Free Cars, Free RV’s and Free Travel Trailers, oh my!
With modern apps it is possible make our vehicles pay for themselves. Learn how I made my travel trailer pay for itself, and put over $1000/mo profit into my pocket!
My Travel Trailer Adventure
In 2017 — I landed a contract gig working for my first commercial customer who wanted me to help him develop a product.
The contract was 200 miles north of my home in a really beautiful setting — Deception Pass, Washington.
I was driving up there every week staying in a hotel, then coming back home on the weekends. This was becoming expensive pretty quickly.
I decided to look into buying a travel trailer for my extended stays. It would be much cheaper than hotels every week. It was beautiful where I was staying, so camping long-term was very appealing to me.
I found the trailer I wanted nearby at Camping World, a large 35 footer— financed at about $380 per month, on a 7 year term — $31,000 after taxes.
I continued to work on this contract for about 1 year, then it was time to leave and head back home to start something that had taken off in the months while I was assisting that other business.
I knew I’d have to pay to store my trailer because there was not enough room on my property. Parking it at home was not feasible (or allowed).
So now it was going to cost me :
$380 per month
$60 insurance
$200 per month storage
More than I wanted to be paying each month.
Then, through the awesome convenience of targeted advertising, I was shown an ad for RV Share.
I clicked.
It was a website that offered the ability to make my trailer available to eager renters.
I was intrigued.
But…..it sounded super risky.
What happens if they wreck? What happens if they destroy property? What happens if someone gets hurt?
I had to know more.
I dug into their terms and it became clear.
https://rvshare.com/terms-of-service
How does it all work?
Well….. Part of their business model (if not the majority of it), is providing the INSURANCE to cover it’s users.
When I was renting my trailer on RV share, they provided 1 Million worth of coverage. Automatically.
Insurance is NOT optional
This is factored into the cost of rental for your renters. It sounds like it will be insanely expensive, but for a short term temporary term, it’s not bad at all.
Disclaimer : Not sure if it is still the same coverage today. It has been a couple years since I was renting my trailer. But likely it is the same, or increased.
They have partnered with insurance companies to provide temporary coverage packages that cover the the RV, which enables their service, but also — IS the entire business model if you think about it.
Kind of like McDonalds is actually about Real Estate, not just burgers, RV Share is all about ….Insurance!
And that works out great for you and me!
This means RV Share is not just a listing platform like Craiglist where people privately transact and hope for the best.
RV Share is a platform that does NOT permit access without verifying every single user.
Identity verification + clean drivers record + verification of insurance
All must be verified before renters or owners can be cleared for insurance coverage on renting. Users who have spotty history or are uninsured themselves, are ineligible to use RV Share. Insurance won’t cover it.
That prevents issues with dead beat renters or uninsured people taking your baby for a destructive ride and not being liable.
How much did I make?
I rented out my Keystone Bullet 311BHS trailer from 2018 through 2021.
The entire time, it was rented out pretty consistently. I only kept it formyself a few times, and mostly rented it out, for a little over 3 years.
I priced my rental at:
$120 per night
$750 per week
$2200 for month
Most rentals were 2–3 days, mostly on weekends or extended weekends, and I’d net around $300, and I would rent about 1–2 times per week.
Sometimes a weekly rental would happen, which was nice. Less driving and cleaning for me.
This happened about once per quarter and more often in the summer.
My first year, I took in
$300–500 per week.
$1600 per month average.
This more than paid for the loan, storage space, and insurance, and put about $1000 in my pocket each month, which I used to pay down my trailer loan.
I found myself having to clean and prep the trailer and drive back and forth to the storage way more than I wanted though….
Time Vampire, Time for a Change Up
There were over 25 short term rentals in the first year, and 2 week-long rentals, but it became exhausting having to meet them at the storage all the time.
So far, I had made around $1000 in the first year.
My trailer was already 1/3 paid off!
I extended my minimum rental period to 5 days, instead of 2.
This eliminated all the back and forth driving, and now I was only having to clean/prep the trailer like a housekeeper once a week.
The change did not disrupt my rentals, which continued to be plentiful — no shortage of customers and my trailer was never sitting in storage for longer than 3–4 days.
And the best part : most people would rent 5 days, and thus be paying full daily price.
Only a few people rented for an entire 7 days, or longer.
This had the effect of increasing my average monthly income to to $1800 gross, and decreasing the amount of time spent meeting renters and cleaning the trailer.
Year # 2 I grossed around $13,000, having to pay for one Air Conditioner repair out of pocket, which was $1200.
My trailer was now 2/3 paid off!
My longest rental
I only had one gentleman rent for a month long term — and he rented on a month-to-month basis. Renewing at the end of each month.
He ended up keeping my trailer for over a year!!!!
He was finishing a gigantic house that he moved into that needed ALOT of work, and kept running into material and labor issues and had to keep extending the rental. He promised to take very good care of it, and HE DID!
