Switching from a C-Class Motorhome to a Travel Trailer | Ep. 66

Presented by Niagara Trailers — your trusted source for RVs, trailers, and camping adventures across Ontario. 

This week on The RV Canucks, we’re catching up with our good friend Ben, who recently made the leap from a C-Class motorhome to a travel trailer. He joins Dan to share what buying a trailer in 2025 really looks like — from finding the perfect rig at the Niagara Trailers booth at the RV show, to the purchase process, pickup day, and finally, that first tow. 

Ben talks about learning the ropes as a new tower, setting up weight distribution, and gaining confidence on the road. Whether you’re thinking about switching setups or just love a good new-rig story, this episode is packed with practical tips, laughs, and first-hand insights you won’t want to miss.  

📝 Show Notes 

• Why Ben decided to switch from a C-Class to a trailer
• The RV show experience and how Niagara Trailers made the process easy
• What to expect from pickup day and dealer walkthroughs
• Tips for towing as a newbie
• Weight distribution and setup must-knows
• Building confidence on the road
• Ben’s biggest takeaways from his first few trips

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TRANSCRIPT

0 (0s): Welcome to the RV Canucks your friendly source for camping and RV tips, stories, and a few laughs from right here in Canada. You might notice you won’t be hearing as much from me on this episode. Today I’m taking a bit of a backseat. It’s been ages since Dan and I have been on the buying side of a trailer, and a lot has changed since we last took that plunge about 10 years ago. So to help us get up to speed on what buying a trailer looks like in 2025, I’m handing things over to Dan and our good friend who you just might recognize from previous episodes, who has just been through the whole process. They’ve got all of the fresh insight and firsthand experience we need. So without further ado, we’ll hand it off. 2 (45s): So welcome ev, everybody. I’m here with my good friend of over 10 years, Ben Braddo, and we’ve, we’ve coached hockey for a lot of different years together through a lot of different teams, but really it’s only maybe the last three or four years that we’ve gotten to know each other on the RV side of the house. And so maybe about four years ago, Ben and his wife Janine, they were on the podcast and they told us about Marge and their trip out west with the family. So welcome Ben. Say hello to everybody. Hi, Dan. Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s, it’s a pleasure and an honor to be here. Oh, we’re so excited. It’s the middle of the week, middle of October. That’s right. We’re getting ready to winterize basically. 2 (1m 27s): Well, and that’s where we’re at, right? For a lot of people, we’ve come to the end of the season and I think what we’re hoping, you’ve got some big news and you’re gonna bring it up early in the podcast, but I think what we’re hoping to do is learn from your experience this season for all the listeners out there as they think about what maybe 20, 26 will look like. Sure. So like, as you mentioned, we, we were on the podcast a few years ago talking about our experience out to Lake Louise in our rv, Marge, which was, you know, an epic trip for the ages. Just over 7,500 kilometers round trip through Ontario all the way out. We took maybe four days on the way out there, stayed at Dinosaur Park for a few days and then went out to Lake Louise for a few days and, and again, epic journey all the way out, all the way back. 2 (2m 12s): Thankfully, we had no issues. Everything ran smoothly and that was back in 2020. So we spent the last five years really enjoying Marge on a local sense. Within an hour, maybe a two hour radius of the house. We like to explore campgrounds in our neighborhood because we were stuck with the kids doing these short trips. Now, originally we, we had Marge, which is a class C motor home. She was 33 feet. We had her because it had eight seat belts. So we’ve got the, we had five kids, or we still do, they still exist. Just three of them are adults now and don’t necessarily come camping with us. I think once you be, have the ability to vote, you don’t go camping with your parents anymore, is how it works. 2 (2m 54s): But back then, we still had all the kids with us, and of course with the five children, Janine, myself, that’s seven seat belts. We couldn’t fit it in the truck. So when we upgraded from tent camping to let’s have something a little more mobile, a little more stable, the only consideration was really the classy. And we, we fell in love with Marge. She, she gave us five amazing years, but again, now we’re at a point where our oldest is 25, 2 other daughters in their twenties. So it’s just the younger two that are coming camping with us. And we don’t necessarily have the need for the, the seat belts and we can have a little more freedom, which I think ultimately is what caused us to, to trade in this year or trade up this year to a new travel trailer. 2 (3m 42s): And you didn’t, so the big announcement is Ben bought a new travel trailer, the big announcement, and, and we’re gonna dive into that. You had a class C, but you didn’t bring a towed vehicle behind you either, did you? No, I, I didn’t ever, I could have, we did have a class four hitch on Marge, but I used it more for a cargo rack or bike racks, that sort of extra consideration. Never really towed anything before bigger than a garbage dump trailer sort of thing, or a small utility trailer. Yeah. Gotcha. So you’re, you’re coming to the table from a class C that needed lots of seat belts to bring the family and you’ve got lots of camping experience, so that’s what you’re bringing to the table. 2 (4m 23s): I was, so we bumped into you at the spring RV show in Toronto. Didn’t know you were gonna be there. We’re a little surprised to find you down there with Janine. So it was nice to bump into some friendly faces. Right. I guess that’s the start of your trailer buying experience. Well, part of the, part of the, the reasoning for going to the RV show was to explore the idea of what was out there, explore the various layouts by actually walking through them. It’s one thing to, to think about, you know, I wish Marge had this, or I wish Marge could do this differently. It’s another thing to actually walk through and, and look at them. Marge was working perfectly. She was a 2006 model, so it was getting to 20 years old, roughly. 