Our Beginnings
Anita and I have been inspecting RVs since March of 2018. We bought our RV when we began anticipating retirement and wanted to travel and see the country from the ground rather than a plane window. It’s a big, beautiful country out there that’s so much more than a three-hour plane ride can express.
We bought our “Old Girl”, as Anita calls our 2001 Jayco Designer Class C, with little knowledge or experience other than Anita owning a Travel trailer 25+ years ago. Sure, being a couple of detailed control freaks, we did our homework and learned all we could about RVs and what to look for before buying. We spent months “doing our homework”. I became a devotee of YouTube and RV forums.
We began shopping and looking around. By late October 2016 we decided if we didn’t find the perfect RV that we could actually afford, we’d give it a rest until spring. Then we came across an ad on Craig’s List (that’s how long ago this was). The rig looked good in the pictures and was only 200 miles away (!!).
We packed up the car with a flashlight and short list for our “inspection” and an envelope of cash and off we went. I even convinced my brother to tag along because he knows much more about car engines than I do. By the time we arrived we were ready to buy. Traveling all that way and coming home empty-handed was not in our mindset.
We spent an hour thoroughly examining our potential home on wheels. I even poked my head up on the roof. It all looked good to us. I asked my brother what he thought about the engine, and he answered “Well, it runs.” That was good enough for me. We handed over the cash and off we went: me driving this 28 foot rig (I had never driven anything that huge!), and Anita following behind in the car. It was dark by the time we got on the road and began raining like a monsoon. Our “Old Girl” felt like a boat on the high seas of the Interstate. I was scared to death.
We made it home alive.
Learning the Hard Way
The next weeks were spent making it our own. We began to uncover lots of things that needed to be fixed, replaced and updated. Anita and I learned the hard way how to become do-it-yourselfers. It was back to YouTube and RV forums for us. I’ll spare the particulars highlighting our ineptitude and naivety for another time. Except this one. Anita picked up the plexiglass covering the bathroom floor (should have been a red flag but didn’t notice it till we got home) we noted soft spots and ultimately had to replace the bathroom flooring because when we ripped up the vinyl and underlayment, we could see the road! I began to think that if only I had brought somebody who actually knew something about RVs with us, we could have been much better informed.
Becoming an NRVIA Inspector
That’s when we discovered the NRVIA, the association we now belong to that certifies RV inspectors. I theorized that I had so much self-taught knowledge I could become an inspector easily. Wrong again. The program was very rigorous and had a whole level of detail that I never dreamed of. What sold me was that even before the learning started, we had to read and understand their Code of Ethics. It is a very comprehensive document that directs the inspectors to actions that they can and cannot do. The most important thing is that as inspectors we must act at all times with our client’s best interests in mind. To me that meant to treat my clients the way I would like to be treated as a client -something that was not always afforded to me as a corporate drone for forty years.
I became an RV inspector in 2018 and took an additional extensive course to meet updated requirements in 2021. Continuing education is also a must to maintain my certification. We’ve been doing RV inspections for going on seven years now, helping folks not make the same mistakes we made. Yes, our little inspecting enterprise is a great little retirement gig for us, but we love helping our clients most of all. We’ve been in your shoes: making a huge purchase decision with little or no “back-up”. As a newbie our “inspection” consisted of a flashlight and a list of ten things we thought we needed to check out.
Now, as an NRVIA Certified Inspector, our checklist is twenty odd pages consisting of hundreds of items. The inspection takes 4-6 hours and results in a report that can be more than 100 pages complete with pictures. We invest time with our clients to answer questions and educate them. We’ve come a long way!
Our Teamwork Becomes Your team
Anita and I work as a team. This is something we do together, and two sets of eyes are always better than one. While I am the certified inspector and Anita is my assistant, she is much more than that. Her more than forty years as a nurse and nurse practitioner brings a particular focus on health and safety for our inspections. She knows what will work and won’t work for our client’s needs beyond whether the systems work or not. Her attention to detail makes our inspections and reports much more robust. She is the best partner I could ever have, and I would not be doing this without her.
The Future of RVing
During the past seven years we have seen many changes in the profile of the “typical” RVer. It used to be that typical RVers were older retired, or almost retired folks dreaming of the open road (like us!). We are seeing more and more young families who plan to work full time remotely while giving their children the education of a lifetime about the country they live in. We’re seeing people of diverse backgrounds of all ages, ethnicities and family configurations who want to see the country just like we do that are not who us Boomers would think of as typical.
We love it. Afterall people are just people. At our core we all want freedom. We want to experience the world around us and to feel the road beneath our tires. And bring the dog.
And we love what we do.
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