Calculator
When repairing costs more than the thing is worth
Enter a repair band and the current value of the unit and this shows where the repair sits as a share of the vehicle, alongside the thresholds carriers commonly use. It is a framing tool for a decision that is partly financial and partly not.
The ratio a carrier is actually watching
A total loss decision is a comparison between the cost to repair and the value of the vehicle before the loss. When repair cost climbs past some proportion of that value, the carrier settles instead of repairing. The proportion is not published, varies between carriers, and is affected by what the salvage is expected to return.
For an owner the useful move is not guessing the threshold but understanding that the repair estimate and the valuation are two separate arguments. A repair that looks close to the line can be pushed either way by a supplement the carrier has not yet approved, or by comparable units that were selected badly.
Where RV valuations tend to be wrong
Valuation databases are built for cars, where a year, a model and a mileage describe the asset almost completely. A motorhome is a chassis, a coach, a floorplan and a list of options that may include solar, lithium, an inverter and a residential refrigerator, and the databases carry few of those fields.
The result is that comparable units are frequently drawn from a different specification. An owner who has documentation for what is actually installed has the strongest available argument, and the time to assemble it is before the valuation arrives rather than after.
The half of this decision that is not arithmetic
A settlement pays market value, and market value does not buy back a floorplan that is no longer manufactured, a coach that was set up over eight years, or a unit that fits a specific storage space. Owners routinely repair vehicles that a spreadsheet says they should not, and the decision is defensible.
The reverse also happens. A mass produced trailer with a soft rear wall and a wet subfloor is often not worth what it takes to bring back, and a shop that takes that work is charging real money to extend something that will fail again at the next seam. Being told so is not a lost sale; it is the more useful answer.
What moves the repair number after a decision is made
Teardown moves it more than anything else, which is why the repair figure at the point of the decision is usually provisional. Water damage in particular grows: a wall opened for a visible impact regularly reveals a wet subfloor that was not in the original scope and was not caused by the loss.
- Hidden water found at teardown, which frequently doubles an interior scope
- A discontinued cap or panel that has to be fabricated rather than ordered
- Structural findings that only appear once measurements are taken
- Supplements approved late, which change the ratio after the fact
Run the arithmetic
It cannot tell you your carrier's total loss threshold, because no shop knows it and it varies by carrier and by state.
Use the top of the band if you have a range.
Enter a figure above and the arithmetic appears here.
It cannot tell you your carrier's total loss threshold, because no shop knows it and it varies by carrier and by state. Nothing you type here is sent anywhere: the rates are built into the page and the arithmetic runs in your browser. This is not an estimate and it is not a quote.
Related
Questions about this
At what point does replacing a component beat repairing it?
When the repair hours plus the risk of a second failure exceed the replacement price. Slide mechanism service bands $500 to $8,500 against a rebuild kit at $750 to $7,500, so on a badly worn Schwintek the kit frequently wins. Roof recoat at $750 to $4,500 against a full membrane at $3,500 to $18,000 is the opposite: recoat wins until the substrate is wet, at which point recoating seals the water in.
How do I weigh a repair estimate against the value of the unit?
Compare the repair to what the unit costs to replace, not to what it is worth on paper. A 2008 fifth wheel with a $14,000 subfloor and sidewall bill looks absurd against its book value and reasonable against the price of an equivalent floorplan that is not already set up the way you want it. Structure changes the answer: a straight frame justifies investment, a moved one rarely does.