I came to inspect it around 6 months, and I found he was keeping it beautiful inside and he had even repaired a section of carpet for me that was damaged by a previous renter! — so cut him a deal for $1700 per month from then on.
He had already paid me $13200!
The trailer was completely paid off now!
This final renter had it for a total 13 months.
6 months at $2200/mo + 7 additional months, @ 1700/mo = $13,200 + $11,900 = $25,100)
All Profit.
I didn’t have to maintain or clean at all, of course, it was occupied the entire year!
The craziest part when I really think about this experience — is that ONE renter more or less paid for most of the trailer loan.
My loan was for 31k, and over the course of 13 months, he paid me over 25k.
Before this experience, I would never have thought anyone would do that.
Why didn’t this guy just buy his own trailer?
Because he always thought it would be his last month…..
Which has me thinking….. is there a way to specifically market temporary trailers to contractors?
That might be a pretty lucrative business….. haha!
Sorry, I don’t have screenshots for all of that —I rented my trailer over 4 years ago, and I was not making content yet, so never really occurred to me to document the process! I still wanted to share it.
Total Expenses
My average monthly expenses were VERY low.
I took the trailer in for regular maintenance at Camping World every 6 months. Except that last year, of course.
Usually, this was completely covered by my Good Sam policy that I purchased with my trailer, so no out of pocket for most of it.
Highly recommended, their membership covered most basic things.
The only thing it did not cover, the AC unit. Those wre explicitly not covered more than 1 year.
I had to pay out of pocket for that, which cost me $1200 — including installation.
The cost of the AC unit, along with replacing a stabilizer jack when a customer knocked it off ($400 after installation),
I only spent around $1800 for maintenance the entire time I was renting it out.
I bought 2 rounds of cleaning supplies, which were maybe $100 or so total.
It was also my rental policy for the renter to refill propane tanks prior to returning, so that was never a worry, and everyone always did.
Summary
I rented my trailer out for a total of 3 years
The last year, one renter kept it the entire time — long rental terms rock!!!!
My trailer was paid off completely in around 2.5 years of consistent rental. The rest was gravy.
Maintenance was fairly low compared to the cost of ownership, partly thanks to RV Share creating a way to turn my trailer into profit!
I flipped out of it! + 20k bonus high score!
Then, supply chains went bonkers during covid, and trailer prices and used car prices went through the roof!
I listed it for sale for $20k, and to my surprise, I found a buyer the next week. No haggle.
I listed it on RV Trader, found a buyer quickly and we went to a local credit union to facilitate the sale.
I sold the trailer in the spring of 2021 for $20k, so not only did I profit 10k while renting it, AFTER completely paying it off — I ended up with an additional 20k in my pocket at the end of it all! For a total of 30k, which was a total of 200% ROI.
Disclaimer again : no idea if my experience is normal or not. I live in the Pacific Northwest, it’s very beautiful up here and camping places are always full year round. This means we have LOADS of campers and sites. Your income may depend on where you live and accessible camping/seasons.
Other Rental Services for Cars, Trucks, etc
While I have not done this yet, I do have friends doing it. They are renting their cars out, and paying for them.
I even have one friend — Brandon Duff The Boring Passive Income Dad— (who is also here on Medium), he has purchased several vehicles and started his own rental business.
The service for cars and trucks, is roughly similar to RV Share, only they specialize in Cars and normal vehicles.
Turo
https://www.cnet.com/
Turo is a pretty popular service.
I am actually not sure how much you can earn from Turo because I have never pushed it the way I have with RV Share, but it’s enough to be worth it for someone I know who has financed 6+ cars in order to push his earnings with it.
Pop over to my friend Brandon’s profile where he shares info about his experience with Turo and renting out his cars.
He came up with a neat system with a lock box so that his cars can be rented even while he is away.
Creating A $1,000,000 Car Rental Business Part 10
Brandon The Boring Passive Income Dad
Boatsetter
This is a rental app aimed at watercraft rentals!
They even offer referral income in the form of boat credits!
Full disclosure — I am sharing this link to see if I can pay for a boat rental! Its credit towards that for me, if you use the link and rent! Thank you for using my link!
I am thinking about this opportunity the most for myself for future rental property.
I live in a pretty rural area now, but there are lots of local fishing based rentals, so I imagine I could probably rent out boats without difficulty.
I am looking into this myself right now!
I am exploring costs, maintenance, etc, to see if its worth owning just one, or if I need to own multiple to make it work. (boats will likely require more maintenance, and inspections than RVs / Trailers)
First up, shopping for a new boat.
I hope this gives you some great ideas about how to propel your income and lifestyle!
If all goes well I should be making a post later this year about starting a boat rental thing.
Going to take a bit of planning I think to make the boat rental thing work, and if it doesn’t work, I will still likely buy a new boat and rent it out to pay for it until its MINE, debt free, at the very least.
Thank you for reading!
Leave a comment if you enjoyed
Until next time….
Onward and Upward Everybody!
-Chris
#affilatemarketers #rentalincome #rental #sidehustle #onlineincome #moneymakingtips #makethatmoney