We recently purchased a 42’ fifth wheel and long bed truck that was quite a challenge to handle with its overall 59’ length and wide turning radiuses.
I had watched a video online, paid very close attention when driving, and knew the basics of driving and backing a trailer.
Maintenance and care wise, – I also have a lot to learn. This is a complicated rig and I”m not the handiest guy.
We knew we needed to up our game to stay safe and avoid banging up our pretty new camper.
The first several months we owned our camper, I was fairly nervous at times, got myself into a few tight spots, and actually did some damage on one occasion. When I”m nervous, Cara is nervous and vice versa. So we had some tough days out there.
Cara and I both believe we received much more than we expected.
Not only did Steve do a great job on the driving instruction, he also took a good bit of extra time with us on maintenance and care, traveling tips, and just overall good company. I was very interested in learning more about winterization and winter operation and Steve was very thorough with that.
Even with Steve’s experience, we had to work out parallel parking together due to the slow turning of the combination of truck and trailer. It’s incredibly invaluable to now have a step by step strategy for parallel parking on both sides Cara and I both understand.
Time wise, we were very efficient with the 8 hours, and Steve also met us the day before and spent time with us getting to know and also teaching us. And he came after the 8 hours to work with us some more.
My wife Cara had been doing her best to help me not hit anything – and successfully so far thank goodness. But we didn’t have a good way to communicate.
We both feel much more confident now with us being able to work better together. She knows better what to look out for, we have step by step strategies with both understand backing into campsites, but I know it’s still my responsibility to make sure everything is good.
Steve was certainly very knowledgeable but his patience, listening skills and overall manner of being made the experience better and more enjoyable.
Steve Avant represented your school very well.
I’ve been in customer service for over 46 years (starting when I was 12) and I was very impressed with the service of the school leading up to the training.
It was so fun and enjoyable in fact, we want to try to find the time to do it again. We would highly recommend getting training and RV Driving School.
$399 is a very small price to pay when you consider the cost of frayed nerves, and the cost of even minor “rubbing” up against something. My thoughts on the pricing is that it’s probably set that way so more people take advantage of it. There aren’t too many professionals you can hire for $50/hour anymore but I understand some people think that’s a lot.
Hopefully, the low cost equates to more people taking the course and making more people safe. But that matter aside, $800 to us seems like a more appropriate price.
You could also offer scaled pricing based on the size/type camper possibly even with shorter/longer time frames. We really benefited from the extra time – at least 11 hours – because of our rig and situation.
We could have used instruction on our Class C (which would have saved us a $2,000 repair.) but 8 hours would have been plenty of time.
