Today we're talking about towing an RV with a half ton truck.
今天我们要讨论用半吨卡车拖RV(宿车)的问题。
Now a lot of you guys are always asking us what kind of truck are we using out on the road? Yeah we get a lot of questions about our truck.
现在有很多人经常问我们在路上用什么样的卡车。是的,我们收到了很多关于我们卡车的问题。
When we say don't tow an RV with this, we're referring to our first truck that we ever purchased like almost five years ago. That was a half ton blue lifted oversized truck with huge tires and boy were we in for some surprises with the financial mistakes that we were going about to make. Oopsies.
We're going to get into that here shortly but first let's set the record straight.
我们很快就会谈到这个问题,但首先让我们把事情搞清楚。
This video is very specific to those looking to purchase a half ton truck. If you already own a half ton truck, this video is in no way meant to undermine your decisions, your lifestyle or your specific situations leading up to your purchase.
Yeah we love all sorts of trucks and tow vehicles out there and whatever works for lifestyle works. We're just actually so happy that a lot of you all are out here living life to the fullest through RV life already. Yeah. So talking about half-tud trucks specifically or any trucks for that matter is controversial.
There's no right answers but our goal today is to tell our story in hopes that you can learn and have some objective points of view going forward and seeking out your purchase. For the lifestyle you're looking for. Don't make the mistakes we made. Use the hanks as an example of what not to do.
But without further ado let's just get into our story and also introduce like who we are and what our channel is.
但是不多说废话,让我们直接进入我们的故事,同时介绍一下我们是谁,我们的频道是什么。
Totally I'm Kyle. I'm Renee.
我是凯尔。我是蕾妮。
In back in 2017 we started looking for an RV to live in while we pursue travel nursing. Ooh we have no idea anything about trucks and tow ratings we were just like hey here's a truck and it looks cool. Let's go buy an RV. Yeah literally we went and bought a truck thinking that it was going to be able to tow anything. Yeah.
All the ratings such as gross vehicle weight rating or gross combined weight rating curb weight payload that was all like foreign language to us. What what what are you talking about? Yeah and the half-tun truck that we had was kind of like it looked like a monster but it didn't tow like a monster.
Specifically what happened is we pigeon-hold ourselves into a corner with the truck that we initially purchased being a half-tun. And what we should have done was realized that we don't have enough truck for a lot of RVs out there but what did we do? We just went right and bought an RV anyway. Yeah.
That was suitable for that truck. Not much to work with.
那适合那辆卡车。可利用的资源不多。
Now don't get us wrong we're not saying you can't tow an RV with a half-tun. I mean obviously everyone is doing it. We did it initially. I'd say over half the people that have an RV have a half-tun and there's nothing wrong with that.
What we're trying to enlighten you about is our backstory and where we went wrong with our purchases and how the half-tun was not suitable towards our lifestyle.
我们想要向你解释的是我们的背景故事以及我们在购买方面犯错的原因,以及半吨货物不适合我们的生活方式。
Basically when we bought our first travel trailer we bought a trailer that would put us at the max for that truck. Yes.
基本上,当我们购买我们的第一个旅行拖车时,我们选择了一辆会使我们的卡车达到最大负荷的拖车。是的。
Which is okay but the problem was is we had other plans and we're going to get into those plans here shortly. Not to mention our first travel assignment was in California and we were leaving from Pennsylvania.
So there was a lot of nerves about how will this gas half-tun truck do towing over so many mountains. Yeah we were going on like the Sierra Nevada's Appalachian Mountains. There were so many mountain passes where like are we gonna hit bad weather on the way out like snow ice.
But at first they weren't running through the back of our minds. At first we were just like weeee let's get a truck and let's get a trailer.
最初,这些想法并没有深入我们的内心。起初,我们只是像是嘿嘿嘿,让我们买一辆卡车和挂车。
So piggybacking on that topic of us making a rash decision to buy the half-tun truck. We want to point out a couple questions that we wish we would have asked ourselves from the get go that might help you when making your decision of buying a truck.
First of all, think about what kind of RV you are going to be buying. Sure, maybe you're telling yourself, "Well, I know that I'm gonna go buy a travel trailer. I'm gonna go buy a teardrop." Or are you even thinking about just buying a truck camper and throwing it in the back of your truck and hitting the road? Even those can get really heavy. Yeah, they really can.
You also have to take into consideration what type of RV you're doing, meaning are you going to be full-time part-time? And if you're part-time or a weekend warrior, are you hauling long trips and taking so much gear with you? Like, what are you going to put in your truck? Also, if you're full-time, you've got a plan that you're going to be packing a lot of stuff to take with you to live on the road.
