Carrying a Barker Blue Tank - RV-Dreams Community Forum

Alie and Jims Carrilite · RV-Dreams Family Member

Carrying a Barker Blue Tank

Lucky Mike · RV-Dreams Family Member

the tank and a Fresh water method are Great if you do alot of extended boondocking.....I did as you said , mine is mounted underneath between the frame and I use it.

if you dont use it I guess it would be a waste and do much better liquidated and put the money into something else needed...

GENECOP · RV-Dreams Family Member

I used ours often years ago while Boondocking in a very small TT, now with a bigger Rig we don't need it.

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

This one may be of no value to you as it is bolted to the square bumper on a travel trailer. However, a similar device that could be attached to a rear receiver, should your RV have one, might be an idea.

While this idea may not work for you, others might find the method useful for them.

Terry

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

A solo told me once that they were thinking of carrying theirs in the co-pilot seat to remind them of their ex.

Racerguy · RV-Dreams Family Member

bjoyce wrote:
A solo told me once that they were thinking of carrying theirs in the co-pilot seat to remind them of their ex.

yawn yawn yawn yawn yawn yawn yawn

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

Well done, Bill.

Of course, I've never had an ex, so I can't really relate.

When we picked up our Thetford "emergency tank" I simply put it into the back of the bed, in front of the 5th wheel hitch. I didn't get very far before the wind created around that tank blew out the step stool I had in the back. I'd carried that step stool there for quite some time without issue. The Thetford just changed the wind flow to lose the stool. I didn't see it happen, and even if I had, I was on a two lane road at the time. Jo was following in our second vehicle and saw something blow "past the coach," but didn't know it came form the F450. So, I now need to get creative myself on where to stow our tank.

Winds created within the bed of the truck can be strange.

Terry

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

I have never had an ex, either. I knew the guy was joking, he was one of those who was always making comments like that about his ex. Some people are that way, it was someone else's fault and not there own. My father spent 21 years in the Army and blamed the Army when anything went wrong. One day after getting out he realized that guy in the mirror was the one he had to blame. That was a difficult day for him.

Wind while driving can be an issue. Just yesterday we were driving an an oncoming car looked like it had a sail on top, it was an inflatable boat standing up since the front rope had come loose. The car stopped on the side of the road and the boat on the roof came back down. I don't think the driver was going to move without using more rope to secure the front of the boat.

grandpalarry · RV-Dreams Family Member

Last week I was parked next to a solo female and she had taken her 33 gal Blue Boy out to try and see if it was useful, she told me she had been carring it around since her husband had passed and she didn't know what it was for, he bought it and never used it.
So she placed it by the drain, hooked up everything and pulled the leaver. Then she just stood there and looked at it, like it was suppose to do something else.
She looked at me and said "Now what"
I, vested with all my RV savey, said "Tote it down to the dump". Thats when all the fun started, mind you, I never got off the picnic table to help,and by then we had collected quite a few other helpers, just watching.
She tried with all her energy to move the 250 lbs. pulling and tugging and occasionaly looking up to see if anyone of us strong able bodied men would come to her aid.
We soon tired of the show and one of the guys went and got his ATV, we made quite a picture as all went parading down to th dump station, all we needed was a band playing a tune.
She gave the tote to the RV park to use if needed and we all went and had lunch together, oh yes we stopped to get our wives who had gone inside because they were ashamed of the way we were acting.

Bill and Linda · RV-Dreams Family Member

Howard has a write up someplace in dark past about the “Blue Boy” deal and his experiences. Bottom line, IMO, it’s too much trouble. Because they are relatively small in capacity, but very heavy to move, even the small ones, it is just as fast to take the rig and dump once, more or less, then it is to make multiple trips with the Blue Boy to dump the same amount of - well, stuff.. “Back in the day” before we had 50-60-80 gallon gray tanks it was different story. Now, not so much.

One of the funniest things I ever saw was an F-350 / 4-wheel drive - DRW pulling a 10 gallon Blue Boy behind it to the dump. Ford or Chevy or Dodge, doesn’t matter the truck – so many one-liners, so little time. We all just took turns.

Workinrvers · RV-Dreams Family Member

We have one but store it at our daughters house. We have never used it since fulltiming. We do boondock occasionally but not for more then a few days at a time so our on board tanks are more then enough.
Seeing Terry's photos reminded me of a mount I saw once that a guy made from a left over two wheel hand truck (furniture dolly). He removed the wheels and mounted it to his rear ladder (could use the bumper too). Made a nice platform for the "blue boy".

Phil

WestWardHo · RV-Dreams Family Member

Hey Bill & Linda,

That might have been us!!
😄

Dave Buck · RV-Dreams Family Member

I carried one for over a year and never used it so now my son is storing it under his camper. It's a 40 gal. one and his camper is on a seasonal site and he doesn't have sewer. I carried on the truck. We can go for a week more or less without needing to dump. We don't usually stay at places that don't have sewer for more than a week.