2 (5m 5s): For me it was because we’re doing these two hour trips and we’ll do maybe one long road trip per year. The the little short trips, six, eight of those per year. Oftentimes, once you’re set up in your class C and leveled out, you’re there for the weekend. So if you forgot your coffee or forgot some sugar and you need to run into towns, that’s an issue. Right. So a prime example, when we did our trip out west, we got set up at Lake Louise, beautiful campsite. We decide we’re gonna go for the gondola tour across the road. Well, nobody’s walking up that hill to get on the gondolas, so let’s pack up the campsite, drive the RV up to the top of the go, which is great, great adventure, but it’s a pain in the ass. 2 (5m 48s): So really the thought for Janine and I was, we want to continue our, our camping experience. It’s all about, you know, giving the memories of and, and exploration of nature to the kids and, and to keep them coming with us. We’re not gonna go back to a tent. So we want to reduce in size, but to a layout that we really could deal with for the next 10, 15 years sort of thing. And that was the whole point of, again, going to the, the, the RV show is to physically be able to walk around in the units and yeah, we, you pointed us to the Niagara Trailers booth. We walked around a couple models in there and happened to fall in love with one of the bunkhouse models in their section and started the path of conversation with Niagara trailers. 2 (6m 31s): So what did you buy? Yeah, it’s a 29 T Forest River. It’s brand new 2025, which I guess technically means it’s a 29 foot, it’s 36 foot eight, I think tongue to tongue to end. So it is, you know, if I thought Marge needed the wide turnout of the gas station, this one needs a special gas station to go to, to make it through sort of thing. Otherwise you’re, I don’t know if we haven’t got there yet, but hopefully we don’t have to, you know, so we, we wanted to shrink that down just a little bit. We wanted a, a bunkhouse model because the kids could then have their own environment to sleep in, in a, this model has a door in the back bedroom for the girls to have their own little private area. 2 (7m 12s): You know, we have a 14-year-old and a 9-year-old that comes with us. So the 14-year-old is not necessarily an early riser. She likes to have her own space. We want the kids coming with us as much as we can. One of the biggest downfalls of Marge was just the overall crampiness inside. Even with the bump out, the kids slept in the bunk above the driver and the other kids slept in the, in the udine net in the kitchen. So you’re constantly converting a bed to a kitchen and you’re constantly stepping over each other’s bags, et cetera. In, in the bunkhouse, the kids have an area to put their bags, they have their own sort of space to put back. And now it seems specifically with this model, once you put the side bump out out, which is the couch and the, the U-shaped dinette, it’s, you know, comparable to a, an apartment kitchen really with like, it’s a lot more comfort in this specific model. 2 (8m 1s): There’s a king bedroom up front with a cheater bathroom to walk through to get to it. The only really confined area I find in the new trailer is the entry to the bedroom, bathroom cheater area. But I’m a big guy, so that’s understandable sort of thing really, again, we walked into the model and just the way it was laid out, it felt like a two bedroom apartment and where Marge was a camper on wheels. That’s really interesting because I guess I wouldn’t have picked up so much on the compactness or the crampiness of Marge and I understand the freedom aspect of, you know, forgetting the coffee or the sugar, but it sounds like you’ve got yourself something that’s feels bigger, even though Marge was a substantial unit. 2 (8m 42s): Sure, sure. You’re happy with what you got. Absolutely. I, I think so. It’s sort of after we’ve been into our season here too, we can talk about the differences in setting up and, and the, I find it a lot easier to level out, a lot easier to get going. But yeah, specifically on that topic, Marge was, I don’t know if the bump out extension was not quite as much as the new model and that that didn’t give us the extra floor pan or whatever. It feels like, it does feel like it’s more open, even though it’s sort of similar in design. Ultimately, Marge was a forest river as well. She never had a single leak, never had a single issue as far as generators go. The water pump went a little fritz at the end of it, but again, it was nearly 20 years old. 2 (9m 25s): The only real maintenance i’d I had replaced the shower head one year. ’cause it, it froze out. I think that’s really the only maintenance I had done with it. So walking through the RV show, this happened to be an, a Forest River model as well, and doing the research on it, it’s, it seemed to have its pros and cons, middle of the line type quality stuff. But we felt confident enough to, to go forth with that. So, so from the RV show, we didn’t actually make the purchase through there, but we got in contact with, with sales guys and then Janine and I made the trip out to Niagara Falls maybe a few weeks later. Darcy was our sales guy. Darcy was wonderful, helped us out immensely, gave us some great advice as far as towing and what kind of hitch packages to get. 2 (10m 7s): But ultimately, again, I guess back to the, to the RV show is we just happened to, to walk into a model that went, Hey, this is, this is exactly what we’re looking for. We weren’t necessarily going to purchase. Of course nobody is. And never, we didn’t have any financing lined up. We didn’t, or our money lined up. We didn’t know how much we wanted to spend on a trailer. None of those conversations had happened yet. This was purely exploration. But of course it, it led to, to Darcy treating us right and, and gave us what I think is a great deal and, and so far so good. Somehow there must have been some kind of unspoken spark between you and Janine that you knew that like this is the transition you wanted to make. 2 (10m 49s): And it sounds like maybe the RV show was efficient in the sense you got to see lots of stuff without having to drive from place to place to place. Well, I think so back to the setup through this year, and thankfully we’ve made that choice because back at the RV show I was sort of sold on another classy, even though the, the freedom of site isn’t necessarily there, the idea of having the unit as its standalone option. It’s not my truck that’s breaking down, it’s the trailer and the truck and the mechanical is everything. It’s all one unit for me to maintain. And I wrapped my head around that and I was okay with that. And if we really needed to, we could tow Janine’s truck or G Jeep, sorry, if we were going on a long trip and we wanted the, the freedom to travel around, I could, you know, I figured I would get a dolly. 