How did you find your used Trailmanor?

[SCBillandJane]

Several owners have posted about finding their new to them Trailmanor at some distance from their home, and some have felt that they found great deals. Would you share how you found them? Secondly, would you share how much it cost to get it in camping condition after purchasing?

Hi Bill, I think the first place to start is on this form. There is a link to see "trailors for sale or wanted". If there is a dealer in your area he might have information on a "used" unit. Hope this helps! We bought new so I did not need to go this route to make my purchase. I am sure there will be other ideas expressed on the form so hang in there. Good luck and hope you find a unit!

[B_and_D]

Our journey towards our present TM was an interesting one.

I found an ad in the Boise, ID newspaper for a 1998 2720. I emailed the seller, and they said that their unit was in very good shape. We drove there to buy it, and it was not in the shape that we expected. They were not willing to negotiate much, so we left it behind and drove towards Oregon where we had many relatives to visit. We made an enjoyable trip out of our failed TM purchase trip, and on the way through Salem OR, we visited my cousin and told him why we were passing through, and what we were seeking.

A couple of days after I got home, my cousin called me and told me that he had found us exactly what we were looking for. He does janitorial work, and one of the places he works for is a RV dealership in Salem, OR, who just happened to have an 2720 on their lot. They sent me pictures of it, and it was immaculate, so we agreed to purchase it, pending inspection.

We returned to Salem on Labor Day, the TM was beyond our wildest dreams, and still is. Nothing was wrong with it; it was hardly used. We really lucked out. The only thing that broke right after purchase was the Winegard TV booster unit..but it only cost about $40 to fix.

We paid $8900 for it in September, 2003. It was my best birthday present ever!

I searched awhile for my used 3023, learning everything I could about them from these forums during that time. Fortunately, I have an ebay junkie wife, who kept looking there for us. She found one in San Antonio, TX that looked like it fit the bill on what I was looking for.

A used RV dealer there had it. I started asking him questions thru emails about it. The more we exchanged mails, the more the negotiations went. We quickly moved from emails to telephone calls. Alll of this transpired within 24 hours. We were still about $400 dollars off my price, when he throwed in the clincher. He said he would end the auction early for me, and pay my hotel bill if I wanted to come pick it up. As much as I like visiting San Antonio and hard as a good used Trailmanor is to come by.....he sold me.

When I arrived at his business, it was just as clean as he said it was, and the only thing really noticeably wrong was a dent in the upper half of the door, which he had disclosed on his ebay listing, with pics of it. This used dealer was knowledgeable about Trailmanors and took me thru the steps of opening and closing it (which I already knew from these forums). He had water in it, and showed me that the hot water heater, pump, etc. worked. I even climbed underneath it, looking at wiring, framing, seals, etc. I noticed after closing it, that one of the spring-loaded latches was barely holding down the front shell. The dealer had some heavy duty plastic cinches, which we used to help secure it for the journey back.

After arriving home, I gave it a hard inspection and found a crack on the frame. It was in a place that was hard to see, and I missed it on my initial inspection at the dealer. I won't hold that against the dealer either, because I called myself looking for things like that, but missed it and would have expected others to miss it too. It was very hard to see. I followed the advice from Leon and other members here about the crack, and emailed Ed at the TManor factory. After Ed conferred with their guys, he emailed me back precise directions on how to fix the crack and how to reinforce it. That right there sold me on the great customer service that Trailmanor has. Fortunately, I have an employee who is a welder, and he easily fixed the crack for me, following Ed's instructions.

http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...e+crack&page=9

I replaced the spring latch after I got it back home for $8 and the hot water heater anode rod for $13, all which my local Trailmanor dealer had in stock. I also replaced my tires, but I kinda have an inside source on those things. That's all I really had to do to get it in camping shape, outside of fixing the crack in the frame.

I had took a friend/co-driver of mine with me to pick this trailer up, and he had never seen the Alamo. We easily pulled my newly purchased TManor thru the streets of San Antonio down near the Alamo/Riverwalk. It was hard to find a parking spot, because of some kind of charity walk that was going on that morning. I finally found a paid parking lot with some other RV's in it. They charged me $50 bucks to park there. Me and the girl haggled over whether or not I had a true rv or not, but I lost that argument.

One of the first things I did after becoming a trailmanor owner, was to officially join this forum group. Best thing any Trailmanor owner can do.

