Our sweet ride.

We have an American Coach Class A motorhome. It’s the American Dream 45A model built on a Freightliner custom chassis with a 15L turbo diesel engine. You can view the full specs here.

*Note: We are official REV Recreation Group, Inc. brand ambassadors, which is the parent company who owns American Coach. We partnered with the company after we purchased our American Coach motorhome. We genuinely love our RV and would highly recommend it to others.

Class A motorhomes are those RVs that look like a bus – they are long, rectangular and flat nosed in the front. Many Class A motorhomes are constructed on a bus chassis. They typically have a large front windshield that offers the best views on the road. They are commonly referred to as ‘coaches’ and run on either gasoline or diesel. Most of the larger, luxury Class A RVs are diesel and are known as ‘diesel pushers’.

Class A motorhomes have lots of advantages including plenty of exterior storage and spacious floor plans. The biggest advantage for us was the engine and towing capacity of our model. Our RV can tow 20,000 lbs, more than most other RVs. This was important for us as Kris races cars and tows a large race trailer.

Our RV is built on a custom Freightliner chassis and is surprisingly easy to drive. We have V Ride and a steerable tag axle, which makes the ride very smooth and has a better turning radius. We have the Cummins 605hp engine so it can easily tow and manage roads with hills/mountains. It takes some time to adjust to driving it given the size of our RV. Both of us feel comfortable driving the RV, although Kris is usually behind the wheel!

Yes. Any RV will require a lot of maintenance. Imagine the damage your house would experience in an earthquake. When you’re driving, your RV is constantly getting bumped and tossed around. It’s hard even on the best built RVs, and many RVs aren’t built that well these days. They use cheap parts and reduce the weight by using light weight materials. These don’t tend to hold up well on the road. If you aren’t comfortable with doing some maintenance yourself, then RVing might not be for you. It would get very expensive and time consuming if we had to take in our RV to a mechanic every time something went wrong or didn’t work. Luckily for us, Kris is an expert mechanic and willing to get his hands dirty.

Yes, there’s a lot of storage space since it’s a Class A RV. There is ample exterior storage with large bins below the base. Inside there is also a good bit of storage. The main areas that are tight are the kitchen and wardrobe storage areas. We have to be very selective about those spaces as you definitely cannot fit as much as you could in a house.

We love the size of our RV. It measures at 45 ft long total and has 3 large slide outs, which creates lots of room inside once extended. Here’s a list of some of our favorite amenities:
- Stackable washer & dryer
- Large size kitchen (for an RV)
- 2-burner induction cooktop (no propane)
- Dishwasher
- Residential size refrigerator
- King size bed
- Queen sofa sleeper
- Large shower
- 1.5 bathrooms
- Motorized blinds
- 3 armless awnings
- Flat level slide out floors- 4 large TVs- Security cameras mounted on exterior
- Advanced nav system

The list goes on, but you get the point!

Axle loves to ride in the RV! As soon as we start up the truck, he jumps in the passenger seats and can’t wait for us to get going. When we’re driving, he typically lays on the floor in his bed between the front seats. When we’re parked, he thinks of the RV as being at home so he does very well if we have to leave him for short periods of time. One thing to note, we always make sure we are connected to power or the generator is running anytime we leave him. An RV doesn’t have a lot of insulation like a house so it’s heats up very quickly like a car. It’s important to make sure you keep the AC running if it’s hot or leave the windows open for airflow. We also have WiFi enabled thermostats and can check on the temperature inside the RV while we’re away. Plus we have a ring camera so we can check on Axle.

We’re fortunate to have a property in North Carolina with a large garage space where we keep the RV anytime we’re not on the road. This is an enclosed garage with full hook ups. It’s great to have as it keeps the RV protected and gives us a space to work on the RV when needed. Having an RV would be incredibly difficult if we didn’t have a convenient place to keep it.

Yes, we tow a Jeep Wrangler when we travel in the RV. These tend to be the easiest cars to tow as you can flat tow a Jeep even if it’s an automatic like ours. The Jeep is great for exploring places in various terrains as well.

We name all of our vehicles so as soon as we got the RV we wanted to name her. Our first RV was named ‘Tammi’ and we wanted to name our new RV something that sounded kind of similar. We asked for recommendations on social media and someone mentioned ‘Carli’, which we thought was perfect!