2 (11m 35s): But of course class C motor homes are pricey, right? Especially ones that aren’t 20 years old. So when you start looking at the price of ’em, and then we walk into this bunkhouse model and we see the price of it and we think, you know, for the money and okay, there’s a little extra wear and tear on the truck and there’s a little more, I’m gonna have to get a weight distribution hitch and I’m gonna have to get a brake controller and you know, all these things and, and figure out how to tow 38 feet instead of drive 32 feet. It seemed like the, the proper choice because, you know, we wanted 10 more years with these kids before the next one’s able to vote and she doesn’t come along as well, right? We talk about margin, of course Marge is a class C motor home. 2 (12m 18s): But the more like, this podcast episode came together and I made my notes this week and I rehearsed, and if you don’t think I rehearsed people, then I guess you don’t know how bad it could have been. Marge is like a real person to me now, right? So like, where is Marge? Like how did you handle that part of the process? Because Marge is still an asset that, that some people upgrading need to think this part through. So for me and how we do our finances like this, I wasn’t really, I’m not a guy that’s gonna go out and get a loan for the new trailer. This is a, a save and, and kind of pay for kind of trap trip. That being said, we need to clear the financial ability of Marge in order to buy the new trailer sort of thing. 2 (13m 3s): So yes, we were committing to buying this trailer, but it was sort of hinged upon selling March. I didn’t know what to expect. I did a little bit of research on common models and shapes, and March again was in fantastic shape. I, we bought it with just over 50,000 kilometers, 52,000 in something I think. And we sold it. I think she had 69,000 on it. So in five years we put maybe 17,000 kilometers on it. It was well used, well maintained oil changes every year, you know, tires, et cetera. So when we put it on the market, just put it on Facebook marketplace thinking I’ll do a proper ad. This is the middle of the winter, right? 2 (13m 43s): There’s still snow on the ground. They are, the marge was stored at our shop behind the giant snowplow from the, the, the driveway plowing all year, right? So we would store her sort of up in this gravel little pit in a covered little area, but again, plow all the snow right in front of it. So I thought, ah, I’ll just put the, the pictures on and put a quick post up and, and if anybody shows interest, anybody shows interest. Well, within the first three days, I think I had 39 people calling with interest to the point where I’m going, did I price this wrong? Because there seems to be a lot of take, take the ad down and put it back up, right? So, but no, that, it turns out that I think maybe if we’re gonna make up statistics, 73% of those people were just robots showing interest in Facebook marketplace. 2 (14m 28s): You know, is this still available type nonsense. But there was, I’m gonna say five leads that were, you know, I’m really interested. I want to come see it, yada yada. And I’m responsing saying, great, but it’s in a snow pile right now, so I gotta wait for some thawing to happen or we’ll, we’ll continue discussing. It took about two weeks maybe for me to actually get Marge out and bring it out and clean it up and pull everything out for people to come and look at it. I had three separate people come and look at it. The second guy that came and look at it said, I’m coming back tomorrow. To which I kind of shrugged my shoulders. Sure, sure. But sure enough, he came back tomorrow, the next day with a deposit in hand and said, this is my retirement plan, I can’t wait. 2 (15m 11s): This is gonna be awesome. We were hesitant on who we were gonna sell Marge to because we were even ourselves thought, do we just keep Marge and put it in the RV easy rental field and just let it, you know, make some mailbox money on the side. Is it worth the maintenance? Is it worth the effort? Is it worth the, well, no, I still need the money to buy the new trailer. So okay, we’ll sell it, but we gotta sell it to the right people who aren’t gonna go down that same path. But this guy had, he was soon retiring, he was plans to drive it out east. His, you know, his wife had never camped before and he was just beaming with excitement, right. 2 (15m 52s): And it was like, okay, this is, this is the guy. And it turns out we’ve, we’ve stayed in touch over the summer. The guy’s messaged me maybe six or eight times asking about various, you know, I can’t get the, couldn’t get the generator to start. So I’m like, oh, you gotta hit the prime five times and then the starter button and oh, I got it going right. Oh, cool. Or pictures of, like I was telling you earlier, there’s a, we had one of those in rodent repellent jobs plugged into the, to the outlet, which just gives a sonic repellent. And he was wondering, what the heck is this for? Is it a special button or, but anyways, the, the, the point is Marge has moved on to a very happy and caring person who’s messaged me thanking me. 2 (16m 34s): You know, you’ve taken such good care of this, I’m very, very happy. And he’s gone on his trips and he’s planning on a trip out east, et cetera. So fantastic. Marge, Marge cleared out and, and we had some money from that. So we went ahead and bought the new trailer. Let’s maybe get to the point of picking up, like what was that experience like? You’re, you’re about to drive off the lot with your new trailer. Sure. Well part of the experience with Darcy is I also bought a trailer hitch or my distribution hitch from Niagara Trailers. Just let me jump in here, everybody Sure. I’ve seen Ben’s hitch and it’s a sexy hitch, so, so tell us about this part, Ben. Sure. So I am pulling this trailer, which is about 6,800 pounds unloaded with my Dodge 20 21, 1505 0.7 liter heavy. 