What To Do In The First 48 Hours

Safety first and evidence second, in that order, and there is no version of this where a photograph matters more than getting people away from a road. Once everyone is out and the vehicle is stationary and stable, the first hour is about capturing a scene that will not exist again. Vehicles get moved, debris gets swept, and the geometry of how two things met becomes an argument within a day.

Photograph before the coach moves. All four corners, both diagonals, then close on every damaged area. Include the other vehicle if there is one, the road surface, any skid marks, the clearance bar or the branch or the post, and enough surroundings that somebody who was not there can reconstruct the angle. Wide shots are worth as much as close ones and owners take too few of them.

Exchange the information you are required to exchange and note the time. If there is a report number, write it down. If there is a witness, write down how to reach them, because a witness who is not recorded in the first hour is a witness who does not exist by the second day.

Scale is the difference between a photograph and evidence. A crack across a cap looks identical at four inches and at four feet unless something of known size is in the frame. Use a tape measure where you can, a business card or a shoe where you cannot, and put it beside the damage rather than over it.

Shoot in daylight and shoot the same area twice, once wide enough to show where on the vehicle it is and once close enough to show what it is. A close up with no context is unusable in a file, because nobody can place it. That single habit accounts for most of the difference between a photograph set a desk adjuster can work from and one they cannot.

Photograph things that are not damaged as well. The undamaged side, the roof if you can see it safely from a ladder rather than by walking on it, the interior, the slide faces, the compartment doors. A record of what was intact before the repair is what stops a later argument about whether something was already like that, and those arguments are common and unwinnable without images.

Then photograph again in daylight two days later. Delamination, seam separation and a sagging roof line often become visible after the structure has sat, and a second set dated later is far more persuasive than a description. Photographing damage before anyone arrives is worth its own guide, and there is one on this site.

Sound and feel are diagnostic and they decay fast. What you heard at the moment of impact, where it came from, whether there was a second noise afterwards, whether anything shifted while you were still moving. Those notes are often the only clue to damage nobody can see yet, and a week later the memory has smoothed into a single event.

Then note what changed. A slide that stops short of its seal. A door that no longer latches without a shove. A creak over the first speed bump that was not there before. A cabinet latch that keeps opening. Each of those is a structural symptom in disguise, and each one is easy to attribute to age rather than to the impact once a fortnight has passed.

Keep the notes with dates, in one place, and bring them to the shop. On a coach the difference between a mechanism claim and a structural claim is frequently decided by a symptom the owner mentioned in passing, and an estimator who hears it on Day 0 tears down in the right place rather than the obvious one.

Tell us where it is and we coordinate transport to the Yorba Linda facility. All work happens at the shop, which is deliberate rather than a limitation: a frame bench, a full length paint booth and lift capacity for a Class A coach do not travel, and a structural repair done anywhere else is a structural repair done without measurement.

Where the coach ends up in the meantime matters more than it sounds. Storage accrues daily, storage allowances have caps and end dates, and a vehicle sitting at a facility somebody else selected is a vehicle accruing charges against your claim while nobody moves it. Ask what the daily rate is on the first call, and ask your carrier what your allowance is on the second.

If the coach is open to weather, cover it. A torn membrane or a missing window over a Southern California wet week turns a collision claim into a water claim, and the water portion is the part that gets argued about. Photograph the covering as well, because a documented effort to protect the vehicle is worth having in the file.

Nothing here is legal advice and none of it is a substitute for reading your own policy. It is the sequence that most reliably produces a claim that moves, drawn from what actually goes wrong when steps get skipped.

• Photograph the vehicle and the scene before anything moves, with scale in frame.
• Write down what you heard, felt and noticed afterwards, with the date.
• Report the loss and get a claim number the same day.
• Find the declarations page and read the deductible, storage and loss of use terms.
• Cover any opening to weather and photograph the covering.
• Ask what the storage rate is wherever the vehicle is sitting.
• Ask your carrier whether the estimate will be written from photographs or from an inspection.
• Send us six photographs, or bring the coach in with the policy and the claim number.
• Photograph the damage again in daylight two days later.
• Ask whether the vehicle is financed and start the lienholder conversation now, not at pickup.

Deciding on repair scope can wait. Choosing between a repair and a replacement can wait. Arguing about labour rates can wait, and arguing about them in the first 48 hours spends credibility before anyone has any facts. Interior upgrades you have been meaning to do can wait until teardown tells everybody what the coach actually needs.

Two things cannot. Opening the claim, because every day before first notice is a day the carrier has not started and a day water has. And getting the coach out of weather and off a meter, because storage and exposure both accrue quietly while everyone waits for an adjuster to be assigned.

The third thing worth doing early rather than urgently is choosing the shop. In California the vehicle owner chooses the repair facility, and the choice is easier to make calmly on day two than under pressure on day nine when a network shop already has the coach and a tow bill attached to it.