The missus and I started looking for campers in Oct. 06 after the wind bent 1 of the support poles on our pop-up. The canvas blowing all nite also convinced us that something else was needed. We wanted a lite weight camper to pull behind our Blazer, which was replaced with a truck about the same time we bought our TM....another story. We were beginning to check out Casitas, Hi-Lo's, Trailmanors, and others online to get ideas. The nearest TM dealers are ~150 miles away, and we were planning a trip to 1 to see what they looked like. Lo and behold, my missus found a TM advertised in the local trader magazine. We went to look at it without knowing much about them. The lady had to get the directions out to work everything.....they hadn't used it for about a year. The unit was filty, musty smelling....the shady side actually turned green from the algae growth....wish I had taken pictures. The TM didn't appeal to the missus, but I saw potential. So, with the wife's reluctant blessing, I went to check it out a second time, and negotiated a deal.

At that time, I was not aware of this forum, so I attacked things the 1st month or so without help. After getting it home, spending a weekend or 2 cleaning it up with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and Black Streak Remover, it looked brand new again. I had to scrap off a bunch of old caulk from the roof vents, and recaulk. Scraped and recaulked a lot of the roof seems, and will have to more in the future.

All of the appliances worked, except for the oven. The battery was toast. There was a spill/messed up spot on 1 of the dinnette cushions. The outside shower door hinge was busted. There were a couple small dents. The rest of the wear and tear items are what should be expected on any TM after a couple of miles. But we considered ourselves very lucky with our purchase.

We bought the TM for what we thought was an excellent price. Since then we have put another $1400 into it, including:
Water heater bypass, oven repair, 2 batteries, a radio/CD player, lift kit, new 15" wheels and tires, mud flaps, and many other small items that add up to that amount.....right down to the silver ware trays and storage containers.....my wife things I'm anal.

Chap

We found ours from an ad on this site. We drove 300 miles to check it out and it looked fine. After thinking about it for a week, we made arrangements to go back the next week and pick it up, then took it camping the following weekend.

I found mine in Indiana in RVTraderonline. The web site was on the home page for this forum. It was just 1 year old and described as like new. It was not a TM dealer and they really met my price. We made that our vacation for the summer and visited a lot of friends along the way. We saved about 1/3 of the MSRP. The dealer didn't know how to open it and I believe that had a lot to do with the good price.

Bill,

We found our 3023 2004 TM in late 2005 on the internet. Drove 600 miles from MD to NH and brought it home. This was the first trailer or Rv we have owned. Almost everything worked fine and we are happy with it. This form has taught me everything I know (still have so much to learn) and I thank everyone for all their posts and help.

John & Marion

I believe that first and foremost the key to finding a good unit at a reasonable price is patience. I spent approximately one year after deciding to go with a TM before finding what I wanted within an amount I was willing to spend. In fact I was willing to spend a good deal more, but didn’t have to.

The internet makes shopping a lot easier than it used to be. I found some attractive deals on new units at dealers in Ohio and New Hampshire on rvtraderonline.com. Another excellent source of clean, used travel trailers is texasrvcenter.com. They don’t get a TM very often, but I’ve seen a couple of good deals there. This forum may be the best place. I actually found mine through the mention on this forum of a classified ad in S.C.. No particulars were given except the area of the state. Searching the classified in S.C. newspapers via the web put me onto a consignment deal at a non-TM dealer. Bought just what I was looking for at a price much lower than I was prepared to pay.

As to what I had to do in order to get it ready for use; nothing except purchase a battery. Everything worked without any problems. I did give it a meticulous cleaning and have made a large number of livability improvements, 75% of which were generated from ideas from this forum.

Wishing you the best as you continue your search. I don’t believe you will be disappointed after you find the unit you are searching far.

Bill

I called the TM factory to get a listing of all the dealers in my area (CT) & at 1st the receptionist was only going to give me ONE dealer in MA. There's got to be a better way to find these things. They are not well known and are very hard to come by. Why is that? It seems to be such a nice trailer but the manufacturer surely doesn't seem to be marketing their product throughout the US that well. You would think after 25 years they would have at least one authorized dealer in each state by now. BTW, I just joined this forum and find all the info quite valuable and interesting. I have noticed that no one talks prices when mentioning they got a good deal. They are quite pricey and I can understand why to a certain point. Would anyone be interested in divulging what they paid for theirs? I am looking at an 08 2720SL w/lots of options in it but need to know if the selling price is a good deal or not. Can anyone help me with this? I'll give more details if anyone responds, which I hope you will. I would really appreciate anyone's help. Thanks in advance - Linda