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Old 10-31-2014, 10:33 AM   #81
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Hi Floyd, I would have to refer you to someone like Robert. I have been there quite a bit, but only during the course of readying a unit to take out on the road to show. We put on over 10k miles along the Gulf and East coast states.
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Old 10-31-2014, 10:47 AM   #82
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Originally Posted by Ron Merritt View Post
With the Oliver you get two dinettes. One can be left as a bed while the other is left for dining. As these are mostly couples buying these size trailers, that is a fine setup.

^^^This^^^ Mostly two people is what I am thinking. I do understand families buy these also but personally I was shopping for a two person trailer when I bought our Scamp. And I will use the same criteria if I shop for another egg.
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Old 10-31-2014, 10:58 AM   #83
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The primary problem I see with a layout that has a permanent bed and a large dinnette (essentially a 4 berth trailer) is, to accomodate traveling with 4 people, where does all their stuff go? There is generally not room for food or clothing for that many people in a small trailer. You don't have the hanging closet space for sure, and 4 people have to share a very tiny bathroom and shower. Where do their damp towels go?

Now if your intent is to sleep 2, but have dining for 4, that is a different matter. But if you are going to have a "dinner party", you can always just tear down the bed and have at it.

The Oliver layouts are just that - sleeping for two, dining for 4. The space that would go to a permanent bed is traded off for a large closet, larger bathroom and many cabinets (with pantry), including dedicated outside storage compartment and a battery bay. Having ample storage compartments, large overhead cabinets, and large hanging closet provides alot of the appeal of this layout. You can conceivably sleep three (maybe a visiting grandchild), but mostly this is just a 2 person coach.
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Old 10-31-2014, 11:10 AM   #84
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The primary problem I see with a layout that has a permanent bed and a large dinnette (essentially a 4 berth trailer) is, to accomodate traveling with 4 people, where does all their stuff go? There is generally not room for food or clothing for that many people in a small trailer. You don't have the hanging closet space for sure, and 4 people have to share a very tiny bathroom and shower. Where do their damp towels go?

Now if your intent is to sleep 2, but have dining for 4, that is a different matter. But if you are going to have a "dinner party", you can always just tear down the bed and have at it.

The Oliver layouts are just that - sleeping for two, dining for 4. The space that would go to a permanent bed is traded off for a large closet, larger bathroom and many cabinets (with pantry), including dedicated outside storage compartment and a battery bay. Having ample storage compartments, large overhead cabinets, and large hanging closet provides alot of the appeal of this layout. You can conceivably sleep three (maybe a visiting grandchild), but mostly this is just a 2 person coach.
just a little perspective...
Below is a "small trailer" which has sleeping for two and dining for four ...
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Old 10-31-2014, 12:29 PM   #85
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Originally Posted by Ron Merritt View Post
The primary problem I see with a layout that has a permanent bed and a large dinnette (essentially a 4 berth trailer) is, to accomodate traveling with 4 people, where does all their stuff go? There is generally not room for food or clothing for that many people in a small trailer. You don't have the hanging closet space for sure, and 4 people have to share a very tiny bathroom and shower. Where do their damp towels go?

Now if your intent is to sleep 2, but have dining for 4, that is a different matter. But if you are going to have a "dinner party", you can always just tear down the bed and have at it.

The Oliver layouts are just that - sleeping for two, dining for 4. The space that would go to a permanent bed is traded off for a large closet, larger bathroom and many cabinets (with pantry), including dedicated outside storage compartment and a battery bay. Having ample storage compartments, large overhead cabinets, and large hanging closet provides alot of the appeal of this layout. You can conceivably sleep three (maybe a visiting grandchild), but mostly this is just a 2 person coach.
Ron, it just goes to show that people look for different things and of course they often want certain features that they are used to having. As I recall from the Oliver info, I saw a big lounge area which looks impressive but then the question is where is the bed. You have to make it up from that lounge area. So if you keep the bed made up, there is a small 2-person dinette. Lots of people have no intention of making up a bed every day so that is what they would have. Others have no problem with always making up the bed.

We have a 19'. There is a permanent bed and 4-person dinette. There are quite a few people who own 19's who travel with children and/or dogs and some with a third adult. I don't think of a permanent bed in the Oliver as being anything other than removing dinette or lounge space because of what I am used to and what the Oliver site photos show. With 23' I simply expect more dinette or lounge area but that is just some of us.

