RV Roadside Assistance

I get questions all the time from people who are considering venturing into the full-time RVing lifestyle.

In addition to questions about how do you get your mail and what do you do about health care, another question I get a lot is, "What if you breakdown while on the road?" We all know that RVs breakdown while on the road from time to time. The most common problem is having a flat tire (or even worse, a blowout).

Getting someone to come out to change a tire or bring you a new tire if you don't have a spare can get expensive. Even finding someone (how would you know who to call) is not easy.

If you break down and need to be towed, that can be really expensive--from several hundred dollars to over $1,000 depending on where you are and how far you need to be towed.

The simple solution is to have an RV Roadside Assistance plan. There are several companies that offer this, and sometimes your RV insurance may cover this. I have been on the road for almost seven years and I have never broken down on the road. I have always carried Good Sam's RV Roadside Assistance Program. They are a little more expensive than some of the other programs, but they do have experience knowing which tow companies can tow motorhomes.

In the song at the link below, Roger talks about sitting on the side of the road waiting for Good Sam to show.

Here's a link to the song Home Sweet Home in my RV by Roger Hurricane Wilson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFd1r56De2o

I finally needed to call for roadside assistance.

I put new tires on my motorhome last week and I used one of the old tires as a spare and put one of the new tires on the rim of the old spare. The problem was that the spare had a bad valve stem and I didn't know it until a couple of days later. I was in a campground and I needed to take the tire off and take it to a truck tire shop the get the valve stem replaced. I didn't have a lug wrench (I do now. I bought one from Amazon for $10).

Anyway, I called Good Sam and they sent a truck and RV tire service guy out to take the tire off. I'm camping up in the mountains and he was a little over an hour away. Good Sam paid him $400 to come out and take the tire off. He said he would be happy to come back the next day and put the tire back on (Good Sam would pay him another $400), but I decided that I could put the tire back on myself. It was a front tire and I had a lug wrench with an 18-inch handle now.

Bottom line: I still haven't had a break down on the road, but now I have had experience with the Good Sam Roadside Assistance program. I was very satisfied with their service. If you're interested, below is a link where you can get more information on Good Sam. This is not an affiliate link.

https://www.goodsamroadside.com/

I have paid Good Sam more over the last seven years than it would have cost me to just pay for the time I needed service, but for me, the peace of mind is worth the $79 a year I pay them.