RV Inspection and Pick-up Process
After we made our final decision and put in our RV order, which I wrote about in Purchasing Our Jayco Fifth Wheel, the estimated delivery date was end of February. The factory apparently made good time and it was ready by the end of January. So Kevin planned to go pick it up mid-February. Then it was time to prepare for the trip and RV inspection!
The Trip
Again, Kevin was going on a long road trip, similarly to when he picked up our truck and drove it home. By this time my sister Victoria (Tori) had moved to Illinois. It was a perfect stop-over location for Kevin to get our RV in Indiana. The drive itself was uneventful both ways. However, a storm in Indiana moved in early and dropped a lot more snow than anticipated. So picking the RV up on Friday as planned was out. Kevin would have to wait until Monday. Luckily he wasn’t stuck in a hotel by himself. Instead he got to hang out with my sister and her boyfriend Brian. In the meantime, they did put him to work though helping unpack and setting things up for the horses!
The RV Inspection
To prepare for the RV inspection, I found a checklist that had been recommended by someone on the Jayco Owners Forum. To that I added a few other things I found while searching around on Google and things we remembered wanting to know about our Koala travel trailer when we purchased it. With all of that printed out Kevin was ready to go.
Indiana RV Connection had said the walk-through would take about one hour but we knew that was laughable. No way could you do a decent and thorough walk-through in that time. In the end it took about 2.5 hours for Kevin to walk through our checklist, inspect the RV from top to bottom, ask all of his questions, and get answers and demonstrations on how everything worked from the technician. Kevin felt they did a really good job with his walk-through. They set up the RV in a nice heated bay too!
We would highly recommend someone takes video during the inspection and walk-through. Since I didn’t go along it was tough for Kevin to do on his own and then he had some technical difficulties as well. Still, he was able to take pictures and some good notes. All of this contributed to a smooth trip home and start to our next RVing adventures!
So, make sure you have a good checklist that you’ve reviewed beforehand, take good video and notes, and then have fun taking your time getting to know your RV even better on its first few trips out!