2 (17m 24s): The truck does fine, it pulls it, it maybe is a little sluggish off the start, it could use a little more torque and it maybe gets bounced around quite a bit, but at the end of the day, I was sort of nervous about making the jump from Class C into towing such a big rig with an untested, unproven just a 1500, right? If I had the A two 50, maybe I’d be a little more cocky, but I, I was timid so I I I wanted to get a good hitch and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t just shape out on the old chain realignment system, which I, you know, I, my dad had used and I’d seen it used around the farm, et cetera growing up. 2 (18m 6s): And I kind of had an idea of what was going on. I’m not all the way rookie on towing, but really previously I’d only towed again up to a utility chart or a cart or, or like a 12 foot trailer maybe at the biggest, which obviously didn’t have electric brakes and didn’t have the distribution that you need, all this kind of stuff. So Darcy showed me this weight safe model, which has a built in scale on the hitch, which is beneficial because now that I’ve got the overall length, I really have to be concerned about the overall levelness of the trailer compared to my truck. And my concern with the, the Dodge is just driving that little bit off kilter and the pressure it puts on your transmission and et cetera. 2 (18m 48s): It’s, it’s a higher mile mileage truck now as well. So I wanna be as gentle as I possibly can. What this model allows, allows me, or what the hitch allows me to do is obviously connect my weight distribution bars, which helps the sway, but I can do a tongue weight rate on, on site as soon as I let my tongue on it. Then I open up my app and based on what the tongue weight is reporting, the app tells me how to adjust a three quarter inch bolt on the top of it, which aligns the pitch up and down, which gives me a true level pull. Now it turns out there’s a pretty big, like I’ve got about a 300 pound window to be in when loading the trailer. 2 (19m 29s): Okay. That where I don’t really need to adjust the hitch anymore now that it’s been adjusted as long as I’m within that little window, it’s pretty good. This hitch is meant for much bigger application I think, right? And maybe much heavier application. I’m at the lower end of usage or the lowest end where, you know, I’m at the higher end of my remote brake controller, my Bluetooth brake controller of setting that guy up. But the hitch is beautiful because like I said, I can do that weight, I get a quick look at it, I open up the app, it tells me I need to be in a certain window on the, on the mechanism. I turn a three quarter inch bolt counterclockwise or clockwise accordingly, put me in that little window and off we’re going. 2 (20m 10s): So it’s, this is interesting now that I listen to this whole story. You, you came with lots of RV experience so you know how to travel and you know how to, you know what to expect on a long road trip and book a campsite. What I’m hearing is like the most you’ve ever towed is a 12 foot utility trailer. You came with a vehicle that can tow a Dodge Ram 1500, which you know, so many people drive. Sure. A half ton pickup truck or an SUV that’s similar to that and you’re coming to Niagara trailer and they’re basically setting you up from scratch. This is, this is it. Darcy showed me maybe two, three different types of hitches and said, yes, you can go with type A, yes you can go with type B, but cla the type C and this is why it’s worth the money it’s worth. 2 (20m 54s): And I did some research on the, on the behind scenes sort of to agree with them. I also added the Tiburon spring assist into my truck just to stop the SAG essentially, which is just an AF aftermarket bumper stop basically that you put in that has a little bit of balance to it that takes the stress off the springs. That definitely helped in the sway of the truck as well. But at the end of the day, yeah, Darcy was setting me up to say like, listen, I, I tow, he tows with a a half ton as well. He goes to Florida every year and this is what he’s put on his truck and he had the same hitch and as far as I’m concerned, that’s sort of the, if he’s using it, okay then, like you say, I was a rookie, I am a rookie still and I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t making rookie mistakes with my equipment to get me into a position where I said, ah, I wish I would’ve just, right. 2 (21m 46s): So to that point in the pickup with Niagara fa Niagara Trailers, it was the middle of May that like just before the May two, four weekend, Darcy met me there with a couple of their technicians who had the trailer actually set up. They did a half an hour walkthrough with me on all of the bill bells and whistles of the device, how to, how to turn the stove on, how to operate the fridge, how to turn the dis the disconnect for the battery off how the tank’s water heater worked, right. The whole sorta of kabang, which he was nice enough, I forget the chap’s name, but he was nice enough to let me record it on my phone for us to, that’s a good idea actually. That’s a really good idea. So I recorded it on my phone just so I could go back and I actually did that when I bought Marge too. 2 (22m 29s): The guy I bought Marge off of did a fantastic job of keeping care of her. He was the original owner, so I was the second owner on Marge. He had had it for 14 years. So we bought it in 2020. He bought it brand new in oh six and he did a little walk around the same way how the, how you start the generator, how you empty the gray tank, how you, whatever. And I recorded that and so many times over the five years would go back and go, how did the freak, did he get the, an hode rod outta the, the tank, the water heater? What he, you know what I mean? So I thought that was a good idea to, to go around and just follow him with the camera and, and joke around. So they set me up with the, with the tour of the trailer, then we packed it all up and then they walked through the connection to the trailer hitch. 2 (23m 16s): They had actually installed the hitch for me, walked me through the measurements on how to set up the app, basically set the, the hitch on in place and you know, everything looked good and showed me how it was set up and everybody was happy to go. Did a little demonstration actually, because I was worried about jackknifing and how much of a radius I could do on a turn. And my original plan was to just go to an empty arena parking lot and kind of play around with it. But with the weight distribution bars and how they kind of set out, it kind of seemed like in my mind I was gonna be limited to like a 30 degree radius or something, very, very small radius in parking. So John actually jumped in my truck from Niger Trailers and said, ah, no, no problem. 