Here’s another question I often am asked:  What does it cost to live on the road?

I think a lot of people ask this question because they assume that a life of travel has to be an expensive luxury.  This isn’t surprising, since (at least in the USA) most people’s view of free time is tied directly to the concept of “vacation” — and it isn’t a vacation unless you go somewhere and spend a lot of money.

It takes a little re-arranging of the brain space to grasp that full-time travel via an Airstream can be a really economical experience.  Some people try, and fail miserably, having spent many times more on fuel, admission tickets, and “supplies” (read: souvenirs), just like their vacations.  But I’m here to tell you that not only can it be cheaper than living in a stationary house, it can be a life-saver.

See, when I started Airstream Life magazine, I was severely under-capitalized: the curse of many small business entrepreneurs.  After a year of running the small and unprofitable business, it was clear that we needed to reduce our living expenses if our savings were to last long enough to reach profitability.  And our largest expense by far was the upkeep of our house.

The house was eating us alive, with mortgage, substantial taxes, maintenance, utilities, snowplowing, garbage collection … while we were traveling about 5 months per year on business. So after some consideration, we decided to sell it and live on the road for a while before building a smaller house.  A summer of living in our Argosy 24 turned into 36 months of life in our Airstream Safari 30.  Along the way we discovered that life in the Airstream was not only a lot of fun, but much more affordable than life in the house had been.

And that made all the difference.  I could not have succeeded with Airstream Life if we hadn’t lived on the road for three years.  Without the crushing burden of a house, we were able to stretch our savings to permit years of travel — combining a once-in-a-lifetime experience with a smart financial move.

Of course, we took care to ensure to cut our travel expenses whenever possible.  We saw people run through $50,000 in a year traveling by RV, and we saw people doing it on as little as $20,000 per year (and having the same amount of fun).  So we tried to emulate the folks who were having a frugal but wonderful time.

The “tricks of the trade” aren’t really tricks at all.  They’re just common-sense choices that you can make along the way, like limiting your driving.  There’s usually no need to zing back and forth across the country, but as I’ve said before, this is one of the top mistakes made by new full-timers.  One of our very best months was spent in the Four Corners region (CO, UT, AZ, NM) where we visited fourteen national park sites on a budget of $971.  You don’t have to spend a lot to experience a lot.

Why was it so cheap? First off, we rarely splurged on full-hookup campgrounds. Instead, we prefer to stay in the national park campgrounds whenever possible.  They’re more natural, better located, and cheaper, in exchange for the trade-off of generally lacking the amenities of commercial campgrounds.

Second, we limited our travel.  We stayed several days in most locations, and never towed more than 100 miles.  When we found a good place, we stayed a while.  Staying put is always cheaper than towing somewhere else. Although we rarely stayed as long as a month, you can really save a lot of bucks with campground monthly rates.

Third, we didn’t buy anything except necessities.  Our souvenirs are strictly limited (because of space limitations too!), so early on we decided what we’d collect.  Eleanor buys a national park pin in almost every park we visit.  Emma sometimes gets one too, or a book, in addition to the Junior Ranger badge she usually earns.  We don’t buy logo apparel because we really don’t need it and the trailer would quickly fill up with the stuff.  (After all, we’ve visited well over 150 national park sites.)  We avoid the cute gift shops in town, and when we do buy something local, it’s most often edible.  I know a lot of people like to shop as they go, and I’m not saying you can’t do that, but you can’t expect a habit like that to be cheap.

Related to this, we were also careful to limit eating out.  It gets expensive quickly, not to mention the rapid impact on your waistline.  This is tougher than it might seem, because everywhere you go, there’s someone who wants to celebrate your arrival (or your new friendship) with dinner out.

Fourth, we took full advantage of the great deal that our nation’s parks offer.  For $85 per year we have free admission to every US national park in the world, including the ones in Guam, American Samoa, and the US Virgin Islands.  It’s a deal like no other.  If you are over age 62, the deal is even better: $10 for a lifetime pass.  Don’t miss it.

