What Earthroamer Won't Tell You!

JaSAn

Grumpy Old Man
. . . After inspection we asked for sales comparables for similar vehicles that have actually sold so we could get an idea of were the market was. We were told that this info is not available as it is "confidential." . . .
Then there is the claims they make on their website....."several owners have sold their XV for more than they paid new"
Ask your bank, they would be able to determine market value. I wouldn't think you would be interested in the very inflated COVID RV prices.
 

scout909

New member
Another "What's It Worth" post.

It's not Earthroamer's job to do your research.

Step up and be a Big Boy and figure it out for yourself!
Thanks vintageracer

I'm sure even you can tell that the purpose of this post is to get accurate and helpful comparable sales details. This is how one makes informed decisions!

maybe your just driving too fast, turning heads and breaking hearts !
 

nickw

Adventurer
This is a niche vehicle and unless they thought it was in their best interest, it's not their job to figure out "worth" in a market that certainly doesn't follow std. ebbs and flows of typical vehicles.

If it were me, I'd depreciate sales price based on what I thought the market is doing (in general) and combine that with what your budget is and adjust / judge accordingly. Come to the table with some numbers, how you arrived at the numbers and tell them to prove you wrong if you wanna play the numbers game with them.

At the end of the day it's worth whatever they can get somebody to pay for it / whatever it's worth to you, if you are interested and have the money come to the table and negotiate vs playing games and figure out a price....that's how it's always worked in my world.

If I was the salesperson I'd tell you they sell for full MSRP / listed price....next question. Nobody else has had this problem, they were able to figure it out on their own and probably don't care to help you benefit when they didn't have the luxury of folks helping them.

Regardless - the important thing here is residual value, sales price is somewhat meaningless depending on market conditions.....what is this thing going to be worth in 2, 5, 10 years time? I'm guessing the market is heading down quick, so do your math, how much can you lose, over what period of time and base your offer on that.
 

Wakeup2river

Active member
I’ve googled and found previous sales info (Earthromer) brochures on their sold trucks but that doesn’t tell you what it closed for. I’m not sure they budge much on price. I googled “Earthromer“ and the build number together in the search. It was helpful because the vehicle I was looking at was recently bought used at ER and it turns out the owner was trying to recoup his retail price paid from ER plus the $30k in sales tax after putting on miles and a year on it

In considering one for ourselves, I was disenchanted when they said ER takes title “ownership” and it’s not a consign deal. 2 things I didn’t like about that, it adds another owner to the truck’s history and 2nd I need to pay sales tax because the title is coming from a dealer vs if consigned it would transfer as a private party sale. In AZ there is no private party sales tax. No way I’m paying $35,000 in taxes on a used truck. GXV and Earthcruiser do a consign deal and the title transfers from the owner to you. So if there were 2 real owners and the truck was back at ER for sale you would be recorded as the 5th owner.

ER said they put the used trucks in their name to hide the identity of the previous owner, but they could easily do that by having a 3rd party do the title work at the time of resale.

We just concluded they would be a constant headache and a wealth prevention program. :)
 
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I bought my Earthroamer in Feb of 2021 PreOwned. I paid about 15k less than what it was posted for at the time.

Lots of things go into the market value of these extremely niche vehicles. I did research for a few years before I bought one and kept a record of the preowned site. I downloaded the offered spec file and recorded asking price, mileage and the level of extra options.

In my experience the supply and demand of used Earthroamers and the wait time for current build queues influence how much things will sell. Looking back over the last 3-4 years with the pandemic happening I bought at a pretty good time since there was still a large stock of pre-owned at the time and wait times on current Earthroamers were not high until later in the pandemic.

I was at Earthroamer a few weeks ago and current lead time on an LTi right now is 10 months out.

I wanted to address an earlier post in this thread relating wheel bearings. It is the rear wheel bearings and not the front ones that are going out. There is an accelerated schedule for maintenance. In addition to that the 2017-2019 model years not coming from the factory with Timken ones due to a supplier change for those model years. Ask me how I know? :sneaky:

We had one of the more extreme rear wheel bearings. We are in the Seattle area and our entire wheel bearings, axle and axle housing had to be replaced when we were Acadia National Park. We broke down about 200 yards from the entrance/exit gate at Schooner's Overland. We limped out causing even more damage to the truck and waited five days for a lowboy to come grab our truck.

