Who has a Class A former rental?

[Adaycj]

I rented a class A for a week in Cali a few years back (work related). According to the manager, with 70,000 miles it was slated to be sold soon. It had a number of fairly serious cosmetic issues, but any tire kicker that was inspecting it would easily find them. It did have repaired roof damage, and I found it when I thought I had caused more damage on a tree branch. Every system of any importance worked, however.

As a comparason the very used class A had less real issues than my new 2014 Coachmen. There a idiots that abuse things everywhere, and my experience is that those same people that destroy a rental will also wreck their own stuff. Any used unit could have had the same life as my rental. At least with the rental there is a chance that when the abusive renter is done it will go in for service. People who wreck stuff usually aren't up on maintenance.

[Slate Run]

Before I got too far along with this plan, I would talk to the buyer at a few RV dealerships. Specifically asking how much do they discount a trade in figure because the rig has a prior rental history? Not, "well, we rented it out a few times", but "am I making a mistake buying a well worn, high mileage rig from Cruise America, El Monte, RoadbearRV......etc?" It makes sense to think about the exit strategy, no matter what you buy. I don't know how much disclosure is involved when a second owner sells a used A, but when it comes to those that are clearly built for the industry, for example the Majestic series that are obviously well worn, spruced up Ex-Cruise America stock, They depreciate horrendously.

There was a recent discussion on RV.net regarding this. Two big issues are studiously avoided by the happy new owners of these things. first, when purchased from the major rental companies, they are well marketed and IMHO, grossly overpriced. They are flogged for 7-8 years, accumulate 2-3X the miles, and who knows? maybe fifty times the wear of a privately owned unit. The seller tries hard to get you to believe that none of that matters, and their exceptional maintenance and reconditioning make the thing worth a premium. Second, when you look at online resales at dealers, it becomes clear that, 2-4 years after the purchase you can expect a trade in, or buy out figure, that is a shockingly small percentage of your "investment". If you paid a non-negotiable figure of mid-20s for a seven year old rig with 120K miles, and the dealer is ASKING $17K for the same rig, that's three years older, you can pretty much guess that they didn't pay more than $12-13K for it. A 50% hit in a few years doesn't work for me.