The average rental is going to be about five to seven days on that rental.
A franchise, if it's a travel trailer I always say tollable travel trailer
or drivable RB. If it's a tollable travel trailer, franchise is going to
net write around three hundred dollars for that rental. That's just off the rental
revenue. And then if it's a drivable you're gonna net about double that.
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Welcome. You are listening to and watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm
your host, Carrie Lotz. Well, hey you heard a OPM. Well
we got o RPM other people's money. Now you can rent out other people's
RVs. And there's actually a franchise called Fireside RV Rental. We've got the
founder and CEO Gar Russell with us gar unique idea. It's kind of like
you took you took Airbnb and moved it onto the open road. Yeah,
yeah, we did. Yeah, we took real estate and we turned it
into wheel estate. So you've got one hundred locations you expect to have by
the end of twenty twenty four. Yeah, one hundred locations by the end
of next year. That's our goal. We're currently at thirty and that's just
word of mouse and social media. We're about to start a marketing campaign and
okay, go wild. So you and your family, your wife and three
kids, been living in an RV for the past five years. Yeah,
we just actually got back in a house in March. We traveled the country
for five years, building up the business and homeschooling our four kids and checking
out America. Well it's more like RV schooling then, huh yeah, we're
RVD school and oh yeah, okay, so I saw that. You know,
this market is kind of taking off as the economy gets tighter or more
people gonna rent rather than buy RVs. What's your thoughts, Yeah, you
know, so our thoughts are a couple of years. So, first of
all, during COVID, you know, there was a huge spike in r
V sales. Oh yeah, uh. And then it's kind of like a
timeshare for a lot of people. You buy, I think you're going to
go a bunch and you've got all these grand dreams. Then you realize it
only got you know, ten days of vacation of the year, and the
kids in baseball and all these sports, and wait, we can't use this
camp at all. What do we do? You know? And during COVID
especially, you know, I was like zero down. There's a huge demand.
So a lot of people are stuck with these RVs and they can't even
sell now because they're competing with the dealerships. So on the like inventory side
for us, that's you know, there's a huge inventory. Uh. And
then on the oppi side of it, you've got campgrounds that are going up
all around the country. There's just a huge movement and people you know,
wanting to experience the outdoors, stay local, do local stuff, you know,
be outdoors together. So it's kind of a perfect store as far as
especially with this newer generation, they don't want to own anything. They just
want to experience everything, right, and that's where we come in. So
how many RVs do you have on a lot at any particular time. Our
average franchise is right around twenty five rbs twenty five and so like, what's
the I guess, for lack of a better term, occupancy of these RVs.
Yeah, so depending on where you're at, you know, based on
the weather or you know, if you're in a seasonal state, the average
RB is going to do maybe about seven to nine rentals per season, and
our average rental is around five to seven days. We're kind of going after
a specific avatar as far as who we want to read to you, Like,
we're looking for mob is planning the summer daily trip. You know,
that's who we're going af here. So we typically have higher nightly minimums.
Interesting, how do they How does your end customer find out about you?
So our whole niche is we're the management piece. Uh So we work heavily
with the peer to peer marketing platforms. So, you know, just like
you said Airbnb or short term rental space, there's a couple of peer to
peer marketing platforms that we're partnered with. The largest one is called urv share,
where they're number one customers, so we let them spend the millions of
dollars to find us the customers. You know, and then we're the management
piece. It's pretty cool. And yeah, so what kind of returns can
a franchise you realize? What's it got of cost to open a franchise and
what kind of return can you realize? Yeah, so a franchise startup phase
fifty thousand dollars. And I'm still learning some of these rules and laws as
far as what I can and can't say, but typically what I'll tell somebody
is kind of going back to your previous question, is the average rental is
going to be about five to seven days on that rental franchise e if it's
a travel trailer I always say tollable travel trailer or drivable RB. If it's
a tollable travel trailer, franchise is going to net right around three hundred dollars
for that rental. That's just off the rental revenue. And then if it's
a drivable you're gonna net about double that. So if you kind of do
your math from there and you say, okay, i've got a fleet of
let's say twenty ten our travel trailer, there's ten of rbs, but a
seasonal state, they're going to do seven to nine rentals. If you work
the math up that way, an average franchise can net right around six figures
per season after you have that, and then figuring in your add outs,
which is another full piece of this business. You know, you can rent
out, you can rent out generators, kitchen kits, betting kits, delivery
set up smorest kits. I mean the add ons that you can offer are
you know, our end list. So that's a real good money making avenue
as well. How's the insurance work on these? You've got to have your
own policy, I would assume, right, Yeah, so the insurance basically
the way that this industry is set up, as you're paying a renter is
paying a per day commercial insurance fee. So depending on where the book eight
originates through and there's going to be different insurance packages that the renter is going
to be offered. You know, they have like standard and essential and preferred,
and then they can you know, get like all the things you can
get nowadays, trip protection and and you know all that kind of stuff,
right, and what happens if the RV breaks in the middle of the trip.
