Tips for quick departure after work

Until last year, my truck was my tow vehicle and daily driver. Camping was mostly weekends only. Living in San Jose, I am always anxious to get ahead of the crowd after work on a Friday night.

Here are some tricks that I used. I still use some of them. This is not necessarily efficient. It is less work to load stuff in the back of my truck than in the TM, but then it is not secure in the company parking lot. I am willing to perform the extra effort of loading stuff on the TM floor, even though it is less spacious than the bed of the truck.

Coming back home Sunday, I pack differently. Coming home I do not want anything in the TM that I might need later, because the TM will be closed up in the garage. The first thing I do when I get back home is put the TM immediately in the garage.

I can legally leave my TM on the street for 72 hours, but I do not like to do so very frequently. So I normally load up the weekend before a trip. Here is my process.

Pull the TM out Saturday morning and pop it open on the street.

1. fill with water. Sanitize once a year.
2. charge toilet and add Potty Toddy tablets only. Chemicals will be added in camp. I do not like the toilet chemicals to brew in a hot garage all week.
3. plug in to shore power to charge batteries.
4. load clothes, canned goods, etc. Some of this stuff stays in all summer.
5. load fridge with non perishable stuff, mostly drinks. Room temperature Otter Pops in the freezer.
6. set fridge on 12 volts and fridge fan on.
7. pack the TM floor with everything that will fit, typically: 5 folding chairs, one folding lounge chair, two folding tables, small portable gas grille, bedding, kids (25 and 27) sleeping bags and tents, free standing awning, and anything else that I can think of that will fit.

I weighed my TM once when fully loaded. I did not weigh the tongue, but the axle was 3380, 120 pounds less than the documented limit. Close, but not over.

TM is then parked in the garage and the batteries are disconnected via a switch that I added on the exterior. The fridge is not actually running now.

Wednesday after work, I plug the TM into shore power and connect the TM batteries, dual Interstate group 24 batteries. This charges the batteries to the top, chills the fridge and its contents and freezes my Otter Pops.

Also on Wednesday, plug in the Coleman 12 volt portable cooler in the house on 120 volts to pre-chill.

Thursday night fill the Coleman cooler with milk, lettuce, tomatoes, lunch meat and other perishable items.

Also on Thursday night, load the rear seat of the crew cab truck with other stuff that is not smelly (no generator in TM or truck). Stack other stuff in garage ready to be loaded.

Friday after work, disconnect shore power, connect batteries, pull TM out of garage onto street, load bed of truck with the last of the stuff in the garage, move Coleman cooler to space left in back seat of truck and plug in to truck power.

I keep an empty ice chest in the bed of the truck. At the last gas stop before camp, I fill that up with ice.

In camp, besides the usual things to do, transfer drinks from TM fridge to the ice chest, I like my beer very cold. Transfer the Coleman cooler stuff into TM fridge. Put TM fridge on propane.

From the time I pull up to the house after work until the house is locked and off we go is a little less than an hour. I was hoping to get it down to 30 minutes. But, DW has bad knees and the kids are 10 miles away, so I do all the last minute shuffling of things by myself. With two healthy people it could be a half hour.

So lets here some other tips to get out of Dodge in a hurry Friday after work.

[ShrimpBurrito]

For older TMs (pre-2003?), adding a 110v cord that can be plugged in while the TM closed has really saved us time. That way we can turn on the fridge, stock it, and close the TM and hook up to the TM -- all while keeping the fridge running. That saves us 15-30 min easy since all we have to do is unplug and drive away. Otherwise, you go in the TM checking things out, close it, hook up, etc. Ugh.

Highly recommended mod if you want to save time...not my idea...someone posted a thread here with the idea.

Dave

That's a good checklist, Wayne!

The biggest timesaver was an investment in a solid tonneau for the truck bed. We bought the Extang Solid-Fold. We toss all the chairs, the folding table, genset, and a Tupperware tub with the jack, drill, 12v air compressor and sundry emergency stuff, into the truck bed and lock it up.

That allows us to pack nearly everything ahead of time. About all that is left is to fill the cooler with ice and fill it with veggies & other cold stuff that doesn't go in the fridge. Banjo, jackets, travel snacks, Direct TV box, and what we call a "One Night Bag" go into the back seat. We can then lift the jacks, hook up, and get on our way.

The "One Night Bag" is a very small gym bag that has enough stuff for "one night" should we decide to pull into a motel on the way home. It doesn't get used a lot but some times we wind up leaving late for home, find that part way home we decide we're too tired to go on and just want to check into an inexpensive motel rather than find an RV park and go through the hassle of set up late at night. PJs, clean underwear, and toiletries are right there rather than having to open the TM to get them.

[4Kids2Dogs]

Great! A big Thank You very much for sharing your experience with us newbies! I'll print it up and use it for getting ready for our first trip.