8 Things I Wish I Knew BEFORE Buying My Motorcycle Camper. Toy Hauler Noobs

in March of 2023 I purchased my very first toy hauler these are some of the things I wish I knew before buying a travel trailer I haven't had too much time to ride motorcycles what I have had time to do is sit inside of my camper with my husband and my cat and contemplate the things that we wish we knew before buying a travel trailer so the first thing on my list of things that I really wish I knew before purchasing a camper is I wish I understood vehicle man manufacturer toe ratings like actual toe ratings I think I've explained this in a couple of my videos with you guys but in August of 2021 I purchased our Chevy Silverado 1500 and I thought that 11,000 lb toe rating was amazing little did I know that yeah you're not supposed to go over 880,000 or uh 80% of your actual toe capacity we learned that the hard way we thought maybe we would tow some motorcycles in a train trailer or you know a small trailer stuff like that and as oh my gosh I keep thinking I'm seeing things in the water and I'm like freaking myself out um anyway as the years went on WE quickly realized that we wanted to travel further and stay longer and experience different things so that led us to the purchase of our 2021 No Boundaries 19.1 toy hauler now the toy hauler was very important to us because we have many different styles of motorcycles I have multiple touring bikes I also have a Harley-Davidson Dina a Royal Enfield Himalayan and my husband has a Harley-Davidson Sportster and a Suzuki dr650 my touring bikes are made to tour and I'm going to ride those motorcycles when I actually tour our other bikes it's really nice to throw them in the trailer and have a place to live while we travel on the road so when we purchased the No Boundaries toy hauler it was our really our only option for the tow rating and the capacity of our truck so on the same subject of tow ratings and truck capabilities I wish I understood more about trailer weight when we were shopping for trailers I the one thing I do dislike about shopping for trailers was a lot of the salesmen that I would speak to especially if it were me talking to them instead of my husband they would try to tell me that the dry rating of any trailer especially if it was over 5 6,000 lb that it would be enough for my truck and no matter how many times I would explain to them like I get it but we're going to be hauling like a, lbs of motorcycles in this as well they didn't seem to understand that I needed a trailer that was a light enough weight trailer with a heavy enough load capacity to haul motorcycles so I wish there was an easier way or a more clear way for manufacturers to like publicly State this is our max tow rating this is your Max Capacity or cargo load and then this is how much the actual trailer can hold as a whole we did months and months worth of research and ended up with the camper that we ended up with now which is a lovely camper but it's kind of difficult for two people in a cat to live in comfortably of course we were already limited with our you know the trailers that we could haul anyway but holy moly was it a tough learning curve to realize just how crappy the quality of these travel trailers are I can't speak to things like actual RVs or Coachman's or the class B style uh campers and stuff I can only really speak to the travel trailers because that's what I have but these things are made like hunks of junk and I really can't believe how much they get away charging for these travel trailers but yeah we uh Jordan my husband has had to completely like reassemble half of the walls because they literally fell off while traveling down the road um is that a turtle there's like something in the water that is a turtle that's a huge Turtle wow oh my gosh the wildlife is coming out that was awesome um anyway just the build quality in general of these travel trailers have been a really tough learning curve Jordan has had to like completely recul like half of the trailer and then we just found another leak today because of all the rain we've been having so uh these are just things that I wish people were a bit more vocal about when you watch these reviews online um we did buy a 20121 trailer and it has been worked on before we owned it it's a used trailer but it it's just it's like highway robbery what these companies can get away with selling people one of the hardest lessons that we have been learning on our little travel trailer journey is the actual boondocking capabilities and how important it is to be able to Boondock we wanted to give it a full year traveling in our trailer together to see if we actually wanted to invest in solar or any boondocking capabilities like battery Banks power stations generators stuff like that and we decided to hold off and just see if we like the actual camping experience in it um and we had to learn the hard way on our way South that yeah we really need something to be able to Boondock and uh have heat when we're sleeping at least at the very minimum we need to be able to heat our camper because it got down to I think 6° F and it was it was a miserable night so we had to do a last minute booking at a campground so that we could plug in our camper and plug in a heater and a heated blanket so I do think uh boond talking in the future for us is going to be a bit more uh thought through we have been doing some shopping around for like battery Banks and stuff because I just like with the amount of work that I have to do on the road being able