. Dry camping? What's that?

5. The inverter will run everything that you need.

6. More than 2 batteries? Whatever for?

7. When your husband arrives we'll talk about the chassis.

8. Don't pay any attention to the weight stickers. We can arrange this rig so you'll have 3000 pounds capacity. (Sticker says less than 1000 pounds.)

9. This is a frost free refrigerator. (Instruction booklet in the unit explains how to defrost the frige.)

10. What is that button for? I'll get right back to you. (It was the toggle switch for the overdrive.)

11. This is a non-rubber roof, of course. (Had to get back to me about what is was made of, of course.)

12. The longer the rig, the more weight you can carry. (Totally bogus!)

13. The exterior graphics alone will increase the resale value by $10,000. (This was on a $90,000 rig.)

Finally: Surprise, Surprise

When Dottie and Bob joined me on Saturday, their Rving world was turned upside down within an hour. In that time they saw more travel trailers than they had seen at all of the regional shows they had attended, combined. They arrived at the show firmly against anything except a travel trailer. It soon became clear to them that the trailer manufacturers were focused on sleeping capacity, not on the sorts of amenities and storage that they would require for extended travel. They made an immediate course correction and spent two days touring 5th wheels and admiring customized tow vehicles.

As I joined them to look at their favorite large 5th wheel models with multiple slides, I began to see the allure of the exceptional interior living spaces that those provide. As a cook, my eyes lit up at the kitchens, in particular. However, after a brief "romance" the allure of the 5th wheels wore off for me. My needs require less interior space and more basement storage and capacity for energy independence than is likely to be readily accommodated by a 5th wheel and a non-custom truck. With a more generous budget than I have, Dottie and Bob are now happily pursuing a high class 5th wheel and custom truck as their primary (but not sole) eventual retirement home. And, then again, they are starting to talk about getting rid of their stick home and traveling for a few years while they decide where, or if, to resettle.

What Next?

I went to the show wondering if it was really feasible to have some choices of good used rigs within my budget. Because the answer is yes, there are at least six manufacturers' mid-line products that will fill the bill, I was ready to make the next steps. I now have a timeline that tells me, for instance, that if I want my fulltime companion dog to be out of its "teens" I need to get the dog in 2005, which means shopping breeders in 2004. Since the show, every time that I pick up an article of clothing or a durable good in a store I ask myself, "Will this go on the road with me or be just more yard sale fodder?" Family and friends have been asked to think about that question, too, so Santa brought road-worthy goodies. The Life on Wheels eastern session will be in Bethlehem PA in August 2004; I will be there and probably at each succeeding session for several years. I have lists, and I have lists of lists that should be started soon.

The feasibility study is over. Stay tuned for the countdown.

[Questions? Drop me a note -- Cilla.

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