Their floor plan could have been very different. Some Escape floor plans could be very different to suit me also. They are what they are and we look at what we like and are used to having.

As for towels, we have a drying rack that goes on the bumper and we use backpacking towels most of the time. If it rains, towels go on a bathroom rack. There is a hanging closet but I would not put wet items anywhere except the bath.

We use campground showers and I have to suppose that people with children do also much of the time. I would not expect to boondock more than about four days with taking showers, for just the two of us. But I am pretty good at conserving water. The Oliver would no doubt better suit people who want to boondock and have the bathroom space to take showers. It could suit us if we took to boondocking a lot, which is quite possible.

It would be a trade-off of more of one thing for less of another, which is quite the common problem. Makes the decision on a trailer often a toss-up. It has sometimes occurred to me to use a quarter when comparing trailer models or companies.
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Old 10-31-2014, 12:50 PM   #86
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Well, if you are in the market for an Oliver, layout is probably not at the top of your list of considerations. Build quality and features are probably much more important. If you want a rig for boondocking, I can't think of a better molded fiberglass trailer - none I've seen have the ground clearance to go offroad that this one does, or the battery capacity or the solar & inverters. If I could suggest an improvement, it would be for more fresh water tankage. But it is pretty high compared to other MFTs.

You do have a choice of permanent bed - that is the twin plan. I upgraded one mattress and am leaving the other bed as a sofa. You could upgrade both mattresses to the residential style mattresses, or neither (using the standard cushions). One could use the twins as day sofas I supposed, without the need to really "make up a bed" each day. Also with the twins, you don't have a crawl-over situation either. The two person dinnette is fine for me 99% of the time. If I have a dinner party, it will be outside.

You do have the option, down the road, to convert the twins to a full time king mattress - they can remove the drawer and put in a platform to span the mattresses. That may be a good option for folks who started with a twin, but decided they want to go back to a double bed. Not sure if you could convert back to the U-lounge with table, but I would imagine that is not too hard a task.
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Old 10-31-2014, 01:29 PM   #87
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We had a motorhome that 'could' sleep 6 but never did. In it we once had 6 for dinner and on a very few occasions slept 4. 99% of the time it was used for sleeping two.

Generally dogs and cats were not part of our travel.

In our Scamp it's been just the two of us.

Personally if I had a 23 foot trailer I would like a real shower and two comfortable chairs and a love seat. The love seat and chairs would turn into a bed. It takes minutes to set up a bed and would be even easier with a little design fore thought.

The second bed in our motorhome went from couch to bed in seconds and was as comfortable as the queen bed.

Our 15.5 foot Sunline had a bathroom, a small home style shower, a dinette and a full time bed. A really great layout with jalousie windows all around. In addition it had solar panels, sat dish and a rear storage box. It also weighed 400 lbs less than our Scamp 16. We would still be using it had it not leaked and ruined the wooden frame.



Taking down the bed is no harder than making the bed every morning.
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Old 10-31-2014, 02:24 PM   #88
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Layout

Cathi we also looked at the Escape 19's but just couldn't warm to the notion of having to crawl over the other person in the middle of the night to go powder you nose. In fact we actually like the layout of the Oliver, King size bed at least on the one we ordered and the smaller dinette seems more than adequate. So at least to use we have the best of both worlds, an adequate size dinette always available, and a bed always ready to go for those times you want a sofa or a larger dinette no big deal just takes a few minutes to change form large bed to U shaped dinette. But mostly agree with Ron on this, heck if its in the summer or milder parts of the year who is staying inside anyway. We will most like carry a screen room along with us as well. About the only time you'll catch us inside is sleeping or inclimate weather.

Norm, just for the record even the almost identical in size to the Oliver, model 1985 Lance TT does not have a love seat. It does have a real bath however and is a full foot wider than all of the FG trailers on this website. And then theres the fact of reliability or lack of it there of. We came close to doing one of these before coming back to our senses.

The long and short of it is this, nobody makes the perfect camper when it comes to floor plan and other amenities. So we all have to choose what works best for us.

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Old 10-31-2014, 07:07 PM   #89
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I have not cared about the climb over thing but probably more because we had never had a trailer, so that hardly seemed like a big deal. After a while though, perhaps it does get old. I will have to look at the twin situation you mention. Of course, the Escape 21' took care of the climb over but with a somewhat smaller bed.

