Concrete Campers
This past labour day, The National on CBC aired a short piece by Laurie Graham entitled Concrete Campers. The piece explains a recent phenomenon; RVers that stop at Wal-Mart parking lots, do their shopping, and then camp in the parking lot for the night. Wal-Mart allows the practice, because apparently their company policy disallows the turning away of a customer, potential or otherwise. Wal-Mart claims that the RVers normally only stay for a night, and then continue on their travels.
Now I know what you’re thinking, these people are insane! Why, would anyone choose to camp in a Wal-Mart parking lot? The very idea seems to be the very opposite of why someone buys an RV in the first place; namely to get away from it all. That being said, I feel that I must defend the RVers as long as all they are doing is parking after a long day of driving, grabbing some food either from Wal-Mart itself, or one of the numerous restaurants that ordinarily surround them, and then leave in the morning to continue their journey. It only makes sense, they may not know the campsites in the area, or they arrive so late in the day that the cost of going to a campsite doesn’t justify itself. However, I cannot in good conscience defend any RVer that decides to use Wal-Mart as their campground for several days, it seems pointless.
The “problem” with these so-called concrete campers, is that local campgrounds suffer a huge economic loss, at least according to campground owner Glen Musgrave. He complains about how he just finished an expensive upgrade to his camp’s electric and sewage systems, all in a bid to attract more RVers. He goes on to say that these concrete campers will spend three or four nights at Wal-Mart, and then stay at his camp for a night simply to offload their holding tanks, and charge their batteries; at a significant cost to the campground. His solution (and that of other camp operators) is to have governments pass laws forcing RVers to camp in campgrounds, and not in Wal-Mart parking lots.
By no means am I a fan of Wal-Mart or the idea of RVers camping in their parking lots for extended periods, but the idea of having governments pass laws to force people into becoming customers of campgrounds seems a little retarded to me. I mean where does it stop? What if an RVer decides to camp in the driveway of a friend or family member? Will that be illegal too? How about if you have kids, and they want to camp in the yard? What about truckers? Are they all to be forced into a campground as well?
Wal-Mart is private property, if they don’t have a problem with campers staying a night or even two, who the hell has the right to tell them, and the RVers otherwise? I think a far simpler course of action would be for Mr. Musgrave (and other operators) to rethink their business models. I don’t know this for a fact, but it sounds as if Mr. Musgrave may have raised his rates in order to maintain his profit margins after the cost of his upgrades. If this was the case, then perhaps he raised them too high and should either lower them, or bring them back to his original rates. Another simple idea that comes to mind is to make some camping packages that entice RVers to stay at his campgrounds for more than one night, or to simply charge RVers appropriately for the services that they use “at significant cost to the campground.”
I’m all for the small business man, but what Mr. Musgrave is asking of governments is totally unacceptable. He is asking that a person’s freedoms of movement and choice be restricted even further than they already are, at a financial gain to himself. That’s not good business, that’s a monopoly.