Mail Forwarding for RVers

The question of Mail Forwarding for RVers is one of the most common ones we get from people hoping to go full time or planning long RV trips away from their sticks and bricks home. We talked to Amber Hobert, the President of Dakota Post, one of the largest of the various mail forwarding companies that service RVers. We also talk about when it makes sense for RVers to declare residency in South Dakota and also registering their vehicle in South Dakota. It’s an interesting conversation, What to do with mail is a question we are asked about a lot by RVers planning to go fulltime or to be on extended trips away from home. Others want to know about the tax benefits of registering their RV in South Dakota or even declaring South Dakota as their residency. Here's the full transcript of our interview with Amber Hobert. Mike Wendland: Amber, thank you very much for making time out of your schedule to join us and talk about mail forwarding. How are you today? Amber Hobert: I'm doing very well. How about yourself? Mail Forwarding Services for RVers Mike Wendland: We're doing excellent. Let's talk a little bit about Dakota Post. I have used your service and there's a number of other ones out there, I know. This has become a very important concern for people as they embrace the full time RV lifestyle. Exactly how does it work and when should one consider signing up with a mail forwarder if you're a full time RVer? Amber Hobert: Even if you're a snowbird, you can still sign up for service with us. We have short term and long term policies for both. A good portion of our customers though are full time in the RV traveling world and so as you can imagine, your mail doesn't stop coming to you just because you no longer have a home. We make sure that we can get the mail in here and then find you wherever you are to get your mail back out to you. Mike Wendland: Now, how do you get that mail back out to somebody who is on the road? They may be in Montana this week, Idaho next week, down to Utah, and then Arizona. How does one get their mail that way? How do you get your mail when you are on the move all the time? Amber Hobert: Yeah. We have a couple of different options. We have some of our customers that just do traditional mail. They put in a forward of their address to here, so we would receive their mail in and then they pick the option of how frequently they want to get their mail. Whether it's once a week, once a month, twice a month, and then at that time they know that their contract is for the 16th of the month. So they know 16th of the month, right before that they need to let us know where they're at. They can go onto the website, they can enter in their information, they can give us a call. And then that way we make sure that we're sending it out to the correct location because as you said, we have people who are traveling to a different state, different location all the time. Mike Wendland: Now there are- Amber Hobert: The other option- Mike Wendland: Yeah, I was going to go to the other option. In fact, when we used the service, we were gone pretty much half the year and I really got hooked on being able to look at my mail online. Explain how that works. I can't do it justice cause you guys do it all the time, but I just thought it was magic. It was pretty cool. A Virtual Mailbox for your Forwarded Mail gives you access from the road Amber Hobert: Yeah. That's the other option is to have a virtual mailbox. That is by and far one of our most popular plans. Essentially your mail comes in here, we go ahead, we scan it into a portal. You have an individual login that you go to our website, you put in your own credentials, and then you can see everything that's been scanned into your mailbox that day. From there, you can go ahead and tell us, "Don't do anything with it," which means we're going to put it in your box. "Shred it" if it's junk mail that you don't want. Or you can ask us to open it and scan the contents to you. Maybe it's your credit card bill and you want to see all your charges to make sure that you're paying the right amount and that everything looks okay, then we open up, we scan that to you, and then that information, we just have to back an envelope, put it back in your box. For the virtual mail customers, they let us know whenever they want their mail. A lot of customers that are virtual, they don't get their mail for over a year because they have everything that they need out of it, so they don't want the extra paper. In an RV, obviously your space is limited, so that's important too. Mike Wendland: You say you look at a digital image of it and determine whether it's worth saving and whether it's not. I know at the time I used you guys, it was the first part of the year and of course I was getting all my tax forms coming in. I was working with my accountant back in one state