Fifth is the Big One: We sold our house.  You can’t leave cheaper on the road if you still have a house somewhere.  The house stills costs even if you don’t live in it, doesn’t it?  The only ways to make the economic formula work are to sell the house or rent it out while you are gone. We calculated the cost of owning our house at about $65 per day.  Once we had that burden lifted, it was easy to cost-justify the Airstream and the tow vehicle.  You’re even better off if you don’t have a loan on those vehicles.

“The cost of travel” is a red herring.  The cost of staying at home is the unspoken and dangerous story.  Unspoken, that is, until the recent mortgage crisis revealed how many people were living far beyond their means in the name of “home ownership.”  Dangerous, in the sense that if too many people realized how much better off they might be without the trappings of suburbia, the housing market could collapse further. Not everyone can break away from their current responsibilities and travel, but if you are lucky enough to be able to travel — even for a week or two — yes, you can live on the road and save money.

It’s a quiet time for us, relaxing at home base in the holiday season.  We have no plans to take the Airstream anywhere until after Christmas, which means we will have spent a full five weeks here in the house.  In the hiatus, since we have no Airstream adventures to relate, I want to use a few blog entries to talk about questions that I am often asked when we are traveling.

The reason for doing this is simply that I am constantly reminded of how much misinformation exists on the Internet about RV’ing. Online forums filled with urban myths, badly-researched or biased magazine articles published by people who should know better, and poorly-edited books from “RV experts” are the primary sources of misinformation that new RV’ers come to believe.  It’s a travesty. Most people don’t understand the most basic concepts of trailer hitching, for example, even though incorrect hitching can result in their death.  Many RV dealers are complicit in this as well, by the common practice of just shoving a new trailer owner out the door with minimal instruction.

When I was learning to fly airplanes, I was impressed at how safety-oriented the industry was.  Everything in aviation is ultimately about safety, which is why it has an incredibly impressive statistical record. As a member of the Airline Owners and Pilot’s Association (AOPA), I received a glossy monthly magazine (AOPA Pilot) which was extremely well produced and loaded with useful information. My parents (also private pilots) subscribed to a newsletter by Belvoir Publications which analyzed the causes of aircraft accidents, which they passed on to my oldest brother (another pilot) and me.  We read it like our lives depended on it — because they did.

In aviation, pilots in training are often expected to read a book from the 1940’s, called “Stick and Rudder.”  In that book, author Wolfgang Langewiesche precisely described what happens when a pilot controls an airplane, in a way that defuses misconceptions that would otherwise occur among pilots.  It was a seminal work, so important that it remains in print today.  There is no comparable book on towing in the RV industry, which is why I asked Andy Thomson to begin writing articles for Airstream Life on that subject.  We hope that someday Andy’s articles will be recompiled into a book much like “Stick and Rudder,” which I will publish.

No question, part of the reason that there is so much good information for aviators compared to the dearth of good information for RV’ers, is the fact that aviation is a very high-profile and wealthy industry. Despite the fact that there a new Airstream runs $35,000-100,000 dollars (about the same price range as a new Mercedes) and that there are hundreds of million-dollar Prevost buses on the road, RV’ing is still too often viewed as the domain of country bumpkins and “trailer trash.”  The industry sells itself short.  When we were learning new concepts in aviation, like Instrument Flight, we considered it a good investment to buy a series of King videos for $80. We watched so many videos of John and Martha King in the living room that it felt like they were members of the family. But even if you are willing to spend in order to learn RV’ing concepts, where do you look for trustworthy information? Too much of what’s out there is either unreliable, or produced by “interested parties” with significant bias.

That’s probably why I’ve been increasing the educational aspect of everything I can touch.  Last year’s Alumapalooza included seminars on towing, axles/brakes, and maintenance.  We’ll do the same again in 2011.   I’m also working on a book of my own for new Airstream owners, which I expect to publish in the first half of 2011.

Andy’s book probably will take a couple of years to complete, but when it comes out I expect it to be an important and long-lasting work.  If you haven’t seen his towing series in Airstream Life, it’s worth the price of subscription all by itself.  (We have some of the back issues in the online store.)

