Steph and Dud B's RV Screed

With our Oliver trailer delivery day approaching fast we officially put our fifth wheel up for sale today. The Rockwood 8289WS is listed on RV Trader here , if anyone's interested. It's a nice rig. We really enjoyed it. UPDATE 5/13: We now have a sale pending on our fifth wheel.

One of the traditions of the Oliver Travel Trailer company is that they refer to their trailer bodies as "hulls." I assume this has to do with the fiberglass construction, similar to many sailboats, and the fact that a Catamaran designer helped the company design their first trailer. Another tradition is that they assign each trailer its own "hull number," starting with Hull #1 for the first trailer they built in 2007. Owners are very proud of their trailer's hull number since it tells others a little about its history and lineage. We have just passed an important step on the road to getting our new Oliver Elite 2 in June: we've learned our hull number. Our trailer will be hull number 1150. We also followed another owners' tradition. We named our trailer. Hull number 1150 will be named Eggcelsior,  a play on excelsior, which means "ever upward" and is often used as an exclamation upon the completion of a major challenge or accomplishment. We th...

Last week we sent Oliver Travel Trailers our second deposit payment and our build sheet, which specifies our option choices for our new trailer. Some of the options we chose were a large lithium battery bank and rooftop solar panels, cellular signal booster, and an additional awning on the driver's side of the trailer. These are all to increase our boondocking/drycamping capabilities with an eye toward more varied and less expensive campsite options and future trips back to the Southwest. We still have a few more items to purchase before we take delivery. Other than that, we're basically in a holding pattern. Oliver will start making our trailer in early May. For now, we wait and anxiously watch the financial situation. It's going to be an expensive summer for RVing, but the trips we have booked are relatively close to home and we're hoping the Oliver's lighter weight and aerodynamic shape will give us better gas mileage than we currently get with our fifth wheel.

On October 25, 2021 we talked to our Oliver sales rep and put a $2,500 deposit on an Oliver Legacy Elite 2 with the twin bed floorplan. Our estimated delivery date: late July, 2022 - 9 months away. What to do while we waited? Shop for stuff, of course! Weirdly, even though we've been camping for 20+ years, we had to buy more stuff to move to a smaller trailer. Some of the things we carried in our fifth wheel were too big for the Oliver and had to be replaced by smaller versions, or alternate devices. Others were things we never needed before, like a ball hitch for the pickup truck. We pored over the Oliver forums, looking for tips and tricks, and started making shopping lists on Amazon and other online retailers. When something went on sale, we grabbed it. When Christmas came, we asked for gift cards. Here are some of the things we've bought so far (we have no affiliation with any of these vendors and have not been compensated for any of these links): Weigh-Safe 4" Drop Hi...

Now that we were seriously considering buying an Oliver, the next step was to reach out to the company to learn more about them. There are no Oliver dealers, they are sold factory-direct, so if you don't live near the factory in Hohenwald, Tennessee you need to visit a privately-owned trailer if you want to see one. An email to Oliver was quickly answered and our sales rep helped us make arrangements to visit Jeff and Katie's brand-new Oliver Elite 2 at their house.  There were a couple of things in particular we wanted to look at: the beds and the bathroom. The Elite 2 comes in two floorplans, one with a dinette/king bed conversion in the back, the other with fixed twin beds. Steph was leaning towards the twin bed floor plan for easier access to overhead storage and not needing to convert the bed at night, but I had my doubts. I'm 6 feet tall and was worried the bed would be uncomfortably small for me. This is not a standard twin mattress. It is only 30" wide and tape...

With retirement in our sights, the Oliver trailers appealed to us because of their: Lower maintenance Durability High historical resale value But, an Oliver would be a huge departure from our established camping patterns. Our current fifth wheel fits our present camping mode perfectly: typically short hauls to regional full-hookup campgrounds for stays ranging from one weekend to two weeks at a time. It has three slides and provides plenty of living and storage space for extended stays. There are plenty of creature comforts inside like leather recliners and a fireplace. It's quite comfortable. There's room to entertain friends. Our gas-powered dually tows it comfortably in mild to medium terrain. And it's not too big at 32' long.  Oliver makes two trailers, the 23.5' Elite 2 and the smaller Elite. We immediately decided that the Elite would be too small for us, but the Elite 2 was a possibility. However, it's truly the polar opposite of our fifth whe...

Last summer I was on the roof of our fifth wheel doing routine maintenance on the roof seals. If you own an RV you know how important that is. Any water leak can lead to major damage: delamination of the walls and serious damage to the wooden cabinets, interior walls, and floors of the unit. As I crawled around 13 feet off the ground I started wondering how many more years I'd be able to do that.  When fall came, Steph and I worked hard hauling the winter cover up onto the roof and getting that secured. Again, I thought about the difficulty that task will entail as we age.  Then I saw an interesting article in my news feed, something about "America's answer to European RVs." It talked about a little RV manufacturer in Tennessee called Oliver Travel Trailers . They make molded fiberglass travel trailers. I'd seen little Casitas and Scamps in campgrounds before, tiny little white bubble campers, and I always assumed they were cheap little campers for people who coul...