Do you guys have kids? Is there any concern that your kids will graduate and then it's just going to be you and your significant other and then maybe you go full time later on? Like, these are all questions that play into one another. You need to consider it from the get-go rather than just playing offense and just being like, "Yeah, we'll buy this and then we'll figure it out later." Are you going to be going to RV parks? Are you going to be boondocking? And if you're not sure what boondocking is, it's basically the same thing as dry camping. You are not using any hookups. You are using the holding tanks, the onboard batteries, everything to power your RV. And if you are doing some boondocking, don't forget that extra batteries, generators, all the firewood, maybe all your cooking gear. That's going to add up when it comes to weight in your truck. Yeah, that's huge, and that's something we were like, "Well, we're going to stay at RV parks along the way," but as we started full-time, and we were like, "Well, wait a second, we want to start trying this boondocking because that looks cool too," so we didn't even consider that. So make sure you just keep an open mind about opportunities out there and maybe think about how a half-ton truck isn't going to accomplish all those needs at one time. It's also really expensive to constantly stay at RV parks. Yeah, we're always boondocking, like doing boondockers welcome or trying to get off-grid and just maybe taking a night here and there and staying in a parking lot or something. Yeah, we don't do long-term boondocking, but just one night can save you like 50 bucks. Yeah, it adds up super quickly.
Now, this is all tailored to your financial goals. We're not here to say what you can and cannot afford, but when we initially got started, we knew we were kind of on a budget and we had bought the half-ton. And we realized quickly that like, "Oh, I kind of wish we had gotten a little bit bigger." We're going to get into that in a second, but basically what we're saying is the RV life can be as expensive or it can be as cheap as you want it to be. But let's get back to the story of what happened with us and the truck purchases. And you want to keep the spotlight on us. Yes, oh, it's hot though. That spotlight is hot. It is hot. That's Tennessee.
So there we were, we had like two months till we were leaving for travel nursing. We had our truck, our half-ton Tonka truck, the RV that we just purchased. It was a grand design imagine travel trailer 2150 RV, which is a really cool floor plan. So check that one out. We liked it. It was like a 26-footer. It fit our needs. It worked.
Did we want to go bigger? Yeah, that's why we were stuck. But why did we purchase a half-ton? Like, that doesn't make sense. Why did we know we were eventually going to go bigger but we purchased the half-ton truck? It just. Well, we just didn't know that there were things about tow ratings. Like, we just assumed trucks could tow things back then. No, that's honestly our first mistake. We just assumed that was the way it is, and it just doesn't work like that. The trusty YouTube and internet research had us really pondering, "Is this half-ton truck going to get us to all of our destinations safely?" I'm sure it could have, right? Well, it probably could have, but we were looking to make sure we had some wiggle room. Yeah.
So one night, we were both at work in the ER. I'm pretty sure it was like four in the morning because we were night shift. Yeah. Kyle approaches me, A.K. Carl, Kyle, whatever you want to call him. He approaches me in the ER and he's like, "Hey, I got a great idea." And he was like, "Hear me out. There's this truck. Okay, it's like 600 miles away. No big deal. It's in Illinois. We're in Pennsylvania. But I love this truck." Yeah, it was sweet. It had a lift kit. It's the one we're sitting on right now. It's D. It's D. And D stands for Denali in case you're wondering, like, what does D mean? Basically, it's a three-quarter ton truck, and we're like, "Hey, babe, it's gonna be overkill for what we have, the travel trailer." Yeah. And what could go wrong? We'll just go in. We'll drive. We'll turn in our truck. Switch it out for this bad boy. It'll be overkill. We'll be handling all those roads and mountains perfectly. Nothing will go wrong. Yada yada.
有一天晚上,我们都在急诊室工作。我很确定当时应该是凌晨四点,因为我们在夜班。是的,Kyle(也叫A.K. Carl 或者Kyle,你想叫什么都可以)来找我了,在急诊室说:“嘿,我有个好主意。”然后他说:“听我说,有一辆卡车。没什么大不了的,它在伊利诺伊州,离这里大约600英里。但是我非常喜欢这辆卡车。”是的,它很棒,有升降装置。它就是我们现在坐在上面的这辆卡车,是D型车。D是指Denali,如果你不知道D是什么意思。基本上,它是一辆三吨卡车,我们说:“亲爱的,对于我们的旅行拖车来说,这辆卡车实在是有点过于强大了。”是的,还能出什么问题呢?我们就开过去,把我们的卡车换成这辆冲锋车吧。它会完美应对所有的道路和山区的,一切都会顺利无误。啦啦啦。
So there we go. On our way to Illinois to go get this truck and we're taking the old one with us. Our truck does have a four-inch lift on it. D currently. We now the old one the half-ton tonka truck. That had a six-inch lift right? Yeah. Yeah. And it just wasn't ideal for what we were looking for. So and I think that was another thing that distracted me is whether it's a half-ton three-quarter or one-ton. I was looking at it more of like a visual like oh what color do we like? Or what kind of size lift does it have? Does you know obviously this truck could handle that trailer at the time but we were still chasing our own tails when it came to this. Where we initially went wrong is we took out negative equity on the current loan with the half-ton and rolled it into this current truck. Yeah. Lots of debt. We're rolling negative debt into a depreciating item like this truck and it's so stupid. So. D for debt. D for debt man. We were like what are we doing?
