I just had a $5,000 surprise expense with my motor home and I may have uncovered a dirty little secret that RV owners are not talking about. Welcome to the channel. I'm Liz and I have a very important video for you today and it's about safety and it's a certain thing that it seems like no one is talking about. If you don't know, I've been on the road as a full-time RVer for four years, mostly in a fifth wheel and I just recently got a motor home. And if you can't wait for the scoop each week and want to know what I'm up to, you can find me on Patreon where I will be sharing sneak peeks every week. Now, about the safety issue. I found out something with owning a motor home that just absolutely shocked me and I had to pay $5,000 unexpected to remedy. Now, I had been interested in owning a class A motor home for at least a couple years. I've met a lot of neighbors with motor homes and nobody talked about this one thing. And that is how expensive it is to tow a vehicle behind you. I thought, oh well, I just need to get a blue ox tow bar or a road master tow bar. That kind of thing and that's it. Well, here's the thing. If you want to do it right and you want to do it safely, you actually need a more complex system that not only will give you lights, but will give you breaks on the tow vehicle. This is really important if you are towing more than 4,000 pounds and in fact it's the law if what you're towing is more than 4,000 pounds. So why is no one talking about it? Well, because they're not doing it. Sadly, there is a group of motor home owners that I have talked to you, that I've met, I've neighbor with that just don't have the break system. I talked to one neighbor who was pulling a Ford pickup truck and I thought great because that's what I'm going to be pulling what system do you use? Well, he had a Patriot system that he just found was too much of a pain in the butt and didn't use it. He just let his motor home do the breaks. Then I started asking more people and I kept hearing the same answer. They're not using a break system and I know why because it's expensive. But for me, if you've been a regular viewer for a while, you know that I totaled a travel trailer. It's been now 10 years, but that changed my thinking and now safety is number one. I'm so grateful for that accident because my focus, my priority is safety. If you're comfortable with risks, then go for it, but just know it's not just your lives and danger. You could be endangering other people. If you're towing a heavier vehicle, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 pounds, you most likely have a diesel pusher. That means that when you're sitting up front in the driver's seat, you don't have as much protection from a front end collision than you would if you had an engine up there. So this is another reason to really think about having the best breaking system that you can have that's going to stop you as quick as you can. You're talking about many of these motor homes are 25,000, 35,000 pounds. That's a lot of weight going down the road and if you need to stop on the dime, wouldn't you want to have the most help that you can have? If you have a break system, it will include a safety break cable, which will pull the brakes automatically in situations where your tow bar fails or if you somehow get separated from your towed vehicle. That's what we're talking about is having all four wheels on the ground. For me, I didn't want to deal with a dolly and certainly not a trailer. Dolly's can weigh 500 pounds. Well, as a solo RVer, I didn't want to be rolling that around the site and they can kind of be in the way. There's certainly the cheapest option because they come with brakes in them. So if you're a couple or if you don't mind dealing with that weight, there's nothing wrong with a towed dolly and I highly recommend it. Another option, of course, is a flat trailer or a box trailer. If you have the means and you want to get one of those, again, you have built in brakes. But if you go to campgrounds, that's something you have to deal with. You've got to find a place to park it and it's probably harder to hitch and unhitch it behind your motorhome. So if you're going to flat tow, the first thing you want to do is you want to make sure that your vehicle is flat towable. And I thought my 2011 Ford F-150 was flat towable. So I fortunately did my research and it actually is one of the few that is not flat towable. By that evening, I had purchased another Ford F-150. It was kind of a rough day. But it did ask myself, well, did I want a smaller vehicle? Did I want a car? Did I want an SUV? Well, I do a lot of hiking and a lot of the hiking is in national parks. And you probably know that the best hiking is often on off roads. I didn't want to have any roads close off to me. I'm a photographer too, so I wanted to be able to go anywhere. Another reason is I'm only going to be traveling about once every four weeks. So since I'm going to be traveling less, this vehicle that I'm towing becomes pretty much my daily driver. I wanted it to be something that met all my needs. I thought, okay, the tow bar that sits going to be $1,000. Then I learned there need to be a custom plate installed on my truck. So in addition to ordering the custom base plate and a wiring kit so that when I hit the brake lights on the motorhome, the brake lights actually light up in my truck, it was the actual brake system that I needed to spend the big bucks for. And I did have choices. One of them was the Patriot made by Blue OX and here's why I didn't do it. The neighbor that had it and wasn't using it backed up what I read on the reviews online. There's a lot of setup. You do need to have power seats because this box sits right in front of your front seat and you need to have a power seat to push it in and wedge it in. So I ruled it out because it seemed like something that was just a pain. The box was also heavy about 14 pounds, so it was a lot to deal with. What I liked about the roadmaster in this a break, I was going to spend a few more hours paying for someone to install it. But once it's installed, then I just said it and forget it. So I'm really glad that I got the roadmaster in this a break. No, this is not a sponsored video. This is something that I paid for full price when I was all said and done with the base plate, even with the sellers providing the Blue OX tow arms. I still paid $5,300 and I'm glad I did because it's safety. So there was really a short learning curve to hitching up. I find it pretty easy. It takes about five minutes or less. I learned that I definitely need to remember to bring the truck close enough so that the tow bars reach and also that I'm centered with the motorhome. There are several cables to hook up. One is the brake monitoring cable when I'm driving the motorhome and I push the brake, a light comes on on the dash confirming that the truck brakes are coming on. There's also a pigtail which is all the connectors that give me turn signal and brake lights. There is a safety brake away cable so that should we become disconnected, the truck brakes will engage. And then finally there are the Blue OX tow bars. Remember if you want the scoop before everyone else you can find me on Patreon, I will be giving sneak peeks of the upcoming videos and even inviting you to go hiking with me in the future. Let me know if safety is a priority for you and what you do for safety. If you have a motorhome, please let me know that you have a braking system if you're towing more than 4,000 pounds. And as always these are exciting times to push pass fear, build confidence and live amazing.