Adding our camper to our car insurance costs $15.50 a month. Upgrading our roadside plan so it covers the camper too costs $92 more a year. Getting to those two numbers took four phone calls, two quotes and one evening at the kitchen table with Dana and a yellow legal pad.
I'm a PE teacher, not an insurance agent, so this is what we chose and why, not a recommendation. Policies vary a lot from family to family and state to state, and the right answer for yours should come from a licensed agent who knows your situation.
Insurance: adding the camper
Both our cars have been with Progressive since 2019, bundled. On Monday, February 2nd, two days after we bought the pop-up and two days before I towed it anywhere, I called and asked to add it. The quote came back at $186 a year, which works out to $15.50 a month.
To make sure that was reasonable, I also got a quote through Good Sam's insurance agency, since they focus on RVs and campers. Theirs came in at $241 a year. Both were fair offers. Ours was cheaper, and keeping everything on one policy with one bill and one phone number mattered to us.
Here are the questions we asked, and what we were told about our own policy:
- Is it covered parked at home? Yes. The camper lives in our side yard most of the year, close to an old mango tree, so a falling limb, a storm or theft was the coverage we cared about most.
- Who covers liability while we're towing? Our agent explained that liability while towing runs through the Pilot's policy, and the camper's own coverage is for damage to the camper. That surprised me, and I was glad I asked.
- What about the stuff inside? Some coverage for our gear, with limits. We made a list of the bigger items and took photos of everything in the bins.
- What happens if it's totaled? We asked how they'd figure the value of a 2009 camper and got a straight answer we were comfortable with.
- Deductibles? We matched the ones on our cars, so there's one number to remember.
Roadside: one card for everything
We've had AAA Classic for the two of us for years, at $97 a year. It's been a quiet line in our budget, but it doesn't cover a trailer. A camper with a flat on the Turnpike would have been our problem alone.
We compared two options:
- Good Sam Roadside, about $110 a year for RV coverage. It's the cheaper choice if the RV is all you need covered. But our two cars would still need their own plan, which means two memberships, two cards and two phone numbers at the worst possible moment.
- AAA Plus RV for two, $189 a year, which covers both cars and the camper under one membership, with longer towing distances than Classic. The upgrade from what we already paid came to $92.
We went with AAA. Dana made the argument that settled it: when something goes wrong with a camper behind the car, at night, with two kids in the back seat, the last thing we want to do is figure out which card to call. One card, in the glove box, next to the trip log and the jump starter.
We haven't used it yet. I would like that sentence to stay true for a long time.
What it adds to camp math
Insurance at $186 a year plus the $92 roadside upgrade is $278 a year, a little over $23 a month, just for owning and towing the camper. Add the $5,800 we paid for it and the $1,785 we spent making it road-ready, and what this camper really costs us will depend entirely on how often it leaves the side yard.
That's the honest test. If it sits behind the gate, it's an expensive lawn ornament. If it goes out about once a month in the cool season and a couple of times in summer, the numbers start to look a lot like the pop-up we rented at Myakka in November, which was $435 for three nights before gas and groceries. We'll see.
The first chance to start bringing that number down is tomorrow. We tow to Long Pine Key in the morning for Presidents' Day weekend, two nights, no hookups. Maya has already packed the clipboard, and Nico has packed the old wheel bearing.
