What I Tell Every First-Time RV Renter

The pre-trip checklist that saves the rookies — from someone who's handed over a lot of keys.

Most first-time RV renters make the same three mistakes, and all of them are avoidable with a ten-minute conversation before you leave the lot. Here’s the version I give in person, from years around the rental side of this.

Do the full walk-through, and don’t rush it. Electrical hookups, the dump procedure, the water system, the awning, the leveling — get shown each one and actually run it once yourself before you drive off. The worst nights happen because someone nodded through the walk-through.

Know your rig’s height and length cold. Write them on a sticky note on the dash. Low bridges and tight campsite loops are where rentals get hurt, and “I forgot how tall it was” is the most expensive sentence in RVing.

Book the campsite before the rig, not after. In peak season the good spots go first, and a great RV with nowhere to park it is a bad trip. Reserve the site, then the rig, then everything else.

Everything else — the gear, the groceries, the route — is downstream of getting those three right.

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