Hello folks,
I've been quietly perusing the forums here, soaking up as much info and tips as I could contain for the last few weeks. Figured it was about time I come out of my shell and socialize a bit!
Name's Lucas, and I'm fairly new to the camping scene, as well as Trailmanors. My girlfriend (soon to be fiance) Rachel and I have spent several months pondering the idea of getting an RV. My retired-farmer grandfather has an early 2000's Fleetwood Discovery, which I had the pleasure of staying in on a trip to his winter hideout in Naples, FL just off the highway to Marco Island. I think this is where the seed was planted that eventually had me interested in getting a 'mobile hotel' of my own.
A little about us... We're both 29, and quickly approaching 30 in just a few months. (I'm not as uncomfortable with this as she is) I'm an IT/Electronics Technician for the Indiana Army National Guard, with almost 12 years of service and prepping now for my 3rd overseas deployment. My better half, Rachel, is a RN at the Indianapolis VA Medical Hospital and enjoys helping the veterans at the VA (so long as they behave she says!). We've been a pair for almost 2 years and will soon be taking the plunge. (Any words of wisdom?
)
Prior to meeting Rachel a big hobby of mine was motorsports, in which I had built my own car for SCCA Solo2 Autocross events. Come to find out, it wasn't the kind of hobby that Rachel and I could both enjoy, plus it gets quite expensive and time consuming. The way this all ties in, is that I finally came to terms with... err I mean joyfully made the decision to trade my previous self-interest into an investment of future memories for the two of us. So during the months of tearing the race car down and selling it off piece-by-piece, I started looking at: 1) A ring (this was the priority purchase), and 2) a travel trailer for us to have a shared hobby that enables us to spend quality time together doing something we'll both enjoy equally.
And for the record, any of my comments that come off as ho-hum are pure sarcasm. Rachel is a sweetheart to the core, and I'm truly excited to have her!
So while Rachel spent most of her free time finding that perfect ring, I spent most of my free time finding that perfect travel trailer. Our requirements were a bit strict it seemed.
Our budget was slim, basically $7-10k was all that we wanted to invest in our first camper, because we are against financing non-essentials and of course there is no guarantee that we'd even enjoy it as much as we had hoped. After all, I sure can't expect to compare it to my previous experience staying in a $200k+ motorcoach!
Aside from finances, we needed something that we could fit in our garage, for a couple reasons. First, I'm just too cheap to shell out $40-$50/mo to store a toy. Lastly, our homeowners association doesn't allow recreational vehicles to be stored outside.
So prior to discovering hard-sided options like Trailmanor and Hi-Lo, we were initially looking at pop up units. We just weren't too thrilled with the idea of having canvas sides, zippered windows, and cramped space. We made a solid effort to find one that would be acceptable, even went to a few RV shows and dealerships here in Indy to look at them. I scoured Craigslist and eBay for months. While I found a few good deals, I just had this gut feeling that we wouldn't have much excitement about this whole camping adventure if we settled on a pop-up. They just looked cheap, both in build quality and aesthetics. I think there's a good market out there for someone who designs a pop-up with colors that aren't bland or downright outdated.
Anywho, I eventually stumbled upon Trailmanor when I was scouring Google for a 'RV that fits in the garage'. This opened up a whole new world of hope for us! The price of these new was way beyond our budget, but it looked like some older models were attainable. We really liked the 2720SL model and thought it would fit us best.
Now the next step was to find one to see in person, which turned out to be difficult! We were on vacation in Houston, Texas in February and I noticed that an 'official dealer' from the Trailmanor website was just about 30 minutes away. We decided to take a morning to go look at these Trailmanors, but ended up finding that the dealership had taken new ownership, and the new owners knew nothing about Trailmanors existence!
Eventually a few weeks after returning home, I noticed a 1999 2619 model was listed at the Camping World just 10 miles from our house. We went to check it out (and got terrible service at this location), but once we got to it, it was a mess. It hadn't even been cleaned out. It smelled horrible, looked real rough, and our experience with the salesperson had us ready to leave in short order. At least it was some degree of seeing a real-life Trailmanor.