Yeah, if the RV breaks in the middle of the trip, you've
got roadside that you call a lot of times it's operator here, you know,
when it comes to rent V or so many different things that people didn't
necessarily know. It's a house on wheels, you know, you got twelve
bolt systems and one hundred and ten volt and the generator this and that and
slide out and stabilizers. So a lot of times those situations will just be
handled with the technical support call. If it's something more of the driving side
of the arvy, uh, you know that it would be like a standard
road side you know, when they come change out the tire or tell you
to a shop something like that. But I assume that happens rarely. You
know, it's yeah, it's not super combin. That's something like that would
happen and years later there's in those kind of scenarios, there's usually a pretty
simple solution as far as like con manual override, different things like that getting
back the road. So, what's the craziest DORV story you have in your
extensive travels around the country, so in regards to my travels or like rentals
in your travels, and that you could tell us about rentals too. Uh,
you know, I don't get asked that quite often, so I don't
have a kind of an awful cause I enter I could say one of our
favorite memories, Okay, yeah, that was Lowoia Beach in California. That's
probably one of our favorite memories where we just kind of pulled right up to
Lowaia Beach and you've got these seals and it just wasn't your typical American sight
seeing experience because there wasn't like guard rails and fences and lines and all those
kind of things you would see where it's like, oh, here's an attraction,
let's monetize it and make it as safe as we can, you know.
So, so it was just very natural and real, and that was
cool. Put those seals to work, right, Yeah, let's put these
seals to work and yeah on a quarter of ere. Yeah, so it
was it was almost too naturally, you know, because people are like trying
to get down new selfies with them on these rocks where their waves are crashing
in and stuff like. That's that was definitely a really cool memory, uh,
you know. And then all the way to the other side of the
the country, weird out on a whale watching tour and ended up being the
second worst journey this captain had ever taken everybody out on so literally like ninety
percent of us could have got sick. Oh we're all puke in and this
and that. It was it was horrible. Yeah, so that would only
be ingraded my memory. Well, you know, just because you're on a
vacation doesn't mean it's going to be wonderful, right, yeah exactly. Yeah.
So hey, what about like crazy renter stories. You must have some
there, huh. Yeah. You know, especially during COVID, you know
a lot of people decided, well we can't travel, let's you know,
run an r v H. You know, so we had all different kinds
of crazy stories with that. I'd say probably the craziest story that sticks out
and I know is I had a group of ladies. They were in Pennsylvania.
They were going to travel. They were going to take the whole summer,
go all the way to California and back. Well, the second morning
after they left, they woke up and they all had bed bugs. Oh
my god, they all had bed bugs. And so we went into you
know, trying to figure out, okay, what do we do. So
we're getting treatments, We're putting them into hotels, rental cars, you know,
trying to figure out, like, what in the world is going on?
It was a brand new RV too. We couldn't we couldn't understand,
you know, we just assumed they must have brought it on with them to
the trip that they brought you back with them. Yeah, these sweet ladies,
we got them through their trip. They yeah, they they sure had
the memories and stories and they went through that was even it. They had
their windshields smashed on me. They just these three ladies are probably sit they're
talking about it right now. Yeah. That was probably one of our living
your life time of their lives. That's yeah. Cool. So people want
to find out more about what you're doing here or go are maybe even become
a franchisey. Where is the place to go on the web? Yeah,
so you can go to fireside arby rentel dot com. You can see all
our our RVs for rents. Then click at the menu bar and you know,
you can learn more about the franchise, or just google us. You'll
see us. We're all over YouTube and Facebook and to all the places that
people are nowadays. All right, it sounds like a really timely business.
There's a link in the show notes to this interview on Financial Survival Network dot
com. Make sure you go there sign up for your free newsletter. Gar
appreciate you coming by, and it sounds like said very timely business. We
wish you the best. Awesome. Thanks, Terry, appreciate having me on.
Thanks for listening to carry Lenz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's
trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial
Survival Network now more than ever,