The tanks are always a concern and never big enough in these smaller trailers. We have stayed at a place where a wagon came around once or twice a week to dump tanks and fill water. We can go a week if showers are not taken in the trailer but would not last long if they are.

I hardly think Oliver can ignore layout desires but at least they do have two options. The all-season claim is also a big deal to many.
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Old 10-31-2014, 07:18 PM   #90
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ron Merritt View Post
Well, if you are in the market for an Oliver, layout is probably not at the top of your list of considerations. Build quality and features are probably much more important. If you want a rig for boondocking, I can't think of a better molded fiberglass trailer - none I've seen have the ground clearance to go offroad that this one does, or the battery capacity or the solar & inverters. If I could suggest an improvement, it would be for more fresh water tankage. But it is pretty high compared to other MFTs.

You do have a choice of permanent bed - that is the twin plan. I upgraded one mattress and am leaving the other bed as a sofa. You could upgrade both mattresses to the residential style mattresses, or neither (using the standard cushions). One could use the twins as day sofas I supposed, without the need to really "make up a bed" each day. Also with the twins, you don't have a crawl-over situation either. The two person dinnette is fine for me 99% of the time. If I have a dinner party, it will be outside.

You do have the option, down the road, to convert the twins to a full time king mattress - they can remove the drawer and put in a platform to span the mattresses. That may be a good option for folks who started with a twin, but decided they want to go back to a double bed. Not sure if you could convert back to the U-lounge with table, but I would imagine that is not too hard a task.
On ground clearance, I don't know how Escape compares but they certainly have plenty on their 19's and 21's. An option on the others.

What is the Oliver battery capacity? Practically everyone gets the optional two 6-volt for Escapes although I am now seeing more going with one 12v on the 21's. Escape has 160 watts and inverters. What solar controller and watts for the Oliver are you getting?

The biggest leap on the Oliver is actually the tow vehicle. They may be making their main market the folks with big trailers who want more quality and are downsizing rather than fiberglass owners moving up.

I like the idea of the day sofas.
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Old 10-31-2014, 10:12 PM   #91
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As with, I suspect, each of us the trailers we own are very special to our hearts. Each one is likely a reflection of our individual personalities. I know we have a very personal attachment to ours. Oliver afforded us a rare opportunity to have a trailer taylor built exactly to our specifications. And yes, Charlie, it did take 3 months to build (much longer actually), not because of any inefficiencies at the Oliver factory but rather their meticulous attention to detail at every step if the way. And you know the engineer in you would have loved watching every minute of the build.

Cathi, you asked about battery choices. We have four Trojan 6 volt AGM batteries in the Outlaw Oliver. They have a combined 400 amp hours. With the solar panels and a Yamaha 3000 genset, we can be pretty much independent for extended periods of time. I've not seen the need for a inverter yet, although we had one in our previous Oliver.

We chose the twin bed model for the same reasons others have mentioned, mainly so as not to have to crawl over each other. We had an additional reason in that we were designing them to provide extra storage space underneath each one.

I don't presume to know everything about the Oliver family's travel trailer business model or their exact target customer audience. If asked, I would guess that it is the 50+ age group, mostly couples with grown children, probably retired (or nearing it) with some disposable income.

I base this presumption on several things:

(1) The absolute maximum number of sleeping adults is three. (I suppose that if you found yourself with more folks than that and everyone was "really good friends" more than two could fit in the rear king size bed but that's probably not a discussion we should have here.)

(2) If you have spent the extra money on custom mattresses (as many have done) you have effectively eliminated the option of converting the rear bed into a multi-person seating/lounge area.

(3) If number two (above) applies, then you are back to the two seater side dinette and that might not suit your needs. The fact that our side dinette has seating only for two had never really occurred to me. If we had room for four people half of it would only be wasted space.

For those with more than one child, this is probably not the trailer you should choose.

These trailers are reasonably heavy in the FGRV group. If you are planning to tow with anything less than a V-8, this is probably not the trailer you should choose.

And, as everyone here loves to point out, they are the most expensive in the FGRV group. Well, somebody's got to be number one.

I don't think these attributes of the Oliver are negatives, not at least among those of us that have chosen to own them.
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Old 10-31-2014, 10:46 PM   #92
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Thanks, Steve,
Can the four batteries fit in the standard compartment? Why did you choose AGM?

Do you actually need and use the generator? We would not have one so would need the inverter to run the microwave.

