When making your decisions about how to insure your recreational vehicle, you need to understand whether or not your insurance provider is offering you specialized RV insurance. Without specialized RV insurance, you and your RV lifestyle may be vulnerable to loss.

Many RV owners have their RVs insured on traditional auto policies. Often these policies are relatively inexpensive, but they do not provide the RV owner with all of the protection they need. Below, we explain the benefits and importance of specialized RV insurance.

To learn more about specialty RV insurance, please read below and watch the following video that we created with RV Education 101:

Protection Against Depreciation:

If your RV is insured with a traditional auto policy and your vehicle is destroyed and determined to be a total loss, you will likely be paid the book value of the RV at the time of the loss. This amount will probably be much less than what you paid for the RV and what it would cost to replace the RV.

Specialized RV insurance often provides coverages that protect against the effects of depreciation in the event of a total loss. These coverages are Total Loss Replacement, Purchase Price Guarantee, and agreed value. They make a world of difference financially if your RV is destroyed.

Vacation (Campsite) Liability:

If you are camping and someone is injured on your campsite due to your negligence or if you are responsible for damaged property, your auto policy may not protect you. Many homeowners policies exclude liability coverage for rented campsites.

Vacation (Campsite) Liability is a specialized RV coverage. It offers liability protection while you are using your recreational vehicle as a vacation residence. For example, Vacation Liability is designed to cover damage caused by your campfire if it gets out of control or provide you with liability protection if someone is injured at your campsite or in your RV when it is parked at a campsite.

Personal Effects Coverage:

When you travel with your RV, you probably take a number of valuable personal belongings with you. Specialized RV insurance policies provide coverage for loss to personal belongings used in conjunction with the RV. Often, homeowners policies will not pay for personal belongings lost in a collision or stolen from a motor vehicle.

Custom Equipment Coverage:

You may have added custom equipment to your RV that did not come from the manufacturer of your RV. This equipment would be expensive to replace in the event of a total loss. Specialized RV policies often allow you to get coverage for this custom equipment. An auto policy may not.

Awning Replacement:

Awnings are a common source of RV insurance claims. If you are using an auto policy to insure your RV, it is possible that your awnings are not covered or, if covered, it is likely that your insurance company will replace your awnings at the depreciated value in the event of a total loss. Many specialty RV insurance providers offer an awning replacement coverage that will pay you the full replacement cost of the awning without depreciation in the event of a total loss of the awning.

Emergency Vacation Expense Coverage:

This coverage is also unique to specialty RV policies. This provides coverage to pay for temporary living and travel expenses if your RV is inoperable due to a covered loss and you are more than 50 miles from your home.

Diminishing Deductibles:

Under this option your physical damage deductible amounts are reduced by 25% for each claim free year you have with the company. After four consecutive claims free years, your deductibles would be $0. Any comprehensive or collision losses would reset the deductible to the initial level. This type of coverage is very uncommon with auto policies.

Fulltimers Coverage:

This coverage is valuable to people using their RVs as a residence all or much of the year. Fulltimers coverage can include liability protection (much like personal liability protection in homeowners policies), coverage for personal property in storage, and fulltimers medical payments coverage.

Adjacent Structure coverage:

If you have a stationary trailer, you may have storage sheds, screened rooms, or carports on owned or rented lots where you camp. Your auto policy probably won't provide protection of these structures, but a specialized RV policy may offer such protection.

RV Towing:

Towing an RV is often much more expensive than towing a car or light truck. Towing coverage on an auto policy may be inadequate for towing an RV, leaving you with significant out-of-pocket expense you did not expect in the event of a breakdown. The towing coverage on specialty RV policies is usually adequate for most towing or roadside labor costs.

Other Unique RV Coverage:

This list is not a comprehensive list of all of the unique coverages offered on specialty RV insurance policies. You may qualify for additional protection. The availability of coverage varies.

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