So we bought the truck. We bought D. We're super happy with it. We go along on our way a couple years living in that travel trailer. Love in life it's handling it like a pro. Yeah what could go wrong? Well Nene needed more space. Yeah. Is what went wrong. Are you sure it wasn't Daxter or Cat? Probably. Probably.
Currently we have a 2019 Grand Design Solitude S-Class 2930 RL. And what did we do? We made the exact same mistake. Now we have a truck that was overkill for the travel trailer. We're buying a fifth wheel tailored to this truck. So now we're pigeonholed again. We're pigeonholed again and we're maxed out again. So if we ever wanted to upgrade from our current living situation we have to go buy another truck. That would be like what did they say? Like. They're times of charm. I hope. Goodness. With this Hanks family. We're rolling with things. I don't know if there's any charm in it at all. I just don't know if you ever want to give up D. If we ever have a family and we want to start raising kids on the road we're not going to be able to live in this forever. We might be something a little bit bigger and unfortunately D cannot handle that. So that is.
Hey look it. I'm not just hating on half tons. I'm not just hating on three quarter tons. I'm just saying find something that's going to be sustainable throughout all your RV travels. And it's not that we're talking bad about our current RV. Right. We love our fifth wheel and when we purchased it it was still an upgrade. We went from 27 foot travel trailer to about 34, 35 foot. It is the smallest of the solitude lines from Grand Design but I'm telling you like it's huge inside and we were just like whoa. Yeah for sure. And we're concerned not expressing you deserve to at least hear our side of the story because we don't want you to get out there and have the same issues where you're like well I want to upgrade now. Because we get emails from you guys where you're kind of in the same situation. You're not sure if you should upgrade the current truck you have to something bigger and you guys will say what do you have and what truck do you have and it's like we tell you what we have but if we did it again we would probably just have gone with the one-ton truck.
But that's a personal preference. You guys might not be RVing as long as we do. Maybe you just want to do it short term and maybe you do want a smaller RV so you can get into the all the nooks and crannies of the country. You were thinking like we should have went with a one-ton right off the get-go right so that we would cover our bases throughout whether we have a small travel trailer or teeter wrap or like a big toy hauler. We've got to haul it all by one truck that fits all your needs right. We love when we're walking around the RV park and we see like a teardrop trailer and then like a one-ton truck and we're just like oh are you sure you can pull that. Are you sure you can pull that but they're like jokes on you I could pull anything I want so I'm gonna be able to pull this and then go upgrade and pull anything I want and unfortunately with the half-ton truck you're not left with much wiggle room at all.
That's up for debate but from our experience in all of our research over five years of full-time RV living we've met a lot of people for a lot of stories and what we've heard is there's not much wiggle room so yeah and we know lots of people who started in a half-ton just like we did and then they were like sending us pictures like surprise we got a bigger truck like they upgraded to a three-quarter ton and they're like hey why does everybody do this right why do we do this we personally feel like it's better to over truck your trailer than over trailer your truck basically saying buy a bigger truck that can handle everything rather than just buying a truck and then matching that trailer to the truck yeah because if not you're gonna do this whole like stair-stopping game and you're just gonna be blowing money out your butt exactly what we did with the current inflated economy you're already paying out the butt for a new truck that's so true yeah it really is everything's jacked up in prices and if you're already looking to purchase in this market unfortunately you're already behind the game so make one purchase that's gonna fit all the needs so if we would suggest anything is if you have any potential to go back and answer those questions and those aren't subject to change like your lifestyle may go full-time eventually or the kids may grow up and you and your significant other might want to do more traveling we would suggest on buying a bigger truck especially in this economy with a larger truck not only do you have the benefit of increased tow capacity yeah but you have things like increased fuel capacity because aren't the tanks much bigger on some of the bigger trucks yeah that's a great point like you won't have to stop as much to feel love which is really nice and convenient during your travels that's really nice and you also have the benefit of not having that negative equity if you're constantly like buying a truck and having to upgrade and having to upgrade again like we did and I think we don't go we don't do a 3,500 we don't do a 4,500 we get a 5,500 wow those are huge let's just go really think do you see what I have to deal with here this is so
all in all this is peace of mind if you buy a bigger truck you can handle anything from the smallest loads to the heaviest hose I mean that's cool huh and it rhymes that was you didn't just you just came up with that just off the top of my little head here make sure you subscribe because we have new videos every single week much love to you all we'll see you next week bye guys later.