If you’re a fulltime RVer or just thinking about it, be sure to visit Work for RVers and Campers, one of the premiere websites for RVers to visit when looking for ideas about how to make a living on the road.
Work for RVers and Campers is for RVers who want to earn money to support a traveling lifestyle. You’ll find free paid employment and volunteer workamper positions along with work-at-home business tips for travelers. Coleen’s newsletter also has inspirational tips and workamping ideas.
Coleen and Bob are a real source of inspiration to us and if you’re thinking about this lifestyle, their story will inspire you too. They’re one of the web’s most well-known experts on making a living from the road. After all, they know a lot; they’ve been fulltiming since 1992! Here’s a little bit about this inspirational couple:
Bob and I spent over a decade living in a recreational vehicle of some kind or another. They included several travel trailers, a pickup camper, a park model trailer, and a motorhome. Along the way, we worked and supported ourselves. We are proof that it is not only possible, but practical, to earn a living while full-time RVing.
Much of what I write is based on our experience. Some of it comes from corresponding with thousands of campers and RVers. I also share what I’ve gleaned from employers and managers who hire and work with work campers and other RV workers.
Our wheels have been rolling much faster than we’re used to.
In less than two weeks we went through Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas and didn’t see much other than a few small farm towns and more conservative Christian billboards than people.
Our rig is now parked at Hill Shade RV Park in Gonzales, Texas where we’ll be here workamping until mid-December. More about that later . . . but now:
In fact, I keep receiving automated calls from the mis-named “Integrity” Personnel staffing agency that finds Amazon’s temporary workers in Nevada. The messages hype the lucrative pay and rewards that never materialized when I was there.
Funny thing is . . . maybe they’re telling the truth this time!
New Times at Amazon
Recently I bumped into Amazon’s main workamper hiring representative, the “Camper Force Coordinator” who attends RV shows and gatherings like the Workamper Rendezvous, touting the benefits of working at Amazon and hiring people on the spot.
This man isn’t a stranger to working the lowest rungs on the ladder at Amazon. He’s a retired firefighter who toiled at Amazon’s Kansas location before being hired as a seasonal recruiter when Amazon started managing the workamping program directly instead of relying on staffing agencies to do so. This recruiter is so nice that I hesitated to tell him about my crappy Fernley experience.
However I didn’t need to be shy: he knew all about the lousy way that the Nevada staffing agency managed seasonal workers like me, and he’s been working with Amazon to make every location a better place for workampers.
So it wasn’t just me! I wasn’t crazy for thinking that the agency treated everyone like dog-doo. I LOVE being vindicated!
The Camper Force Recruiter told me “I want to make sure that seasonal campers have a good experience and want to come back and tell their friends about it.”
Now that Amazon oversees temporary workampers, the benefits are greater than ever. Everyone gets a completion bonus, all campground fees are covered (they weren’t in Nevada), the pay is higher and every worker gets a 10 percent discount on Amazon purchases!
Amazon is also better managing the amount of workers they hire so that the promised overtime that never materialized for me is now occurring for workers at each warehouse. We talked to one Amazon elf this week who is already getting overtime in Nevada.
The Camper Force Coordinator made being a minion sound so appealing, he almost swayed me into applying. If I didn’t have other business ventures happening right now, I might’ve done it.
I had forgotten what it was like to be told how to do my work and even when I could have lunch. Call it a bad attitude or whatever, but that’s just not my style.
As bad as it was working at Amazon’s Fernley location in 2009, I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.
Why? Because it reminded me that . . .
I’d rather be the captain of my own dingy than a junior officer on the Titanic! (Dr. James Chan)
If you’re working at Amazon this season, what’s your experience like so far?
Colorado gave us a spectacular farewell on Monday while closed up the cabin to head south. A surprise snowstorm dumped several inches of white powder on us as we hitched up and pulled away.