2 (23m 59s): We’ll just we’ll at this. And he wheeled her into a back little spot where it was like, this is, this is cool and really impressive. So one thing I will say, now your trailer is where it’s located. If you are new to towing and you pick up your brand new trailer, have fun because the first thing you encounter is a beautiful roundabout at the end of the street, which, okay, we can navigate this roundabout, which is a two lane navigates onto a two lane cross straight onto the QEW, which is gonna get us up to speed real fast. And then we’re gonna go over the first sky bridge on the way home. So within the first, you know, eight minutes of owning the trailer, I’d been through a roundabout, a two lane merger and a, and a SkyBridge, right? 2 (24m 42s): So the truck is handling well and it, I I was really babying it to start, but throughout this year we’ve done, we got to go on like seven trips this year. Oh wow. I think it was six or seven, I can’t remember between the Laura, we went to Nicholson twice. We did, we went back to Niagara to do the Jellystone. So we used it this year, thankfully. And the goal was every second weekend and we just about got there, so. Oh, that’s good. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, we felt like, you know, we bought this two bedroom apartment, we should probably enjoy it the best we can. So it started with in May we picked it up, we watched the Leafs in the playoffs on the outdoor tv in the outdoor kitchen in, in the new trailer and had the fireplace going and everything else. 2 (25m 27s): And, and now this year we’re gonna watch Blue Jay’s baseball hopefully this weekend before we actually put it away. So, well like I did notice that. So for everybody’s benefit, Ben and our families and a couple other families all went camping at a place in Allison, Ontario called Nicholson Dam and it’s right on a river. And I noticed that about your trailer, like you were using everything that your trailer had to offer because this group of people was maybe a dozen people, maybe slightly more. We had some kids that like bedtime was eight o’clock and we have people that are might be grandparents in five years. Right. So we had a real spread of people you yeah, your trailer was kind of serving everybody in that group context. 2 (26m 9s): The kids were watching movies, people were watching baseball games. Yeah, I guess to that point we even used the outdoor shower to wash off feet on the backside and I never really considered that actually until you brought it up right now. But yeah, you guys bring in your beverages over to store in the outdoor, the outdoor kitchen for me and for Janine too, when we were walking through that was like the ultimate cellar. It was like, you know, you’re only 10 feet away from re restocking, you know what I mean? And it’s not like we’re heavy, heavy drinkers when we go camping, but it’s, it’s nice to sit around the fire and you get up and you want a new beer, you or the kids want a drink or you have some friends over, they have a place to put their beverages in the cold and you don’t have to go inside the trailer to get it all the time. 2 (26m 53s): The next selling feature to that same point was the access to the bathroom from the outside through the second door. So it’s got a cheater through our bedroom, obviously entrance through the trailer, but then there’s a second outdoor which gives you direct access into the bathroom so you don’t have to go through the trailer to get to the bathroom. You just kind of go in and do your, the girls do their thing and come back out sort of thing. But yeah, we, the, the outdoor TV is a cool ad. It’s basically just something we pull off the wall on the inside and, and it’s got a mount that pre or came with a mount for the outside under the awning so that the kids can gather around there and watch their show while the, the adults can still do their thing over at the fire. This is a really good story because I think the reason we wanted to do this episode at the end of the season is you’re giving us a full camping season, a full year’s worth of experience, right from right from the pickup. 2 (27m 45s): And it sounds like the pickup is really interesting ’cause as I listen to you tell the story, and I recount this back Darcy’s there on pickup and then a chap who we don’t quite know, but we know he’s the star of a guy on Ben’s educational video on his phone is showing Ben how to work everything in his trailer. So this doesn’t feel like it’s a rushed experience. That’s right. You’re leaving with a really good hitch and to come in and make the save is John who’s jumping out there saying you can do this. Yeah, exactly. And you did it. And and the reason I tell people that is I think I understand that this can be an intimidating experience to move up to a trailer. Yep. And so sure you could go buy, but you’re not just buying a trailer, you’re buying an experience, you’re buying the education, you’re buying the service. 2 (28m 26s): Sure. To feel confident that when you hit that first roundabout that you can do this. Because I don’t think what people might pick up on the podcast, especially if they’re not from Ontario, you and I live about half an hour north of Guelph. It’s an effort there, but it’s a two hour, two hour bit drive. So sure you got some good experience on the way home and I want people to feel confident going into 2026 to, to that point, I, I did visit three of our local dealerships local within, we’ll we’ll call it within a 45 minute radius that had similar and or the exact same model priced similarly, not quite as good of a deal per se. At the end of the day, I, that’s where I had my feel of confidence and just overall, you know, feel even talking to their service people in the backend. 