With our fifth wheel specs in hand (see “The RV Takes Shape”), it was time to search in earnest for one to call our own. An obvious starting point was Google, but a search for “Used Fifth Wheel” returns over 15 million results. Maybe once I am retired I will have time to look through 15,000,000 web pages, but until then I need to narrow my search. The very first result was for www.usedfifthwheel.com which sounded promising. But the site offers only one option for narrowing my search: price. A search for 5th wheels in the $25,000-to-$50,000 range returned only 7 RVs, none in New England. Not very useful.
The remaining offerings on the first Google results page were similarly unhelpful. Some were for remote dealerships (do I really care if there is an appealing RV for sale in Tyler, TX?), others were for sites that talked about used fifth wheels in general, and a few were for specific RVs for private sale in places I didn’t want to visit, even when I get an RV. Bad floorplan. Too small. Too expensive. Too old. A lot of time spent unproductively.
I decided that it might be more productive to search for specific models. I found a site that is very helpful for picking out models that meet our specific needs: www.rvguide.com. The search screen allowed me to narrow the search down to fifth wheels. Unfortunately, it also forced me to pick a manufacturer, a model and a year. This is where I discovered just how many different models of used fifth wheels exist. The point was driven home because I had to re-enter my choices – fifth wheel, manufacturer, year, model – for each model I wanted to view. The payoff from all this tedium was a floorplan of each. I picked out 2009 as a model year of interest because a 2009 model would be new enough to have flat-screen TVs and old enough to be affordable. I could also look at only those models that were longer than 35 feet because shorter ones were very unlikely to have the bath-and-a-half that we required.
I should point out that the web site did not allow me to specify a length, but almost every manufacturer has model numbers that reflect either the length or the square footage, which is a good proxy for length.
A few hours of this yielded a very short list of candidates:
- Open Range 399BHS
- Keystone Montana (Mountaineer) 346LBQ
- Forest River Blue Ridge 3704BH
- Forest River Cardinal 3804BH
Next stop was the manufacturer’s web site (www.openrangerv.com, www.keystonerv.com and www.forestriverinc.com, respectively). These sites are useful for getting information on the company and a sense of their range of products, but I really didn’t learn much more about the specific models that I was interested in. Each company wanted to let me know that they were the best and I should buy their RV immediately, if not sooner.
Back to Google. Fortunately each of these models has a name that is unlikely to be confused with anything else or lead me to a pornographic site. A search of “399BHS”, for example, yielded only(!) 28,400 results. “346LBQ” produced 14,600 results. Now I can’t say that “fewer results” translates into “less popular” but part of me is left suspecting that this might just be the case. “3704BH” produced 12,600 results and “3804BH” gave back 14,600. We have a clear winner, folks: the Open Range 399BHS.
Actually, the Open Range was already the front-runner for a number of good reasons that go well beyond Google counts. I loved the floorplan, and I got a sense that Open Range manufactured high-quality products. And I just love the horse on the nose cap.
One of the “399BHS” search results led me to a UTube video of a 399BHS walkthrough. As I had never been inside one, I found this clip to be fascinating. I am sure similar walkthroughs are available for just about any RV model, if you look hard enough.
I did, eventually, find a couple of listings from Maine of 399BHS’s that were sufficiently interesting to justify a trip to view them (though Jett has vowed to *never* go to Maine – no, I don’t know why but feel free to ask her). I made a note of those and moved on.
I also did a search for these specific models in Craigslist. The problem with Craigslist is that you have to look in a specific geographic locale. Since my search range was all of New England, I had to repeat my search through the 5 MA regions, 2 CT regions, RI, NH and VT. Again, tedious. But I did find a couple more possibilities.
We were getting closer to our prey. Now it was time to make contact with some real owners and dealers and see some real candidates for an RV to call Our Own.