Originally we were supposed to head to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, an artsy little town that I’ve always wanted to check out, but instead we drove a little further southeast to the Workamper Rendezvous in the Ozark town of Heber Springs, Arkansas. What a great decision that was!
Networking and Road Tripping with Like-Minded People
Workamper Rendezvous is a new, twice-yearly event put on by the good Workamper folks. This crash course is a 3-day seminar series geared toward anyone who wants to explore fulltiming and workamping arrangements that allow RVers to work a few hours in exchange for a free RV site and sometimes even pay.
The sessions were a little too beginner-level for us, so we didn’t attend the conference but instead went to network with others who work from the road.
Honestly I had forgotten about what fun this crowd can be. We were made to feel at home from the minute we showed up. From the nightly campfires to the folks I interviewed for an article I’m writing about workamping, everyone was so enthusiastic and welcoming!
If you’re unfamiliar with workamping and dreaming about ways you can live and work on the road, do yourself a favor and check out this seminar, held in April and October. The price is well worth it, and will pay for itself when you get that first workamping job.
Do you road trip with debt? If so, does debt interfere with your ability to enjoy your nomadic freedom?
Roadtripping with debt didn’t seem like a problem to us in 2007. After all, this lifestyle was only supposed to last a year. After that, we were supposed to settle down and get back into the “normal” routine of a mortgage and living beyond our means with the miracle of plastic.
We didn’t know that being normal was dumb.
But when we discovered that we we loved the nomadic lifestyle too much to stop, we knew we had to scale back our spending to keep going.
We still had no idea where our income would be coming from, but our original road trip budget could last another year if we got out of debt. Meeting real life examples of debt free road trippers also helped.
Old Habits are Hard to Break
In 2008, we painstakingly cracked open our nest egg and paid off our last debt, the rig. But old habits are hard to break, and we kept using credit cards.
There’s something about the security of using a plastic when you don’t know how much money you’ll make each month.
Physically we were debt-free, but mentally we were still enslaved by the credit card security blanket. We paid off the balance each month but I would sweat as I scrambled to find the funds.
But I Pay My Balance Every Month!
Studies show that when you use plastic to shop, you’re automatically spending more than you would if you paid in cash. But somehow I thought I was different, and poo-pooed those studies thinking “Oh not me! I’m always careful.”
But after some agonizing credit card billing hassles with Bank of World Domination earlier this year, we burned the security blanket and committed to paying cash for everything.
Because we have the most sporadic, unpredictable income, suddenly every purchase we made was under scrutiny. Knowing that we could suffer the embarrassing fate of being declined at the checkout counter gives us a self-discipline like we never had before. It was scary as hell the first two months, but now it feels “normal” to us.
The Results
Since we stopped using credit cards, I can’t say that our expenses have gone down a whole lot (after all, we were pretty frugal to begin with), but the peace of mind I find in knowing that everything in our possession, everything we eat or consume, is paid for on the spot.
Next week we’ll hit the road, completely, truly debt-free for the first time ever. I can’t wait!
Disclaimer: I’ll confess that we still use one piece of plastic to handle some aspects of our business. The efficiency and protection our card company offers when dealing with vendors, product returns and exchanges and other things that make our businesses run can’t compare with the lame customer service we get from our bank. I know Dave Ramsey would disagree, but since we don’t use the business card for normal everyday spending, I’m OK with it.
We still pay our balance every month, but until our business ventures stabilize our income to a level where I feel comfortable dealing with vendors in cash, we’ll continue wearing the credit card security blanket for the business.
And now a little about the “work” aspect of our road tripping lifestyle.
Over a year ago I committed to finally making good use of my overpriced journalism degree by building my writing career and expanding my editorial capabilities beyond the world of three legged dogs and bone cancer.
Although I was a regular contributor to the Eureka Times Standard Newspaper for about a decade (the main newspaper of our old stomping grounds) and wrote daily articles for our Tripawds.com community, I never seemed to have time to pursue actual paid writing gigs from new clients.
