Wife drives motorhome?

[Danielsand]

My wife can back up our 2500 Sierra with four horse trailer attached, better than me. She leaves MH to me.

I can drive further, and longer than most people, without getting tired. She sleeps, I drive. It works for us. When I get tired, I pull over and sleep. Only IF we have to be somewhere at the certain time. Otherwise we take it slow and easy.

I "drove" big commercial airplanes in the tight spaces on some airports. 40' DP is easy for me.

[cwsqbm]

Plenty of both genders don't like driving a large vehicle.

When the wife isn't comfortable driving a motorhome, the husband does the driving.
When the husband isn't comfortable driving a motorhome, they generally don't get a motorhome.

This increases the odds of a motorhome being owned by a couple where the wife won't drive it.

[Mike and Cha]

I do all the driving as my wife will not drive the MH. She can do everything else regarding set up and operation, and understand how everything works, she will just not drive it. I love to drive so that is no big deal. Even when we travel in our cars she prefers that I drive. In the event that something happens to me while traveling, she will just fly our son out to wherever we are and have him drive it home. In my opinion that is not that big of a deal or a reason to push her to do something she doesn't want to do.

[twinboat]

Originally Posted by LeeOts

My wife drives about 60% of the time. The only things she doesn't care to do are parking/backing and "off roading" on BLM boondock areas. She gets antsy when I drive down steep grades on a dirt road.

She mainly drives as a defensive mechanism because I tend to get bored and fall asleep. For some reason, it scares the snot out of her when my head starts nodding! So, whenever I don't feel like driving, I start nodding my head and she immediately orders me to pull off the highway and let her drive. Works for me!

What a great idea !!! I'll try that soon.

[ksandbe]

We both drive. The "passenger" is the designated navigator. That way the driver just has to focus on driving.

[znt1186]

My wife would not consider driving. She has enough problems with depth perception driving her Sienna. I won't consider letting her navigate if I want go to a specific place. If we are just wandering and don't care where we are going or how to get there, her navigation is fine. That being said, I handle driving and navigation. On set up and break down, she takes care of the inside of the coach and I handle the outside chores.


On edit, I do love her more than she could imagine, and this arrangement happily works for us.

[twinboat]

My wife hails from NY City and didn't drive anything until age 45 in 2001.

I moved her to the suburbs and she got her license and then drove a school bus for a few years.

She drives our Class C about 1/3 the time.

[Frantz]

When DH & I married 11 years ago, I came with a 35' DP; he had never been in a motorhome. First trip he sat in passenger seat, watched the world go by & dozed. Got to the coast & watched while I backed into the site, hooked up water, sewer & electric. He decided this RV stuff was pretty fun.

Today we are full-time & the motorhome is a 40' DP with toad & I still do 99% of driving. DH now does the outside connecting & he does do most of the car driving at stops. DH is also one of the best guides for placing the motorhome in a spot. DH does drive a couple of hundred miles a year to keep his knowledge up. Yes, we have had the situation when I was incapacitated after cancer surgery so he drove us back to our site from the hospital.

It was pretty funny at an FMCA Rally when he went to a co-pilot seminar with 1 other man & about 75 women. Their recommendation was for ALL co-pilots to learn drive their rigs.

Most annoying experience is when we get someplace & inevitably a man will come ask "can I park that for you sweetie?" or ask my DH why he would let "her" drive?

[TrapGame]

Did motohomo say that women drive just as well or even better than men?

[head gamez]

I put the CFO in the seat on a non busy stretch of 4 lane by claiming emergency. I unbuckled, told her to take the wheel, and we switched. I just sat and watched her drive for a while.
I knew she could do it. She just needed the right motivation.

I don't think she will volunteer to pull the fiver though.... And an "in service switcharoo" is definitely out of the question with this setup.

[sfrantz]

We fulltime and my wife does most of the driving. I drive a few hours a year to stay in practice.

When we met 11 years ago, my wife had been using and driving RVs her whole life. I had never even been inside one. I didn't see the point. She owned a 35' Bounder. To see if i would like it we went out for a weekend after we married. She did everything since I didn't even know how to hook up power or drain tanks. It's pretty nice when your partner does everything!

Clearly I fell in love with it since we've been full timing for 6 years. As I said, I drive a few hours a year to stay in practice, but she does all the driving. Since she has many years more practice, she is clearly a better driver.

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Some people, especially older ones, cannot wrap their mind around the fact that DW does virtually all the driving. Two stories.

We attended a small driving class once and the teacher emphasized that he ran another class called "Driving for the Wife" or something like that. We tried to convince him to call it "Driving for the Copilot" but he just didn't seem to understand. He simply did not understand!

We attended Camp Freightliner together (which is a great class). The instructor would always call on me to discuss driving questions no matter how often we corrected him. Near the end of the 3-day class, he was discussing the customizable dashboard, and he asked me what I liked to look at when we go down the road. I said that I like to look at the scenery, but sometimes I just closed my eyes and dozed off.

[Frantz]

Originally Posted by sfrantz

We fulltime and my wife does most of the diving. I drive a few hours a year to stay in practice.

When we met 11 years ago, my wife had been in and driving RVs her whole life. I had never even been inside one. I didn't see the point. She owned a 36' Bounder. To see if i would like it we went out for a weekend after we married. She did everything since I didn't even know how to hook up power or drain tanks. It's pretty nice when your partner does everything!

Clearly I fell in love with it since we've been full timing for 6 years. As I said, I drive a few hours a year to stay in practice, but she does all the driving.

Nice when your spouse tells the same story

[spsm]

I know this lady that can out drive many a man. She is an X-school bus driver. I don't have any X-school bus drivers riding in my rig. I have to do my own driving.

[TMan59]

Originally Posted by Frantz

Most annoying experience is when we get someplace & inevitably a man will come ask "can I park that for you sweetie?" or ask my DH why he would let "her" drive?

Please just do this once for me:

When the man ask if he can "park it for you sweetie" just say you "can do it, but which one is the brake again????"

Should be a great moment that hopefully makes facebook!