2 (29m 15s): It it’s, I felt like they were going to take care of me. Like it’s just part of the process. Like it’s not something they were special doing for me. That’s just what they, they were doing. And that ultimately gave me the confidence to drive that, that two hours to get there. And you know, like you say, I do have the, the season of experience now and as far as the setup, the take down, like I just find it so much easier to set up the trailer compared to Marge. And I think ultimately at the end of the day, Marge has four leveling points that you have to consider. The four tires duals on the back. I used what were called leveling moons where you basically drive up on a semicircle to where you need to be and height-wise and I got pretty good at that with Marge, you know, front tire up back, left tire has to go up with the dually or the back tires. 2 (30m 8s): It was a little harder. You wanted to maybe have those on blocks the best you can. We had a little routine but it was always an effort because it seemed like it was four points of contact that needed to be labeled out or leveled out. And then once I had that leveled out, I had some other stabilizing units that I would put under the bumper of Marge and put under the front bumper because she was really rolly with the, as soon as one of the kids would roll over, everybody in the RV was waking up ’cause the springs were, were going right? But I had these leveling stacks were, were basically a bar that sits under the, the bumper that ratchet together in the underneath to to give it extra stabilization and that really helps. But it was an effort, man. Like I was sweating by the time you got power up and the awnings out and it’s like, yeah I need a, I need a beer here, let’s, let’s do this and you better hope you brought it because, and you better hope you bought it because Jesus, I just plugged in who’s the dial a bottle for, you know, the $75 12 pack is maybe a little excessive. 2 (31m 5s): So, but I find with the trailer, my overall process is just getting it left to right or horizontally level, which we bought the little yellow or the little orange Lego blocks like everybody else has. We get a basic idea with a level of, of how far, how many blocks up we have to go. We have a real good idea now I set a four foot level on the front or in the floor of the bathroom actually has been my spot lately, which is about midway point between the tongue and the tires. So I’ll go side to side level depending on where the air bubble is. Let’s say we have to go up a block or two blocks and then I pull up on those blocks and then it’s almost like it’s done because I got a power jack, I take it off the truck and the power jack gives me my other access level and bam. 2 (31m 54s): Then I put the four stabilizing bars down with my ax blocks in between the tires and it seems to be, it’s still got a little bit of a rock to it, but not nearly as much as Marge did. But man, it’s like you just drill down the stabilizer things and it’s done. I don’t have to, there’s no backup, there’s no, I went six inches too far on the moon. There’s no, the dually slipped off the moon. There’s no, I find that process to be a little bit easier now as far as you hook up water, hook up power, it’s all the six one half dozen, the other, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all the same from there on out. Then it’s just lifting the awning of the outdoor kitchen and getting the TV on the outside and we’re ready to go. 2 (32m 38s): So for a guy who went to the RV show said that he was gonna have a class C motor home, you seem pretty happy with how things have worked out in a, in a travel trailer here. Well, I, I am every single trick this year we’ve gone somewhere in the truck. So whether it’s to the coffee shop or whether it’s to the dollar store for, for paper plates or whatever the case may be. So yes, the convenience, but I also like the idea maybe of not having that second mechanical item to take care of. Right. So Marge of 2006, yeah, she only had 69,000 kilometers and a big old E four 50. 2 (33m 22s): You know, those engines are basically bulletproof. They basically go forever and it’s maintained. But yeah, it sits for six months of the year, so who knows what’s gonna happen and is it a ticking time bomb? Probably not, but does it have another 15 years in it? Probably not. So it just seemed like the time was either, you know, put some flashing seam tape on the top and make sure it never leaks and put, you know, a new brake job in it, put maybe $5,000 into the new engine or something and try to get it to work for another 10, 15 years or just get whatever money we could out out of it right now, thankfully. 2 (34m 5s): And convert that into a brand new trailer where this is gonna last us for 10 or 15 years easily. Well I think that’s what we’re all after, is it? Right, right. Like you said, they’ll camp until they can vote. That’s more or less what it is, is your threshold. Yeah, I do know we were out once and your son came back, so it was nice to see the older kids come back to bit. Sure. So you got some capacity there to play with is where I’m going with this. Well, and you kind of touched on it a little bit in five years from now, some of us could become grandparents or it could be coming down the pipe hopefully starting with that oldest one. So yeah, our oldest is 25 now. So I mean it’s, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for us to be using that bunk host in the back for the grandchildren. 2 (34m 49s): And that’s sort of the intention and sort of the hope. Listen, some of my best years growing up, my grandparents were members of a trailer park outside of North Bay. They, you know, they had a camp model, their own site. They still have that site. So that site has had our trailer on it since I was, you know, so we’re talking like 30 some years, nearly 40 years. And some of the best memories of my life were in that campground and, and the lake it was on and you know, I knew the, the a hundred acres of forest around that campground like the back of my hand. And those were some of the best times growing up for me. And I wanted to make sure that my kids had at least the exposure and the possibility of that we’ve tossed around the idea of a campground site that we permanently go to. 2 (35m 36s): But Janine and I both agreed that no, we like the idea of exploration, we like the idea of going to whichever campground making notes of it. And if we really enjoy it, like Nicholson, we’ll go back there, right? And we’ll make it a traditional thing. Nicholson, we’ve been to every year since we bought Marge and now we’re gonna continue. That’s the first place we took our new trailer to begin the year and it’s was our last trip the weekend before Thanksgiving there. So a couple weekends ago. So when we find those beautiful sites, we’ll keep going there, but in the meantime let’s explore and check out all the things to explore. So your story’s really good. You have built a ton of confidence. You went to Niagara trailer, you got set up correctly. 