to charge all of my cameras all of my laptops like my batteries Jordan's computer everything that's going to be important so if you guys have any recommendations on battery Banks leave a comment down below um another thing I kind of wish I would have known a bit more about and I guess this ties into the capabilities of boondocking is how expensive camping actually is um to put it into perspective I went and stayed my husband and I stayed at a state park in Savannah Georgia for a week exactly 7 days and we paid $400 for a week to plug in we didn't even have full hookup like we didn't have septic it was just Water and Electric and I uh I can't believe how expensive camping actually is so you know on top of I I own a home I pay a mortgage I have to I have all of those bills coming out and then on top of it I'm paying hundreds and hundreds and if not thousands of dollars for a couple months to be able to travel and go camping so it's something that obviously I thought of but I was like oh if so many people do it then it must be affordable and I just if you're doing it full-time I think it's fine it I think it averages out to about the equivalent of a mortgage and owning a home but it's just crazy to think that traveling full-time is now the equivalent of owning a home and paying for a mortgage and all of your utilities so that was that was a hard lesson for us to learn and find out oh and speaking of you know utilities and bills learning about having travel Wi-Fi I can't believe believe how expensive and I understand you're paying for convenience but having Wi-Fi on the road which is imperative to the type of work that I do we we didn't end up buying any to take with us on this trip you know this uh Snowbird experience because I just could not justify the fact that I'm already paying $100 for my internet at my house and then I'm paying an additional oh gosh I think just looking into like starlink or something it was like a $650 just getting started to buy it everything and then 150 a month oh my gosh I don't know I'm like you know there are so many places that have free Wi-Fi anymore so if I need to upload a video or check emails I'll go to a McDonald's or something I don't know I I do wish we would have done more research before purchasing our camper with all of that information but it's still quite the learning curve so something else that has been interesting for especially me because when I travel on my motorcycle you know you have the luxury of going 75 85 if you're in a hurry uh Plus 90 mph on the highway and you can just kind of get places in a decent amount of time because you can plan accordingly when you're towing you're going slow and you know especially us in our little half ton truck we have to plan out our gas stops accordingly we have to completely think of your route where you go if there's Bridges or tunnels or um things that you can't get through it's very very concerning or getting stuck in like a tiny little town yeah just being able to plan your route and figure out the amount of time it's going to take to actually tow that was a huge learning curve so when I rode my Road Glide out to sturis separately from my husband Towing our trailer I literally got I think like 3 hours ahead of him just because of how quickly I was driving my gas stops how often he had to stop for gas and we were just going slightly uphill the whole time so poor Jordan I don't think he said he got over 65 M an hour so these are just kind of the things that I've been thinking of I wanted to share with you guys because I kind of wish I saw more videos like this and it wouldn't have deterred me from purchasing what I purchased um if anything I probably would have done a bit better job shopping for a truck before I bought my camper so that that really is all it comes down to is I wish manufacturers were uh just a bit more honest with actual toe ratings and the transparency of toe ratings and maybe that's me I've never owned a truck before my husband never owned a truck before so these are just things that you know hindsight's 2020 and we're we're still learning so I actually learned so many tips and tricks from you guys while posting these videos and being open and honest about it so if you guys have any more tips or tricks or things that you had to learn the hard way while learning how to to or use your camper please leave a comment down below my husband and I read through all of the comments he has actually learned a lot from your comments so he's he's definitely a bit more Hands-On with certain things than I am um now that the sun's coming out I think I'm going to dry off my motorcycle and see if there's anywhere cool that I can go ride today cuz I got to get I got to get back on posting some videos for you guys if you have any recommendations on the type of content you would like to see while I'm down here in Florida away from the cold air of Ohio please let me know in the comments as well but yeah I'll keep it short and sweet and see you guys in the next one and until then you be good and I'll catch you later

Channel: Her Two Wheels

Views: 119,438

Keywords: motovlogger, woman motorcycle rider, her two wheels, woman rider, woman motorcyclist, beginner rider motorcycle, harley davidson dyna, her 2 wheels, camping on motorcycle, road glide, road glide special, bagger, camping, motorcycle camping, lady biker, beginner motorcycle, motorcycle, motorcycle channel, toy hauler, camper, motorcycle trailer, travel trailer

Id: a4j44ma2-xQ

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 29 2023