Towable Owners: Getting a Camper or Fifth Wheel Off the Lot and Into a Bay

Every date on a towable repair depends on a haul happening first. So we book the bay and the arrival together rather than treating the arrival as your problem to solve afterwards. Tell us the earliest realistic date you can physically get the unit onto La Palma Avenue and we build the schedule from there, which avoids a booked slot sitting empty while a hauler is chased.

It also means the number of visits matters far more than it does for a motorhome. Two haul legs are a fixed cost each way, so splitting a job across two visits is rarely worth it on a towable unless there is a strong reason. Where a motorhome owner might happily come back in the autumn for the cosmetic half, we would usually advise a towable owner to do everything in one stay.

The single most common delay in this segment is a lot that will not release a unit to a third party hauler without written authorization from the person on the contract. Add gate hours that exclude Saturdays, a requirement that any commercial hauler shows a certificate of insurance naming the lot, and a unit parked nose in with two other trailers behind it, and a straightforward pickup becomes a fortnight of phone calls.

Handle it in one call before you book anything. Ask the lot four things: who they will release to, what written authorization they need from you, what hours a truck can enter, and whether your unit is currently accessible without moving somebody else's. Send us the answers and we will schedule around them. Owners who do that get the unit here on the first attempt, which is not the norm.

• Written release authorization naming the hauler, signed by the contract holder
• Gate hours, and whether weekend access exists at all
• Insurance certificate requirements for commercial haulers
• Whether your unit is blocked in by other trailers

Most owners tow their own unit in and that is usually right. Two situations argue for hiring somebody. The first is damage that has affected how the unit tracks or couples, because a trailer that was within your truck's capacity intact is a different proposition with a bent member or a damaged suspension component. The second is a unit that has been sitting long enough that the tires, bearings and brakes are a genuine question over a fifty mile run.

If you hire, use a service that hauls RVs specifically rather than a general flatbed operator, and confirm they carry cargo coverage for the value of your unit rather than a nominal figure. We do not arrange transport and we take no referral from anybody who does, so you are getting an opinion rather than a sales pitch. We simply take delivery, log the unit and photograph it on arrival.

A towable spends most of the year parked, which changes the downtime conversation completely. If the unit sits from November to March regardless, a repair inside that window costs you almost nothing in lost use, and it is also when our board is quietest. Owners who plan around that get a better job at a calmer pace, because nobody is trying to hit a Friday deadline for a Saturday departure.

What keeps running is lot rent, which most facilities bill monthly and will not prorate, plus registration and insurance. Tell your lot the release date once we set one, because some will hold the space and others rent it on. Do not cancel coverage on a unit sitting in a repair facility, and tell your carrier where it is, since policies generally have something to say about the unit's location.

Half the towable units we finish sit an extra three or four days because collecting one is a whole afternoon with a truck, and the owner had not scheduled that afternoon. We do not run a storage yard, and a finished unit occupying a space is a space another unit needs, so plan the return leg at the same time as the delivery.

Give us a collection window and a named driver, particularly where somebody other than you is coming with the truck. We will not release a unit to a person the registered owner has not identified, which occasionally annoys a helpful brother in law and has never once caused an actual problem. Bring the same hitch and hardware the unit arrived on, since we do not keep coupling equipment here.

A jackknife, a rear end hit while coupled, or a canyon road scrape frequently damages both the tow vehicle and the trailer. Administratively that can be one claim or two depending on how the vehicles are insured, and it is worth establishing which on the first call to your carrier rather than assuming. Two policies means two adjusters, potentially two deductibles, and two sets of approvals moving at different speeds.

Our part is straightforward. We estimate and repair the trailer, we document the coupling area carefully because that is where the two vehicles argue with each other, and we make our scope readable by an adjuster who is only looking at one half of the loss. The claim structure question belongs with your carrier, and there is a page describing how multi vehicle files are normally handled.

One towable unit, plus a tow vehicle that may also be off the road. Lot rent continues and often will not prorate, and a haul in each direction is a fixed cost regardless of how long the repair takes. Two short visits therefore cost noticeably more than one longer one.

• The storage lot needs written authorization before releasing a unit to a hauler
• Their truck is legal for the trailer loaded but marginal for a damaged one
• Two separate policies looking at the same collision
• Nobody at the lot answers the phone outside weekday mornings