2 (36m 17s): It sounds like the summer went well, you were out six or seven times, you haven’t managed a catastrophe. So what I want people listening to think about is you can do this, right? So if you’re a listener here that has never done this before, you’re thinking about getting a trailer, you can do this is the point. I’m trying to make sure go slow. Just, you know, there’s no need to drive 120 kilometers an hour down the road with your brand new trailer. So yeah, you’re going over to the sky bridge, but maybe just keep her at 105 and stay in the right hand lane and, and yeah, let that guy cut in I guess. And just take your time. For me, I try to organize my roots that avoid the highways as best as I can. 2 (36m 58s): Just, that’s my confidence level. I’d rather not have somebody smash into me. It’s not that I am not confident in my own abilities. How’s that go? It’s, you know, I’m afraid of the, the young kid playing on his phone and smash into me and my trailer and everything flips over and you know, everything’s destroyed and the kid says something, oh, sorry bro, my bad. Right? So I’m like, I’m trying to avoid that at all costs. Yeah. And avoid people. So it’s avoid the highways unless it’s the most direct route you can possibly take and just, it’s gonna come. So with with time comes confidence and the more I tow it, the more I back it up, the better I get. In fact, to that point, we had a, the, the trailer came with a backup camera that I’ve never actually got to work. 2 (37m 41s): I’ve connected to it. The nigro trailers is good enough, they’re gonna look at it, I’m bringing it in for a winterization there next week. They’re gonna look at the, the camera for me and I have full confidence that we’re gonna get it figured out. There’s also a real good possibility that I’m the problem. So I I acknowledge that as well. It’s, we’ve connected to the camera. I’ve just, just never actually got the camera to display the camera on my phone. So take that with a grain of salt. To that point, Janine and I have got really good at, what she does is she FaceTimes me, so she’ll stand outside, we’ll put a marker on the ground where we want the back of the trailer to end up. She’ll FaceTime me and do a reverse on the camera. 2 (38m 22s): So it’s kind of like I’m looking through her eyes and I back it up into spot and it seemed to have getting there. I can, I can get in and out. We, we haven’t hit anything, thankfully there was, we stayed at the valence campground. What’s that? Valence conservation campground just outside of Hamilton, if that’s the name of a, you know, I think in your, or I’m talking about valence, vallen conservation Vallen. It is a beautiful, beautiful spot. Tons of trails and we love going to that campground. We’ve been there a couple times before we took Marge there, we, we ordered the, or not March, sorry, we took the new trailer there. We ordered a pull through site thinking, okay, this is, it was maybe our second or third trip. 2 (39m 1s): I’m still kind of, okay, we we got this a pull through site, this would be no problem. Yeah, it was no problem to get into, but the pull through site to pull out of was not meant for a 38 foot trailer. So it was like, do I back up onto the road? Nope. Can’t do that. Do I? What do I do? Right? So in some ways it takes a little more preparation on your escape route. But, and, and in that scenario we, we did actually, we had to pull into the campground Oh, cross the way from us. So we just had to leave, wait for them to leave first. And once their ground cleaned out, we could just kind of do a big old loop through them and around. So yes, you can do it is are you gonna run into situations that are a little hairy probably. 2 (39m 47s): But that’s sort of the fun along the way in some sense. As long as you don’t break anything, there’s no damage on the trailer. So that’s, that’s the important thing. I guess one other caveat for Niagara, when I picked up the trailer, there were two things that happened within the first week. One, the trailer has a 12 volt fridge on it with a solar panel and a charging system. So the fridge runs full time off of basically solar electricity. Awesome. It kept blowing a fuse. So it blew the fuse the first time we used it watching the Leafs game sort of thing. And I, I didn’t think much of it. I whatever I went and bought new fuses, replaced the fuse, move on. Well it blew the fuse again and it blew the fuse again. 2 (40m 27s): So on the third fuse I called Niagara trailers and like something’s funky here. And for some reason or another, the one wheel well had kind of popped like a screw had popped sort of thing. So Niagara was really good. Take it back, bring it back to us next Thursday or whatever it was. They took care of the, the wheel well they took care of, of everything else for us. They adjusted something in the fridge. They put a a a different type of fuse into it. I forget the actual fix of it, but we haven’t had a problem since. And it was actually a learning experience for me because with the solar, it’s a new, new configuration, new outfit for me. I I, Marge was just plug it in and there’s your power. 2 (41m 7s): Yes, you had onboard batteries and yes you had an onboard generator to run the, the AC or to run the bigger items for, for, for the most part we were plugged in and never really worried about anything. Now in the new trailer, we’ve got a 12 volt system that is charged by the solar panel, but we’ve also got a one 10 system that you get from plugging in or your, your 30 amps into your site. So the outdoor fridge and the outdoor kitchen and is all run off one 10 and only works when you’re plugged in. But the indoor kit, the indoor fridge and some of the lights on the inside and the bathroom fan and there’s a few other items that are strictly run off the DC system. So I didn’t, when I was blowing fuses, I thought it was something I was doing with the electrical coming in and my source from the house or whatever it was, but it turned out it was in my, in my DC system. 