We were stranded in the New England area from Oct 2021 till middle of Nov 2021 in AirBNBs when we found out that everything with the pandemic was back ordered. We didn't get our Earthroamer back until Feb 2022. The Londonderry Ford dealership in New Hampshire was great about fixing our truck and replacing everything end-to-end in our rear axle. It just took forever due to parts. We are Roamsoft on IG and have posts about that debacle.

While this is not a widely discussed issue that research will catch there are over 100+ Earthroamer owners on Instagram and open to be followed by anyone. Most owners post when the rear bearing club gains a new member.

These trucks are definitely a lot of maintenance and effort to keep running or modify, but that just comes with the territory. I have definitely learned to become a better mechanic since I got mine and taken on a lot of the maintenance needed to upkeep it properly. The Earthroamer community is great about supporting everyone. We have some great Yodas out there that know these trucks inside and out. They are active in the community and are always willing to help folks out with questions or issues.
 
If it were me, I'd depreciate sales price based on what I thought the market is doing (in general) and combine that with what your budget is and adjust / judge accordingly. Come to the table with some numbers, how you arrived at the numbers and tell them to prove you wrong if you wanna play the numbers game with them.

At the end of the day it's worth whatever they can get somebody to pay for it / whatever it's worth to you, if you are interested and have the money come to the table and negotiate vs playing games and figure out a price....that's how it's always worked in my world.
Pre-Roamed Earthroamers are done as consignment and the owner dictates the price. Earthroamer has no control of that. They are consulted on for suggestions though.
 
Another thing that isn't much prioritized or discussed [not as fun as showing off the luxury interior riding on a fat-tire SRW beadlock setup with air suspension on yotube] is just how closely folks track how much weight they are throwing on their truck for a trip, especially when they think little of loading a dirtbike, generator, fuel, etc. on a rack or in a hitch or other storage box, or a trailer on the back of an already lengthened chassis, then add the standard food/beer, fuel, and passengers. I would guess that the owners who don't tally their loads carefully would tend to be the ones who don't regularly do the old school checks: oil+coolant+trans fluid+ tire air pressure regularly & especially check tire press. upon a transition from offroad to driving fast on pavement, putting a hand on each hub&tire to check for excessive heat at stops, hand torque their own wheel lugnuts to the right spec, make sure their diff fluid is topped off, swap in a clean air filter after a few hundred miles of dust/dirt road, ensure proper maintenance schedules are followed, etc., etc., etc.

Great description of all the things I have learned to do since I bought my Roamer. I am aslo mindful of what I am taking with me. Below is a snippet from a discussion in the ER Community I made a while ago.

My stamp from ER themselves says the following;

GVWR is 21,060LBs
Front GAWR is 7,500LBs with 335/80R20 Tires, 20x11 Rims @ 34 PSI Cold
Rear GAWR is 14,706LBs with 335/80R20 Tires, 20x11 Rims @ 90 PSI Cold
ERDoor Tag.jpg

My stamp from Ford says (Incomplete Vehicle MFD. by Ford Motor Company)

GVWR is 19,500LBs
Front GAWR is 7,500LBs with 225/70R19.5G Tires, 19.5x6RW Rims @ 105 PSI Cold
Rear GAWR is 14,706LBs with 225/70R19.5G Tires, 19.5x6RW Rims Dual @ 110 PSI Cold

ERDoor Tag Ford.jpg

I have also included my cat scale PDFs from 9/8/21 when I weighed having the most gear for a six month trip around the states, and also the one I did a few weeks ago on 7/21/22 when it empty of gear. While I was empty of gear I did have have 90% fuel and 90% water and myself in the truck. I believe diesel is around 7lbs per gallon @ 85 gallons is 595lbs. Water is 8.3lbs per gallon @ 90 gallons is 747lbs. I weigh another 240ish lbs. Total of ~1582 lbs and most of it in the rear axle. I don't actually know how it would be spread on the scale.

My fully loaded cat scale weight was 6,560 (of 7,500) in the front, and 14,800 (of 14,706) in the rear. My total was 21,360 (of 21,060) and I am about 300lbs heavy on GVWR.

9-8-21 Cat Scale ER.jpg

My empty cat scale weight was 6,500 (of 7,500) in the front, and 13,580 (of 14,706) in the rear. My total was 20,080 (of 21,060) and I am almost 1000lbs light on GVWR.

7-21-22 Cat Scale ER.jpg
 
Do you know the offset of the wheels when they are flipped “out” as installed on the rear? Obviously the net offset of the original duallies = 0.
 
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lucilius

Active member
Great description of all the things I have learned to do since I bought my Roamer. I am aslo mindful of what I am taking with me. Below is a snippet from a discussion in the ER Community I made a while ago.

