RV hire in USA

simon_blay

Evening all,

We are going away at the end of September and will be hiring an RV through El Monte RV. This has been arranged through a travel company local to me and I have been told that the van has all the necessary insurance.

My question is, are there additional policies I should be taking out to protect myself (other than standard holiday insurance). I know when hiring a car, it's wise to take additional cover.

Thanks

Simon

NiftyDigits

Perhaps you should begin by finding out exactly what insurance coverage you have on the van.

[Deleted User]

simon_blay wrote: »

Evening all,

We are going away at the end of September and will be hiring an RV through El Monte RV. This has been arranged through a travel company local to me and I have been told that the van has all the necessary insurance.

My question is, are there additional policies I should be taking out to protect myself (other than standard holiday insurance). I know when hiring a car, it's wise to take additional cover.

Thanks

Simon

I've used El Monte a couple of times - they're a good company with a long history and modern vehicles.
However check the excess on the policy and exactly what you have to pay in the event of an acccident and consider taking out a collision damage excess policy through one of the websites covered on MSE.
www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-car-hire
Of the ones mentioned I use www.questor-insurance.co.uk which has specific policies for motorhomes.You're looking at around £125 for a fortnight's holiday in the States.
In the long run it may be worth it especially considering you can rent a monster RV and simply drive it away with no more experience than driving your normal-sized family car.
I mention this because I clipped the back of our RV driving out of a petrol station and the excess on repairs was about £400.
As a piece of advice always try to fill up at truck stops which are designed for long vehicles rather than ordinary petrol stations.
Also,be careful about boon-docking.Post 9-11 many states don't allow you to just pitch up at the side of the road anywhere and,in any case,you're much safer at designated stops on freeways or RV campgrounds.
All that aside we had some of the best holidays ever with our kids when they were younger RVing across the States.

John259

As a general rule campsites in state parks and national parks tend to be less expensive than commercial RV parks such as KOA, but places in the national parks tend to fill up very quickly.

I've read that you can boondock on BLM land (Bureau of Land Management, they administer a lot of public land in the west).

Some WalMart's allow boondocking but it's at the discretion of the manager and permission must be obtained beforehand.

I've never seen RV's boondocking in truckstops (TA, Petro, Pilot, Loves, etc) in any of the various trucking vlogs so it looks like they don't allow it.