Two Calculations Worth Doing Before You Authorize Anything

The first tool asks what the unit is worth today, what a comparable replacement would actually cost you including tax and transfer, and which areas are damaged. From the damaged areas it assembles a labor hour range using the documented bands for those job classes, applies the posted rate for the department that owns each one, and adds parts and materials as a proportion rather than as a guess at specific part numbers.

What comes out is two ranges side by side and a threshold. Below the threshold, repair is straightforwardly better. Above it, the decision turns on things a calculator cannot see: whether the unit has a custom build in it, whether a replacement is even available in your configuration, and whether your policy is written on agreed value or on actual cash value. Those are the cases where the number is a starting point for a conversation instead of an answer.

• Inputs: current value, realistic replacement cost, damaged areas, age
• Optional inputs: custom build value, agreed value policy, prior repair history
• Hours come from documented job bands rather than from an average
• Rates applied per department: $210 body and paint, $260 mechanical and electrical
• Output: a repair range, a replacement range and the threshold between them

The downtime tool exists because operators consistently underestimate this figure, and because insurers rarely pay it. You supply the daily numbers, since only you know them: revenue the unit produces on a working day, whatever it costs you to substitute for it, the labor you are paying regardless, and any contractual penalty for missing a date. The tool multiplies that across a shop day range and shows the total against the repair range from the first calculator.

The output changes decisions more often than the repair number does. A three day difference in turnaround is trivial on a personal coach and decisive on a food truck. Once the daily figure is written down, parts strategy becomes obvious: ordering ahead of teardown, accepting a serviceable used panel, or staging two units instead of four stops being a preference and becomes arithmetic.

• Inputs: daily revenue, substitution cost, fixed labor, contractual penalties
• Multiplied across a shop day range rather than a single optimistic date
• Shown beside the repair range so the two can be compared directly
• Useful for deciding whether to pay for expedited parts

Both tools work better with paperwork than with memory. Five minutes of gathering produces a result worth acting on, and guessing produces a result that feels precise and is not. If you do not have a figure, leave it blank rather than inventing one, because a blank input widens the output range honestly while a wrong input narrows it dishonestly.

1. Year, make, model and length of the unit, plus the chassis if it is a motorhome.
2. A current value figure from a valuation source or a recent comparable sale.
3. Your declarations page: deductible, and whether the policy is agreed value or actual cash value.
4. A list of damaged areas by location rather than by guessed part name.
5. For a working vehicle, your own daily revenue and substitution figures.
6. Any prior repair history on the same area, which changes both scope and coverage.

The result is a range and the width of the range is information. A narrow range means the job class is predictable: a seal, a panel, an appliance. A wide range means the scope depends on what is behind something, which is the normal condition for water damage, delamination and any impact near a slide opening. A wide range is not the tool hedging. It is the tool telling you that teardown will decide the number.

What the output is not is a quotation, and nothing on this page becomes binding. The document that gets authorized is a written repair estimate produced with the unit on the floor, which costs $150 and is credited in full against an authorized repair. Where the fault has not been identified yet, a diagnostic at $285 per hour with a one hour minimum comes first, also credited.

Labor hours come from the documented bands on the job pages, which were written from repair orders rather than from a published time guide. Rates come from the posted card: $210 for body and paint, $260 for mechanical and electrical, $285 for diagnostics with a one hour minimum, $95 for detail. Materials follow the published formulas and parts follow the published markup, so the arithmetic inside the tool matches the arithmetic on an invoice.

Nothing about your unit is invented. If a damaged area maps to a job class we have not documented, the tool says so rather than substituting something similar. That is deliberate: a calculator that always produces a confident answer is a calculator that is sometimes confidently wrong, and on a five figure decision that is worse than an honest gap.

It cannot see behind a panel. Hidden decking rot, a subfloor that has delaminated under vinyl, corrosion on a subframe under a slide room: all of those change a scope substantially and none of them are visible from a form. It also cannot tell you what your carrier will approve, because that decision belongs to an adjuster reading a policy you signed.

And it cannot come to you. Every inspection that turns a range into a number happens in shop at Yorba Linda, because we do not offer mobile repair and there is no roadside option. If the unit will not move, the tool is still useful for deciding whether a tow is worth paying for, which on a large repair it usually is.