This topic contains 4 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by Troy and Tiffany Lano 2 months, 3 weeks ago.
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Hello Everyone!
My husband and I are new/newer to full-timing. We began last May of 2014. We own a 2011 Forest River Solera and love it! It fits with our minimalistic personalities and we love how we can zoom around town with it. However, we travel a lot. A lot for work. We own an apparel company and travel to music festivals all over the country/world. It was our intention when we bought the RV to be completly self contained. On this particular model of RV the storage space is incredible. However, we are finding out that the storage may be incredible, but are we even able to store anything? A couple days ago we were about to leave on our 7,000 mile journey west leaving from Florida and we decided to weigh ourselves. We were 1,200 lbs over weight. I was in shock. We were in shock. We took everything out and just left our personal goods inside (leaving the entire storage outside empty). We had a full tank of diesel and empty fresh, grey, and black tanks. This time we were under weight but only by 150 lbs. I was still in shock. There was practically nothing in our RV except some personal goods and nothing stored underneath or on our top bunk. Good news is we have a 7×12 trailer sitting at our parents house, that we really didn’t want to bring, but in the end decided to bring it. Loaded everything up in that. A couple of questions:
1. Do RVs travel over weight all the time? Or anyone have trouble with their class C not being able to hold that much weight? (I’m thinking we may be traveling around 300 lbs over weight once we add a little fresh water and my husband jumps in the vehicle)
2. We loaded up the trailer and went and weighed ourselves. We were still under the GCWR, however the back axel of the RV was still over weight by 400 lbs. (we are thinking this has to do with the added weight of the tongue of the trailer) Will this harm us in the long run?
Any thoughts would help
We are very excited to have found this website! I am sure I will be in other forums asking on places to stop between Florida and Joshua Tree National Park (Where we are headed)
-Tiffany
Weight is a serious issue. One that could potentially be life-threatening. Not to sound over dramatic, but seriously. Different RVs are built for different purposes. I’m really glad you like your rig and decided to bring your trailer. You definitely don’t want to overload your capacity.
I’m not enough of a technical RVer that I have specific insight for you on your current set up but I’m friends with many who are. If you don’t get an answer here, I’d recommend you reach out to Kevin Ewert of NuRVers. He is pretty knowledgeable in the way of RV weight.
Another thing you may consider is ground shipping the bulk of your wares to your destination. I know it is an added expense for merch, but it is a small price to pay for your safety Tiffany!
We actually went with a used diesel rig, one of the many reasons was the weight capacity. I’m sure you don’t want to change out your rig now, but if you are looking to do this long term you may consider looking into a used diesel. If you do, hit us up.. on this we have a ton of thoughts.
~ Eric
Eric and Brittany
RVWanderlust on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest too.If the dept of transportation started to require all rv’s to weigh in the commercial truck scales in each state, it would be shocking news to everyone how many are overloaded. A lot of weekend rvers pack up and go not considering weight. All the thought is, my truck can pull it no problem. An over weight vehicle puts a lot of stress not only on the chassis but the tires. This could lead to tire failure.
When loading a trailer a lot of people load heavy to the front. Try loading the heavier weight to the trailers axiles. I pull a 24 ft enclosed with my class a. I haul three 4 wheelers in it and load them over the axiles. This helps take the weight off the rigs rear tires. But you have to watch that you don’t over load the trailers axiles. Another thing to consider is weight distribution bars. this helps distribute the weight also. They can be expensive so if money is an issue shop around and try craigslist. Could always ask around a rv site and start talking to people about it and you never know they may have a set for sell or know someone who does.
What a lot of people don’t realize is by the time you load up an rv with dishes food clothing, water, misc supplies, you reach you weight.
Try the rearranging on the trailer and let me know what you come up with.
Another caution is if you are ever in an accident and it is found out the rig is overloaded the insurance company could try and get out of covering it. I’ve heard of them picking up all the debris and having it weighed.
If you do decide to run over weight a little or even near the max I’d advise upgrading the tires to a higher load range. So many tire blow outs are caused by overloaded rigs. It made a big difference to the tire stiffness and handling when I went from the OEM load range D to E. Also went from 8 plys to 10.
It’s really surprising how the weight can creep up. Our fifth has a dry weight of 7200 LBS and a max of 10,000. I thought awesome, I could never carry 2800 lbs right, will never need that much? Last time I weighed it fully loaded I was at 9200!
RVHH Chief Cook and Bottle Washer - LoveYourRV.comHi guys!
Thanks for all the input. It really really does help! One thing I would have researched a little more and thought about was how much we can actually get in the RV before purchasing it. Our RV’s dry weight is around 9400 lbs. We can only load 1438 lbs of cargo (us and the dog included) and 292 lbs of fresh..Which we don’t drive with a lot anyways to save on weight. Total can’t be over 11030. Over the last couple of days we weighed ourselves about 4 times just to get it right. And we are good all around with being under weight. It’s kind of incredible how it adds up so fast. Currently our rig is a freightliner diesel and it does a really good job at handling it. The last oil change we had the guy recommended possibly putting in a transmission cooler. Anyone have one of those?
I made a joke to my husband today…We are headed to Joshua Tree and I have been wanting to get a propane safe indoor heater, however knowing that it could push us over weight we for now have opted out.
We are just throwing around the idea of upgrading to a better diesel pusher. However, this is hoping the business has great growth this year
We want to travel like this for quite some time, so trying to find the best rig / set up (for our crazy lifestyle) is what we eventually want to get to!Thanks again,
Tiffany
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