Drive Like a Pro

When I was in the Army I was in charge of some very large maintenance operations. When you are put in charge of large maintenance operations you not only need to understand what it takes to maintain the equipment, but you need to understand how to operate the equipment too.

Driving and operating different types of vehicles always came kind of natural to me, but to learn the specifics about a particular vehicle required some type of formal driver’s training instruction. You attend the classroom training, do some hands on training and if you pass the final testing you were licensed to operate the equipment.

I have owned and operated just about every type of RV imaginable, and a large motorhome seemed no different to me. With my experience, driving everything from large recovery vehicles to Bradley Fighting Vehicles, driving a motorhome would be easy. And through the last two motorhomes we owned it did seem that way. I never had an accident or mishap, knock on wood, and I felt as though I was, in my opinion, an educated driver.

That was until I enlisted the expertise of Lorrin Walsh, professional driver & author of “Drive your Motorhome Like a Pro”, to team up with me and produce an RV driving DVD. When I began working on the script, based off of Lorrin’s book, I was immediately impressed with the techniques and educational value the training had to offer. I quickly realized how much I didn’t know about driving a motorhome. Lorrin explained it to me like this;

“When most people were taught to drive they were just taught the hows and not the whys. Teaching the whys, or the mechanics of driving gives you the tools and skills you can apply to any vehicle or any driving situation.”

I have always felt that driving a motorhome, especially for the first time, can be intimidating, but with power steering, automatic transmissions and great visibility almost any experienced driver can quickly adapt to driving a motorhome. But after producing, filming and editing the driving DVD the question was; are you driving it the right way? Lots of people have been driving motorhomes for lots of years without a real understanding of the dynamics and driving techniques of driving a large vehicle.

Should people be required to attend formal type training to drive a motorhome? I don’t know. What I do know is that there is a lot more to driving a large vehicle than there is to driving an automobile. I am a good case in point. When it came to driving a motorhome I felt that I was a well educated driver, but I soon realized there were a lot of things I did, but didn’t necessarily understand.

For example you might know how far to go into a turn before you actually start turning the wheel, but not understand what proper set-up and turn offset data means, or how it can help improve your driving.

View proper set-up procedures

Happy RV Learning,

Mark Polk
RV Education 101
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Who is that driving the motorhome?

Over the weekend we started planning for an RV trip we are taking later this summer. It's about 6,000 miles roundtrip. We are on somewhat of a timeline and I wanted an idea on average of how many miles we would travel each day, based on our schedule.

It seems like more often than not we are on a tight schedule, forcing us to put in more miles per day than I would like. I want this trip to be more leisurely when it comes to how many hours you are behind the wheel each day.

Admittedly I am one of those people who likes to do all of the driving myself. I just feel better if I know I am behind the wheel. I know my wife, Dawn, is a competent driver (she even has her CDL) but I still prefer to do the driving. Don't get me wrong, I think it is extremely important that both individuals are capable of driving or towing the RV. You never know when your wife or husband will need to drive the RV and they should feel comfortable and confident in doing so.

As we were planning the trip it brought back a memory of a past trip we took in the RV. We were stopped in traffic because of an accident, and had sat in the same spot without moving for at least 30 minutes. I told Dawn that I was going to run back and use the bathroom and if traffic started moving to just get behind the wheel and drive. The boys were in the back bedroom playing X Box.

The motorhome started moving about the same time that I came out of the bathroom. Both boys looked up at me with their eyes wide open and my older son said, "If you're back here with us who's driving the motorhome?" My youngest son (Dawn's stepson), who was about 8 at the time leaped up and ran to the front of the motorhome and said, "Dawn just pull over as soon as you can and let dad drive."

The boys never saw Dawn drive the motorhome and just assumed she couldn't or shouldn't be driving it. At that point I made a mental note to myself to one day produce a driving DVD to help teach people who don't drive the RV how to do it. It took a while but eventually we produced our Drive your Motorhome Like a Pro DVD

Mark Polk

RV Education 101

RV University

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