Now, you may be thinking, “Come on — towing is just driving. It’s not nearly as complicated as flying.”  To a certain extent that’s true, but if you can die because you didn’t understand a basic principle, isn’t it worth learning more? I really hate it when I run into long-time RV’ers who say, “We’ve been doing this for XX years, there’s nothing anyone can tell us that we don’t already know.”  Baloney.  I find those are the folks who are most often full of misconceptions and half-truths, and are anxious to spread them around like a virus.

Here’s a really simple example.  How many times have you heard that reducing weight in your trailer will improve your towing fuel economy?  Like a lot of things, there’s some truth to that, but not nearly what people think.  Sure, lowering the trailer weight will result in less energy needed to get the trailer moving from a stop, or pull it up a hill.  But RV’ers spend most of their fuel budget pushing air out of the way, not pulling away from STOP signs.  Aerodynamics play a much larger role in fuel economy than weight.

The misconception about the impact of weight has led to the popular myth that you can save fuel by not carrying water in your fresh water tank.  It’s nonsense, but it is continually spread even by experienced trailerites.  I recently read a book by an Airstreamer who had bought into the myth that reducing his trailer’s weight by dumping his water supply would improve his fuel economy.  So, one windy day on the Interstate he dumped his water, and lo-and-behold his fuel economy did increase that day.

What really happened?  Most likely, the wind decreased slightly, or he reduced his speed a little.  The reduction of weight caused by the loss of 20 or 30 gallons of water, when traveling on the Interstate, is not going to result in significant fuel economy improvement.  If you don’t believe it, then consider this:  Does your fuel economy change materially if you add one passenger to your vehicle?  Probably not unless you strap him to the roof, where he can block some of the windstream.

I had a radical example of the importance of aerodynamics vs. weight last December, when I was towing my 17-foot Airstream Caravel from Michigan to Arizona with a diesel tow vehicle.  Along that 2,000 mile route, I averaged 13 MPG, which is about the same that I get towing the big 30-foot Airstream Safari. But the Caravel weighs just 2,500 pounds, while the Safari weighs about 7,500 pounds.  Triple the weight, almost double the length — and yet, about the same fuel economy.  If a 5,000 pound difference didn’t affect my fuel economy, why would a 160 pound difference (the weight of 20 gallons of water)?

The reason for the similar fuel economy lies in the fact that both Airstream trailers have approximately the same frontal area to pull through the air.  The Caravel is a foot narrower, but that doesn’t make much difference.  In either case, you’re still pulling a rounded block face measuring about 60-70 square feet through the air at highway speed, and that takes a heck of a lot of energy.

Look at the boxy Winnebago pictured at left.  The fuel economy of those things at highway speeds is horrible, about 6 MPG on a good day.  Would you make an airplane that looked like that?  It looks like an origami project.  All the folds, flat faces, and square corners add up to incredible amounts of aerodynamic drag. Adding a couple of hundred pounds to that aerodynamic disaster wouldn’t be noticed in terms of fuel consumption.

Airstreams are inherently much more “slippery” than most other travel trailer designs, so we get better fuel economy overall.  Airstream claims about 20% better, which I can believe based on many conversations I’ve had with owners of other brands.  But it could be better.  Even an Airstream has lots of drag-inducing objects hanging off which reduce fuel economy, such as awning, air conditioner, door handle, etc.  When the economic justification is there (higher fuel prices), you’ll see more radical designs of travel trailers and motorhomes that eliminate the bulges and junk on the outside.

The industry is of course interested in reducing weight too, but that’s mostly a response to small tow vehicles with lower overall towing capacity.  The real fuel economy savings will come when travel trailers slip through the air with less drag.

This example of the “weight myth” is just one of dozens that permeate the RV space.  You’re not going to die if you don’t understand it, but there are other myths and misconceptions that are more dangerous, or which cause people to waste their money.  When I’ve spotted them in the past, I’ve talked about them, but perhaps not enough.  I think my tolerance for the “industry standard” level of ignorance and banality has begun to fade, so in the future I’ll call ’em as I see them.