Faced with the reality that my current writing efforts weren’t going anywhere or generating income unless I made an honest attempt to pitch my services, I started looking for outlets that could improve my talents while actually paying something.
My efforts are slowly paying off. Here’s my latest piece about the beautiful area we fell in love with back in 2009:
After four years on the road and nearly 70,000 miles logged on the Dodge, there are a few places that have remained near and dear to us, the kind of place we want to go back to again and again. Vickers Ranch is one of them.
And now that the ranch cabins are for sale, there’s a lot more people who are going to discover the magic of this 100-year old Lake City legacy.
Recently I talked to Larry and Paul Vickers about the family’s exciting new Vickers Horse River Ranch Property that gives the public a chance to own one of their hand-crafted, historic log cabins.
In this 15-minute intervew we talk with Larry and Paul Vickers, whose family helped establish Lake City during the peak mining years of the late 1800s.
Jim and I worked at their ranch during 2008 when we thought we wanted to buy a small resort.
Then we realized: What, are we nuts?!
Now that we know the realities of the resort life, we can say we’re definitely not cut out for this kind of gig. The work was the hardest we have ever done but the family’s kindness and generosity made it all worthwhile.
Our adventures at the ranch were chronicled in blogs post such as:
We’ll hopefully be heading back to the ranch in a few weeks to get our share of hay buckin’, cowboy coffee and manual labor, so stay tuned for more Vickers Ranch workamping adventures.
Meanwhile, if you or someone you know would like to be a guest on our Blog Talk Radio show, drop us a line!
There’s a lot to be said for staying in one location, if only for a month or so.
After just a couple of weeks at our current gig, caretaking a vacant property in Southern Arizona, we’ve already settled in nicely and created daily routines that revolve around working, playing, eating and resting.
These routines are much like those of a stick-house dweller’s, except that we don’t see anyone else all week until we leave the property to go grocery shopping.
It’s just us and the wind most days. Oh, and the nasty javalenas.
Caretaking 101
The assignment is easy and our bosses are great people. They’re not asking much from us, so we have plenty of time to catch up on our own work and bringing home the bacon. We love it.
They’ve known the property owners here for a while and were caretaking a neighboring property, but just left.
The weather’s almost been nice enough to work and eat al fresco, but it just turned ugly and we hope this is only temporary.
Still, even during the brisk 50 degree evenings we’re seeing incredible sunsets, like this one. I’ve made a pledge to see every one while we’re here. Most of them look something like this (and no, I didn’t Photoshop this image).
Meanwhile, our Wyatt loves the freedom to roam the fenced property like a dirty ol’ ranch dawg. He’s made a new friend too.
That nasty javalena drives Wyatt insane (moreso than usual) whenever he makes an appearance at sunset. Gregory provides hours of entertainment for all of us.
Water, Water….everywhere?
I was surprised to see that even the smallest properties around here have irrigation running out to landscaping, chicken coops, you name it.
After all, we come from Colorado, where it’s illegal to wash our truck, or water our outdoor plants with our own well water. Water is so precious to Coloradoans, because no water comes into the state, but it all leaves and heads south . . . eventually ending up right here, in the big ol’ Rio Grande dustbowl along the border.
Once that precious resource gets here, people get to water their plants with the very same water that I’m not allowed to use in my backyard, where it originally comes from.
I have to buy water from our property association if I want to use it for outdoor purposes. But Arizonans don’t. Huh?
I like griping about it. Jim says I’m just mad because I can’t use water like this on our property without getting busted. You bet I would, if I could get away with it.
Off the Grid, Away from the Rules
But here in Southern Arizona, just shy of the border, it’s no-man’s land. People who live here are free to do what they want. From the funky handbuilt houses to the backyard shooting ranges, in a lot of ways the Wild West lives on.
And why not?