2 (41m 58s): Gotcha. So, so it was a learning experience for me to know, oh okay this device, this device and this device are gonna run off battery a hundred percent of the time. And yes, the battery will charge if you’ve got it plugged in or it’ll charge if you don’t have it plugged in off the solar. But it was whatever Niagara took care of us, they replaced it, picked it up a week later and, and here we are. So, so so that maybe that’s a good thing like Niagara took care of you. So I hope that there’s people out there thinking, you know, ’cause I know there’s people out there that are thinking next year we upgrade and so we know if you’re not in Ontario or on the northern seaboard, Eastern seaboard, sorry, like we’re at the end of the camping season, the town’s got the snowplows ready to go. 2 (42m 42s): Kids are playing hockey, they’re in school, you’re getting your trailer winter eyes like you mentioned. So the fall shows are coming and Niagara Trailers is at some of those fall shows and there’ll be a show in the winter like you went to. Sure. So I’m hoping there’s, people feel empowered to go out there and do this and to find a unit for them. My question for you, what has 2026 got for the Brido? Like is there a big trip? Is there a new trailer? Is Ben running for Premier of Ontario? Like make the big announcement all all, all the above. Yes, that’s right. No, I am going to replace my truck, my 2021 truck. I just rolled 296,000 kilometers on it. And it’s probably good for people to just jump in here and let ’em know like you’re a small business owner, a medium business. 2 (43m 23s): Yeah. This truck is a tool, not just That’s right. Towing your trailer. That’s right. The, of the 296,000 kilometers, I’m gonna say 1% is for towing. 99% of these kilometers are, are to various job sites throughout Ontario for our, for our business. But it’s a very handy truck. It’s a very handy tool. To that point, I, I believe I’m gonna get another Hemi because it’s got a proven track record now. Although I have been tossing around the idea of a, of a bigger track of two 50 just to have a little more confidence in power for a longer haul. The really, I find the only thing that the Dodge struggles on or the ram struggles on is taking off, especially in town traffic lights, when you’re trying to get off and go from the lights, you really gotta get going. 2 (44m 16s): If you get to a hill off that light, you really gotta, you gotta make that baby work. And I thought maybe the two 50 would have a little less stress, but I don’t think the two 50 relates well to our business work. Right. So I think we’re gonna go with another 1500 or half ton vehicle to continue towing with it. It seems to have done a good enough job. We will hopefully go on one big trip. When I say big, I’d really like for us to, to explore more of the dinosaur parks. My, my wife and I are big dinosaur fans. We went, we did Dinosaur Park in Alberta. That was a highlight of our trip out west, maybe Dinosaur Park in Utah type idea, somewhere in the 10 to 14 day range. 2 (45m 4s): Again, running our business, it’s hard for us to necessarily get away in, especially in the summertime. But if we can pack up the kids and do a 10 to 14 day road trip in the summer, that would be ideal. And then beyond that, every second weekend do the same thing, you know, within an hour or two hour radius of here, find a new campground and go get wet for the weekend. That sounds like a great plan. Like I, I think secretly I want you to try the two 50 because I want your review before I maybe do that, maybe you could blaze the trail ahead for me. I’ll trade you my Utah experience if you buy a two 50 and tell me what it was like. But that sounds like a great plan. So I have been, it’s sort of nerded out the last few days and, and involved with this AI named Grock. 2 (45m 49s): He’s the, the, I don’t know if you know what Grock is. So Grock is Twitter’s ai and you can have full on conversations with this ai and the conversations I’ve had about comparing the F two 50 to the 1500 bighorn and the, the opinions that the AI have, it’s first of all my new best friend and second of all, it, it agrees that maybe the, the 1500 should be fine or the half ton should be fine. I had a Ford before the Dodge and, and really up until maybe six months ago, I was convinced I was gonna go back to an F-150, maybe the five liter. 2 (46m 29s): And I, you know, I kind of did my research on how it’s gonna tow and okay, maybe the 3.5 liter is better for towing just a little, right. So I, I had the conversations with the AI and, and filled my knowledge base. But it, you know, I I, at the end of the day, I think I, I think we’re gonna go with the Dodge because it’s, it’s got 300,000 kilometers on it and I’ve replaced the rear right bearing. I’m on my third set of brakes, my third set of tires, my second set of headlights, my second set of brake lights, my third backup light on the right hand side. Other than that, the truck has worked beautifully. Now it’s of those high kilometers, a a high percentage is, you know, cruise control at 83 kilometers an hour on a country road from list to Godrich or something stupid, you know what I mean? 2 (47m 21s): Or from here to list. So it’s been gently driven but you know, that’s, yeah, maybe you can get the two 51st and tell me how it goes. Okay. And then we’ll go from there. We’re in a bit of a standoff, but you know, Ben is going down the route of Dodge and ai. I think I’m going down the route of Ford and I’m gonna trust Darcy and John and everybody at Niagara trailer. But I think you’ve got some great plans and I think as we put our trailers away for the, for the, for the year, I’m, I’m already excited for next year and what that might bring. Right, me too. Me too. I’m, once we get it, it it winterized. We may have one more weekend in us at valence ’cause it’s open year round before we, we tucker away behind the snow pile for the winter. 2 (48m 9s): Yeah, well I think maybe with that, I think you and me are gonna make plans to go RVing and see trips. We’re gonna cheer on the Blue Jays and I hope I like it. Everybody else is out there thinking maybe this is the year they get a trailer and good stuff. Scoot on down to Niagara trailer for it. Good stuff. Thanks you in the area. You Ben, appreciate you coming. Yeah, I appreciate you having me. This was fun. I always enjoy having a good chat with you and a chuckle. Yeah, there you go. Alright, thank you. Everybody give up between the lines and stay outta the rhubarb.