Plan B

Plan B is sometimes considered a bad thing.  In our case Plan B is going to get us into an RV sooner than we first expected.  So, for us, Plan B is awesome.

Background -> In order for us to live full time on the road we will need to sell our house so we can afford to buy a large truck and 5th wheel.  There are some very real concerns with this plan.  What if business isn't as good as we thought it would be while we travel the country?  What if we can't service our customers in a timely manner?  Would we be able to attract new clients?  What if we don't like living in such close quarters?  Where would we live if we didn't have a house anymore? 

After weeks of dreaming/thinking/talking we've come up with a solution that we believe will work for us.   

Here's what our Plan B looks like:

Step 1 is to get out of our rented shop building.  Working from the house will save us a bunch of money every month.  We'll concentrate on getting new clients when we're not servicing our existing clients.

Step 2 is to buy a smaller travel trailer which we can tow behind our Suburban.  We'll take it out for weekend or week long trips while servicing local clients.  We'll be able to start locally and grow from there.  We'll keep our house for this step and return as needed.

Step 3 is to keep growing our clientele list.  We'd like to have a calendar full of appointments.  We estimate that if we can make 8-10 service calls per week that we would have enough work to keep us in the black.

Plan B has heightened our anticipation for getting on the road.  We've spent a few days at a couple of local RV dealerships and walked through some nice trailers.  We have to keep weight in mind.  The Suburban has a tow capacity of 7300 pounds.  We want to keep our overall loaded weight about 1000-1200 pounds under that so we're looking at trailers with a dry weight between 5000-5500 pounds.  

We've done our research and know the ranking of several brands .  Northwood, located in Oregon, manufactures travel trailers, 5th wheels, light weight trailers, truck campers and toy haulers.  Their line of travel trailers is rated #2 in the 'above average' category.  In our researching we discovered that a local dealership is one of their distributors.  We went and visited the dealership.  To our surprise we found a trailer that we think will serve us well for the interim between part-time RV travel and full-time RV living.
 
Here's a few photos of the trailer we hope to purchase in the upcoming months when step 2 takes place.

floor plan of Nash's 24M

passenger's side from front

driver's side from front

the bathroom is just inside the rear door

view when stepping into the trailer

a dinette is across from the couch

the queen size bed is located at the front of the trailer

there's a separate door to the bedroom and plenty of storage for two people

view from the bedroom

March 12-15 there will be a large RV Show at the Cal Expo fairgrounds featuring several local dealerships and their inventory.  It's a good time to walk through and tour hundreds of RV's in one spot.  We'll definitely be viewing other RV's to see if we find something that tickles our fancy more than this one.