If you’re rugged enough to make a home for yourself here, I guess you deserve to make your own rules. It’s not exactly the most hospitable environment and most people aren’t cut out for it. I know I’m not.
Someone’s gotta do it though, right?
There are some great sights nearby, like the artsy old mining town of Bisbee, which we plan on exploring more during our stay.
Until then, we’re putting our noses to the grindstone, working away to make a buck on that great hamster wheel of life. We put in some long hours most days, but at least we’ve got a spectacular view out of our office window.
My dad once told me a similar joke where an immigrant gave up on learning the English language after reading that headline. But yet again, I digress.
Though I have said it before, whenever I go AWOL around here you can rest assured it has something to do with three legged dogs. This time was a big deal.
Suffice it to say, however, that this undertaking was a crash course in php and css. And so far, it has paid off. Speaking figuratively, not literally. My prime directive for overhauling the Tripawds site was to improve performance in the discussion forums.
We started Tripawds using Mandigo, the same theme behind this blog and the RVblogz community. It has served us well. Mandigo is massively configurable, with lots of java and many files. Over the past few years, Jerry’s blog infrastructure had become bloated.
Too many hacks, scripts and widgets were bogging down the site.
It’s also where I got the lean and mean WPMU-Nelo. Hacking this slick WordPress theme to bits was relatively easy, even for me due to it’s code simplicity and parent/child theme structure.
Did someone say digress? We’re in Quartzite now with the Nü Crew, and I haven’t even written about Walla Walla. As much as I hate reading blogs that bemoan infrequent updates, we gots some catchin’ up to do!
If I have my way, I’ll never have to use my connections to land a job working for somebody else ever again. But LinkedIn is one social business network that makes a nice little safety net, if I ever had to dust of my résumé that is.
Its also a great way to keep in touch with old coworkers and colleagues. And I get a kick out of updating my status with things like “gone fishing” or “Heading South for the Winter” while others talk about provisioning servers or recontextualizing some brand paradigm to maximize market penetration.
Done that thanks. I’ll take my mobile lifestyle and workamping anyday. That’s why I started the LinkedIn Workampers Group. I also stumbled upon the RV Enthusiasts LinkedIn Group. If you’re LinkedIn, check ‘em out. You won’t find me on Facebook.
Whenever I go MIA around here, it usually means I’ve been wrapped up is some major project – one that probably has something to do with three legged dogs. This time is no different.
I haven’t written since that silly Valentine’s Day post because I have been busy launching the all new and much improved Tripawds Gift Shop. This required dusting off the old right brain bits and lubricating my creative gears to come up with loads of new graphic designs for inspawrational three legged dog t-shirts, cards, stickers, mugs and other gift items.
It was fun designing all these new graphics, and it felt good doing it for something I am passionate about, without some client breathing down my neck telling me to make the text bold and red.
Oh, wait … the type on our new Tripawd Power design is bold and red! Well, not really… it’s Cooper Black actually, and more of a crimson. But there I go digressing, here’s the link if you want to talk about typefaces.
I would like to think this represents some of my best work. But that’s not saying much considering I haven’t done any real graphic design work since we sold our business nearly three years ago. But it is a nice feeling knowing that I still got it – if I ever really had it, that is. And it goes to prove that graphic design is like riding a bike, in more ways than one.
If you think you may have lost the touch, just jump back into your favorite Adobe product and start pedaling. And if your chain falls off and you just can’t get it to work right, call a professional. Anyone need a logo?
Work for RVers and Campers is for RVers who want to earn money to support a traveling lifestyle. You’ll find free paid employment and volunteer workamper positions along with work-at-home business tips for travelers. Coleen’s newsletter also has inspirational tips and workamping ideas.Bob and I spent over a decade living in a recreational vehicle of some kind or another. They included several travel trailers, a pickup camper, a park model trailer, and a motorhome. Along the way, we worked and supported ourselves. We are proof that it is not only possible, but practical, to earn a living while full-time RVing.
Entries (RSS)