We can use our dinette as a lounge to read, taking the length of it for our legs. We don't see it as wasted space but as very necessary space. But the Oliver's twin arrangement could serve the same purpose.

Yes, definitely need a V8.

Good observation you make about the custom mattresses and one to remember.

On the four season, have people used theirs in winter to know how well it performs?
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Old 11-01-2014, 06:23 AM   #93
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Yes, definitely need a V8.

I would disagree. Ford rates the towing capacity of the F150 with the 6 cylinder EcoBoost higher than ANY of its V8 F150s. And I towed one of the new Oliver's with my F150 EcoBoost for several miles and was able to easily accelerate going up hill. And before someone points out that acceleration is any change in speed (increase or decrease), I was able to increase speed easily going uphill.


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Old 11-01-2014, 06:44 AM   #94
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Sorry Carl, I didn't mean to imply that pulling an Oliver with anything other than a V-8 could NOT be done. It's just my personal experience with our first Oliver (at about 3900lbs) and a new 2009 Jeep Unlimited as a tow vehicle did not work out too well in the Colorado Rockies. We got up and over them albeit with a struggle and sometimes at about 30mph. Your Ford EB is a lot stronger than the clunker that was in that Jeep. You should be fine. That being said, MOST 6 cylinders would struggle to pull the 5000 or more pounds of the Oliver Elite II over an 11,000 foot pass.
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Old 11-01-2014, 07:00 AM   #95
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Upgrading RVs to Oliver

No apology necessary, Steve. The EcoBoost is rated somewhere around 12,000 lbs. every time I drive it I am amazed at the horsepower and torque it has. I nearly bought an Oliver but it was too long to easily maneuver around my tight driveway.


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Old 11-01-2014, 07:40 AM   #96
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I nearly bought an Oliver but it was too long to easily maneuver around my tight driveway.
We had exactly the same problem. I solved it by putting a receiver on the front of the vehicle. Now we push the Oliver up the winding drive and into its garage. Works like a charm and I believe I could thread a needle with it now.
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Old 11-01-2014, 12:29 PM   #97
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[QUOTE=CPW;490119]I would disagree. Ford rates the towing capacity of the F150 with the 6 cylinder EcoBoost higher than ANY of its V8 F150s. And I towed one of the new Oliver's with my F150 EcoBoost for several miles and was able to easily accelerate going up hill. And before someone points out that acceleration is any change in speed (increase or decrease), I was able to increase speed easily going uphill.

Thank you for pointing that out, Carl. I personally do not look at pick-ups as I like an enclosed vehicle. And I have always assumed that enough power for more than, say 4500 lbs to 5000 lbs, would require a V8. I am sure that many would like to know what you have said.

A normal V6 is not going to suffice as far as meeting the numbers but that one is the exception, I take it, and perhaps a couple of others like it.
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Old 11-01-2014, 12:33 PM   #98
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Does the Oliver have a low-point drain for winterizing?

Does anyone have any experience using the Oliver in winter?
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Old 11-01-2014, 04:03 PM   #99
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As I write this post, this thread (default skin) is seven pages long. I think I've read most of the posts... but still and this is MHO... There's something wrong with the words "upgrade" when speaking of moving from one all molded towable brand to a different brand.... sorry to the OP.

I own a soon-to-be 27 year old Scamp AND LOVE IT. I also own a 2014 Escape 5.0TA. Do I consider that an upgrade? No.. I consider that "upsizing." I have more space.. at least four more feet front to aft. But still, it's an all molded towable, newer forshur... but upgrading sounds (to me) like the folks that have decades old trailer are.... downgraded....too arrogant for me!

Love the one you're with!
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Old 11-01-2014, 04:37 PM   #100
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Looking at the definition, "upgrade" means to replace or add parts that are newer or better. So it really has nothing to do with getting another trailer but improving the one you have. The word does not even apply as far as someone having the 17' and then getting the 23'. At least, that is the way I see it.

If we get another 19', I might call that an upgrade because it is the same model but all new. If we get a 21', however, or an Oliver, that is not an upgrade but simply another trailer that is newer or bigger, a newer trailer or a bigger trailer, not an upgrade. People start using such words and the incorrect usage becomes common. Ironically, they are actually trying to use the correct word!

So you are right, Donna, there is something wrong with using "upgrade" in many cases because it is simply not the correct word.
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