Mailbox			Back to Mailbox	Back to the Current Issue Back to Features
Camping and Tires:

I’ve been reading your magazine for many years, have always enjoyed it and find something useful in almost every issue. My wife and I are 40 and 47 years old respectively and were both born into camping families and I don’t believe we’ve missed a year of camping since we were born. Our boy is 11 years old and will have the same legacy.

As an avid reader of your publication I was hoping to send along a couple of observations.
One of the things I personally would like to see more of is contributing articles from campers much like ourselves. We consider ourselves as average middle class campers with tight budgets and the opportunity to go camping maybe two to four weeks a year with a few long weekends thrown in for good measure. We have tried all aspects of camping from motorcycle trips to the Smokey Mountains in a pup tent to camperized vans to tent trailers to travel trailers to our present 1979 Dodge motorhome. We have noticed camping is not quite what it used to be and has been changing over the years. Camping used to be quite inexpensive for one thing and something you could do more spontaneous. Now it is something you really have to budget well for considering the high cost of fuel and equipment not to mention the cost of staying at a reasonable campground with most amenities.

On the subject of spontaneous: we feel we used to be able to go camping on fairly short notice and even go to more than one camp facility but since many more people have taken up this activity over the years and the amount of campgrounds have not increased proportionately we find if you want a decent camp vacation you usually have to know what you want to do a year from now and cross your fingers it does not rain for two weeks (I hardly can plan a week away let alone a year).

Because many people like ourselves have school aged children, there are thousands of campers all trying to get a site close to the beach during the same two or three weeks in July and August. Many of the campsites that people have been going to for years are outdated and the proprietors are cramming us in like sardines.
As for the reservation system for some of the more popular Provincial Parks, it is not a complete success either. It seems that if you arrive at one of these parks and try to take a chance of going in, the park contractor cannot always say for sure if those reserved sites are actually taken. It seems the person at the booth is not tied into the database. So a reserved site could sit vacant all weekend or people that paid and reserved a site may not show up for some reason and the site sits vacant also. Like many of the more popular parks like Porteau Cove, etc., people are going to these camps on Wednesday or Thursday and putting their campers there so that they would have something for the weekend.

So from your readership, I would like to hear from the average type camper and how they are making out, what’s working for them, and what neat places they are finding. I am a long way off from the 100-foot motorhome with 20,000 watts of solar panels sitting in Quartzite all winter.

One last thing I have to throw in regarding the section “Bob’s Concerned” re May/June issue. I am a commercial truck driver and we have a lot more tires on our units than any camper will ever have. The information on tire pressure is getting a little too involved for some poor elderly retiree or anybody for that matter. All you have to do if in doubt is go to a well established tire shop for their recommendation and DON’T go to a public scale to weigh all four corners of your RV. That was a ridiculous suggestion. Whether commercial or recreational, weights of vehicles are done by axle weights not corners. Can you imagine if some poor old fella went to a scale and found one corner of his vehicle was 1825 pounds heavier than the other corner. How would he go about transferring the weight around?

The best way to get your load properly if you think you are going to be packing way too much stuff, is to first find out the Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) of your vehicle, (usually written on a manufactures plate or your ownership). That simply means what weight is recommended by the manufacture which includes the vehicle and whatever you might pack in it. Example: If your trailer has a 6000 lb. GVW the trailer might weigh 4000 lb. and you could put an additional 2000 lb. in it. The tire capacity should at least match that as well. You can weigh your vehicle empty (dry) then whatever is left over is for cargo.

With trailers the overall weight should be distributed as evenly as practical to do with more weight to the front than the rear and motorhomes and truck campers the greater weight is over the rear axle as this is where heavier springs and dual tires are traditionally located.

I am no tire expert but people are packing more and more stuff all the time and I would recommend at least 6 ply tires at a minimum if you are afraid of over packing and are travelling during hot weather days. A soft squishy ride is nice but not always the most practical or longest wearing.

In my opinion you still cannot beat radial tires for overall performance in almost all applications and they are much more forgiving on less than perfect freeways where bias ply tires follow every crack in the road especially when pulling a trailer.

Happy camping everybody and keep your summer safe and litter free.
Kelly & Mary Ann Young, Langley BC

PS from Sheila: I asked Ray Shillinglaw of R & M Tire to comment and Ray replied:

“Sometimes bias ply tires are better for trailers and fifth wheels as you get a bit less sway – the tire sidewalls are stiffer.”