Who Drives

[Midnightmoon]

Originally Posted by norty1

My dw takes a turn driving.

She has never mastered backing so I'm in charge of that always.

My wife's line is "reverse.....I don't do reverse".....LOL

[JFlightRisk]

I always tow, but always ask if she wants to drive instead. So far, no. I back up to hitch up, but the power jack is her toy. She does the up and down while hooking/unhooking the WDH, and as I'm doing chains, plug, and breakaway, she pulls chocks, and checks lights. I'm going to see if I can get in the passengers side tomorrow before she does. A short trip with a left, and 2 right turns in the 12 miles. We shall see if she gets brave.

[Parcany]

My wife has never drove the Excursion cause it is to big. I told her that maybe she should learn the truck and trailer driving, well I got the look. When we take the car and truck and trailer she drives the car. She sets up the inside of the trailer and I do the outside.

[Scott]

My DW will not drive the Silverado 1500, so no way she will tow the 32' trailer. She is an extra set of eyes in heavy traffic and is good at making sure I know about lane closures and merging traffic, but on country roads she's either snoozing or on her phone.

I ask her many times if she wants to drive and I get "the look." That's ok, because I love to drive and rarely get to when we take her car.

She helps a lot with setup at the site, does a lot of the packing before hand, and double checks the hitch and lights with me before we leave.

Oh, and she will NEVER empty the black and grey tanks. She likes camping, but this was always going to be my job when we upgraded from a popup to a TT. It's my cross to bear....

[RAurand]

I guess I am fortunate. My wife and my 18 year old daughter will drive if I ask. In fact, two weeks ago, we left home at 3:30 in the morning and my soon to be 19 year old daughter drove from Home, down routes 15, 270 495 and 95 to Petersburg, VA before we stopped. Then my wife drove from Petersburg to Jordan Lake, NC.
They don't back up, I do. My daughter wants to learn and my wife will do it if necessary. (I don't want to take all day getting into the campsite, so I back in)

[Camper_bob]

Originally Posted by Scott

My DW will not drive the Silverado 1500, so no way she will tow the 32' trailer. She is an extra set of eyes in heavy traffic and is good at making sure I know about lane closures and merging traffic, but on country roads she's either snoozing or on her phone.

I ask her many times if she wants to drive and I get "the look." That's ok, because I love to drive and rarely get to when we take her car.

She helps a lot with setup at the site, does a lot of the packing before hand, and double checks the hitch and lights with me before we leave.

Oh, and she will NEVER empty the black and grey tanks. She likes camping, but this was always going to be my job when we upgraded from a popup to a TT. It's my cross to bear....

I could've written that post! In fact, had to check to make sure it wasn't mine!! The popup gave it away, we never owned a popup... LOL!!

Truthfully, DW will drive if asked. And sometimes she's eager to do so. But it's mostly me; like 90%. On some of our longer treks, she'll let me snooze in the back of the MH while she pounds out a few hours behind the wheel listening to her audio books. Gives me a chance to recover some if we're really trying to log some miles.

She's also my navigator (sometimes reluctantly), and she's in charge of the boy and the dog and the "inside" of the camper. I'm generally in charge of most planning, mechanical items, and the "outside" of the rig.

She's not that great at backing, but she could be with a little practice. Even launching the boat; she's in the boat, and I handle the truck/trailer. Most all of what she does, I can do, but some of what I do, she doesn't or can't.

This brings me to an important message about all of this stemming from an experience we had a few years back. We've pretty much always slipped into our fairly defined roles, and have done so successfully for over 20 years. One time we were packing up to leave a CG and while I was cleaning up after emptying the waste tanks, I hurt my back ... BAD. Just about the worst pain I'd ever felt. DW nursed me into the truck, but I was totally immobilized. I had to walk her through the hookup process, step by step, by oral description. It was interesting; she didn't know the technical names for things, so almost everything I had her touch I had to explain what it looked like!! She also hadn't driven our rig much at that time, so she got a "crash" course that day. Thankfully there was no "crash" in our course that day, and it was a relatively short trip home!! She pretty much nailed it, and afterwards was A LOT more confident taking over the driving task when necessary.

Anyway, my point is that "cross-training" is critical for RVing IMO. If only one person ever handles critical operations, and that person becomes incapacitated in some way, it's up to the other to get home (or wherever you need to get) safely. Not saying you can't be successful with one spouse taking the brunt of a particular task on the regular. Just saying the other should at least have SOME familiarity with operating critical functions, and ideally have practiced those critical functions a few times.

I still do most of the driving, but DW is up to the task for sure...

[us71na]

My wife doesn't like driving our Pilot even without the trailer. She did drive once while towing and had a white knuckle grip on the wheel the entire time. When she decided that it was time for me to drive, she pulled to the side of the interstate and nearly sideswiped the road side markers with the trailer. She has told all of the family that if I die before she does that the boat and TT will be the first things that go away since she will not tow them or back them up.

[CAG]

I think I answered something like this before but just in case


My wife, and her four older brothers grew up on a ranch/farm she was driving trucks, tractors, and pulling horse trailers since she was 14 (that is when kids could get a "farm" license) if they lived on a farm. She generally leaves the driving to me with the RV but I have never had a fear that if needed she could take the wheel and do as well or better than me.

[Camper_bob]

We actually had a significant role reversal happen in our household related to this just this week!

So, we bought an old boat. Not our first, but it's been a while since we had one. This one is much different. It's a deck boat with an outboard and it's about 4' longer than the old one. The old one was a bow rider with I/O. They handle COMPLETELY differently. Took it out on the water last week. DW historically in the boat, and me in truck/trailer. She took one pass at trailering and gave up. I hopped on and got it on the trailer, but it wasn't pretty. First time with a new-to-us boat ... in the dark. Thankfully it's a used 2007 model, so the big scratch we put in the hull doesn't break our hearts TOO much...

We went out again over the weekend, and I had to "wave off" my first approach to the trailer and go around for another attempt. 2nd attempt was ugly, but I got it on there.

Anyway, so now she wants truck/trailer duty. Watching her back a trailer is painful for me, and she refuses to listen to my instruction. It doesn't help that she doesn't know right from left either. So while I'm telling her to turn the wheel left, she's cranking right... I guess that's okay, she'll figure it out ... that's how I did it; trial and error, practice, practice, practice. The only instructions I got from my dad when I was learning were "everything's backwards; turn right to make the trailer go left, and vice versa". He never even told me the "grab the bottom of the wheel" trick (not that it would've helped me).

She NEVER wanted to tow before. Even when we had the travel trailer. It's so strange to me that this boat scares her enough that she would rather tow and back trailer than drive the boat... Oh well, once I finally get it figured out, I'll train her. We still need to be cross-trained.

This is all a bit frustrating for me because when we had our last boat, we worked it together like a well-oiled machine. I mean it was truly a thing of beauty. Now we feel like noobs again...