My stamp from ER themselves says the following;

GVWR is 21,060LBs
Front GAWR is 7,500LBs with 335/80R20 Tires, 20x11 Rims @ 34 PSI Cold
Rear GAWR is 14,706LBs with 335/80R20 Tires, 20x11 Rims @ 90 PSI Cold
View attachment 796781

My stamp from Ford says (Incomplete Vehicle MFD. by Ford Motor Company)

GVWR is 19,500LBs
Front GAWR is 7,500LBs with 225/70R19.5G Tires, 19.5x6RW Rims @ 105 PSI Cold
Rear GAWR is 14,706LBs with 225/70R19.5G Tires, 19.5x6RW Rims Dual @ 110 PSI Cold

View attachment 796787

I have also included my cat scale PDFs from 9/8/21 when I weighed having the most gear for a six month trip around the states, and also the one I did a few weeks ago on 7/21/22 when it empty of gear. While I was empty of gear I did have have 90% fuel and 90% water and myself in the truck. I believe diesel is around 7lbs per gallon @ 85 gallons is 595lbs. Water is 8.3lbs per gallon @ 90 gallons is 747lbs. I weigh another 240ish lbs. Total of ~1582 lbs and most of it in the rear axle. I don't actually know how it would be spread on the scale.

My fully loaded cat scale weight was 6,560 (of 7,500) in the front, and 14,800 (of 14,706) in the rear. My total was 21,360 (of 21,060) and I am about 300lbs heavy on GVWR.

View attachment 796783

My empty cat scale weight was 6,500 (of 7,500) in the front, and 13,580 (of 14,706) in the rear. My total was 20,080 (of 21,060) and I am almost 1000lbs light on GVWR.

View attachment 796784
That is good info. I was going to convert to the kelderman on my ER (an XVLT that I've had since I bought it new in late 08 before they were using kelderman or 335/80 tires) but after a lot of research went with a leaf/coil setup from Pohl Springworks (Spokane WA, excellent crew who were familiar with the platform having done a few Canadian F550 brush rigs with larger tires) and finally decided on an L-rated (9090lbs at 130PSI) 315/80r22.5 tire on the alcoa wheels (rated to 10k lbs). These are slightly taller (~42") and slightly narrower (~12") than the 335/80r20 MPT81 or GY275. I chose them mainly because I wanted a simpler suspension and particularly dedicated wheels/tires for winter (Conti HDW2) and summer (Conti HDR2+). The kelderman+MPT81's with the beadlock wheels seemed to be great for airing down for the rough offroad and being able to level the rig out at the campsite but IMO the tires were wearing out somewhat quickly with other owners, could be tough to balance and required more maintenance overall. I was also concerned about the complexity of the air system and how it would perform in the cold with condensation/etc. because I am camping more in winter than summer. I also thought the MPT81 per tire max weight limit ~6300lbs was not enough of a buffer for my rear axle weight for offroading fully loaded and of less concern, is speed limited to 68mph (think the Goodyear is rated to 75 or 81mph). I have best balance of mileage vs speed driving 65mph. I am contemplating the Michelin XDN2 Grip in the future, the HDW2 has been discontinued in 315/80, though my current tires show little wear after several years.
My 08 XVLT is also a 4 door quad cab F550 but ~2feet? shorter than wordofbabb's XVLTS, rear axle is a Dana S.100L 4.88 ratio, engine is 6.4PSD which is actually heavier than the more powerful 6.7PSD due to its cast iron block. My GVWR is 19000lbs from Ford and my CAT scale weights are 5880 steer/front axle and 10780 drive/rear axle for a total of 16660lbs, that's with ~80-90 gal fuel and ~80-90gal water with me, the wife, three kids (rough total 650lbs of passengers) and a few odds and ends. I imagine I am ~1000-1500lbs heavier loaded for a long trip adding bicycles, more food, etc. If I was concerned about weight/wheel bearings/GVWR, etc., I would probably start looking for ways to cut the weight on the rear axle...and realize that it's probably easier just to find a stronger rear axle.
 

nickw

Adventurer
Pre-Roamed Earthroamers are done as consignment and the owner dictates the price. Earthroamer has no control of that. They are consulted on for suggestions though.
Same concept applies in any negotiation in my mind, regardless of who owns the pink-slip, what are you willing to pay / value to you and start there, it either makes sense or it doesn't.
 

BillFitz

Member
Ooof, 90# of air in those rear tires to hold all that weight. How low can you guys go when off road before you blow the tire off the rim??
 

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