Then one random Tuesday evening in late May I was doing my weekly search, and stumbled on a 2006 2720SL in Dayton, Ohio listed for 12,500. The pictures looked that it was in pretty nice condition. I figured they'd be able to budge on the price some, so we may have a shot at meeting our budget. At work the next morning, we were really slow and I couldn't stop thinking about that Trailmanor in Ohio. It seemed almost a sign to me. It was relatively close (<2hrs), was the exact model we wanted, and was right in range of our budget. So I took the rest of the day off and drove home to get Rachel, then we set of for Dayton Ohio.
We arrived at Midwest RV in Dayton, and walked into the showroom to inquire about the Trailmanor. The saleswoman (Amy) was incredibly nice, and grabbed up their resident Trailmanor guru and took us out to the lot to have a look. We set it up, did a walkthrough, broke it down, set it up again, and looked around some more. The stove looked like it had never been used, the furniture was spotless, sink had no stains. It appeared to be a pretty good trailer, despite the low asking price considering other 2006 2720SL's were listed online from other dealers for $15-17k.
Now was the time to run the numbers. Going on the principal that most resellers list products at 80-100% markup from what they paid, I thought $10k would be an easy negotiation. After asking what they could do to lower the price, they came down to $11,400. I explained that I was looking to get it real close to $10k, but the would not counter-offer. It seemed that $11,400 was their cutoff. So to play hardball, I thanked them and headed for the car. Figured that if they would budge more, they'd stop me from leaving. Well, I made it all the way to the car. Was a little confused by this since they didn't say a word. Took my time backing out of the parking space and pulling away onto the street.... nobody came.
Went ahead and shot up the Interstate a bit to grab some lunch and talk this over with Rachel. She was a little upset that I just got up and walked out like that, but I explained to her that this is a negotiation tactic. She wasn't quite buying it, but we moved on with the discussion. I said that at $11,400 it still seemed like a fair deal, but not a great deal. We had our laptop in the McDonalds there to do more online research when I discovered that another 'official' dealer, Dave Arboghast, was just 10 miles up the road. So we decided to make a run up there to see some new models. For being an official dealer, they didn't seem to enthusiastic about the brand. "I'd like to take a look at your Trailmanor pop-ups" I said. The salesman gave me an expression of 'Oh, those things...', and said that he only had 2. A 2720 and a 2720SL. We took a look at the 2720SL and it didn't seem there was much difference between the 2011 ($34k) and the 2006 ($12k) other than aesthetics. (I'm probably wrong here on many technicalities, but to the novice eyes they seemed the same). I played the numbers game with the salesman just to put some faith back in my negotiating skills after my last failure. We got down to a price of $24,999 for the 2011 2720SL, but that was still way over our budget.
Now that I had a little more confidence in my negotiating skills, and we had determined that if we could get Midwest RV down to $11,000 flat then we'd bite, we headed back to Midwest RV for another stab at the deal. After all, I still had that gut feeling that this was supposed to work out for us. Rachel was a little hesitant to go back, because she was embarrassed that we 'stormed out'. But that anxiety quickly left as Amy greeted us with a smile after we returned. I explained our new willingness to meet at $11,000, and the deal was struck. Not only did we get the $11k price, but we got free delivery to their new dealership in Indy, plus a great deal on a weight distribution hitch (40% off). We did all the paperwork, wrote the checks, and set up the demo/pickup date.
So we are now proud owners of a 2006 Trailmanor 2720SL, and haven taken 3 camping trips with it so far. First time out was to Camp Atterbury, an Army base close to home so that we could check everything out and still be able to run home if needed. Second trip was to Indy KOA in Mount Comfort, which is just minutes from my mother's house. We had them over for a cookout and to check out our new 'wheel estate' ha! Third trip was just this last weekend, a 4 day trip to Crane Naval Base where we had access to pontoon boats and a 700 acre lake.
Seeing as this introduction has been quite verbose, I'll try to wrap it up here and keep my many other questions and stories for posts to come!
All-in-all, we're glad to have our Trailmanor nestled in the garage, and we're very glad to have found a great resource and helpful community here!
Cheers,
Lucas & Rachel
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