Bill and Linda · RV-Dreams Family Member

WestWardHo wrote:
Hey Bill & Linda,

That might have been us!!
😄

Hey guys, we'll have to review all that at the 2014 Spring Rally. Looking forward to meeting you guys in person.

Bill

mike54 · RV-Dreams Community Member

I've been carrying a 25 gal tote for the last 6 yrs I haven't used it once. It's one the those things I don't need or use going on

craigslist in the spring.

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

12 years of RVing and we haven't bought one yet. Most carry their totes on the ladder, some in the tow vehicle.

I remember staying the night at the only campground in Webster NY many years ago. The campground was memorable in multiple ways. First I needed my 25' 50AMP extension cord to get to the power, which was in a clearing through the trees behind our site. Second, the water was shared between sites, so you needed to use a y-adapter and lots of water hose. Third was a group of workers were staying because it was the closest campground to the job site, and they had to drive 100 miles one way to get totes for sewer. The woman next door said that in many years of doing these 6 week to 2 month jobs, this was the first time they needed a tote.

laurly · RV-Dreams Family Member

We bought one when we first hit the road, thinking we'd need it. We used it once, before we knew how to manage our tanks. It now sits in the bed of the truck, in the back by tailgate, bungee cord securing it. Waste of space! Would love to sell it

Only dumped gray tanks, never black..lol.

Alie and Jims Carrilite · RV-Dreams Family Member

We ended up giving it away to some folks in a restored airstream that had minimal tank capacity.
They were very happy!

LandYachty · RV-Dreams Family Member

As we boondock a lot we do use ours. If you buy one be sure you can lift it and put it in the back of the truck when full if you want to seriously use it. When we boondock with friends all the guys put the blue boys into one truck and make a morning of emptying the black tanks.

Lucky Mike · RV-Dreams Family Member

other than the expense.....a portable macerator makes transfer to the blueboy in the truck alot easier and you dont need to drive your truck up to the side of the coach to do it!......I picked one up on craigslist for 100 bucks and it is worth its weight in gold for dumping in remote places or residential......residential I take a 6' 5/8 hose and push it thru the P-trap on the toilet in the house or garage and away it goes!!!!........(I have even done this at a helpful service station)

Camper Chronicles · RV-Dreams Family Member

Terry and Jo...that's fantastic ...thanks for the pics

WestWardHo · RV-Dreams Family Member

I'm laughing at how many of us have stored our blue boys with our kids! We just left ours in my son's barn in Tucson last week as that's the only place we might have needed to use it but haven't yet. I'm also amused at how much we brought with us that we thought we'd need. This week we donated two bags of clothing to a drive here on base.

Sherry

Fordiesel250 · RV-Dreams Family Member

BIL gave me his and its stored in my storage shed. Someday maybe I will need it.

CamperVamp · RV-Dreams Community Member

We purchased one the last time we camped (we're not full-time yet).We were staying five nights at a state park that had a single centralized dump station but no sewer hookups. By the third night we had filled our tanks (we have a smaller 5th wheel and I had cooked and cleaned up after a full Thanksgiving dinner for 8). My husband towed the tank to the dump station with his truck, like many of our park neighbors did that weekend.

We had a storage issue on the way home, so my husband used bungee cords and rope (lots of them!) to tie the tote to the ladder at the back of the camper. He made sure it would not budge. Worked fine.

I generally prefer state/county parks to commercial RV parks, but they don't always have sewer hookups. So I'm learning about ways to conserve water. (For one thing, I could have lugged all of the Thanksgiving dishes to the dishwashing station outside the central bath facilities.) But still, I'd rather have the tote and not need it than need it and not have it...

TRAILERKING · RV-Dreams Family Member

I know even when in the early days with my smaller pull type campers...............I refuse to have to deal with dragging one of those things around. You go to campgrounds and you're sitting in the peace and quite then all of a sudden you hear all this racket. Like a war of machine guns going off. Here there's someone towing on of those "Honey Pots" behind their car or truck. You swear the little plastic wheels are about to melt. Some places I've been at, the campgroud host has a mobile "Honey Wagon" service to come and pump you out right at your site. I've never used that service.

waltben · RV-Dreams Family Member

The only places I've ever seen them used have been at CGs that don't have sewer hookups and there's homesteaders. Those that have the bigger ones hook the handles onto golf carts or even vehicle trailer hitches (handle goes over the ball) to get them to the dump station. That whole idea has never been very attractive to me and I've solo dry camped in our former TT for four days at a time. The new/old Montana has much larger tanks and both of us have done that for the same time with no issues. Just limit your showers and try to use restrooms as much as possible.

HighwayRanger · RV-Dreams Family Member

With a wife and two teenage daughters, our lame RV tanks would not go more than 3 days at one of our favorite dry camping campgrounds. The honey wagon only came around twice per week, so there were some close calls. I have the mother of all blue boys (42 gallons) and was glad I did. We towed it to the dump station with a friends golf cart, and it made the stay less stressful. If we choose a fiver for our fulltime travel, I was intending to carry it on the back of the fiver on a hitch-mounted rack (which it fits on nicely). I would move it to the back of the truck (empty) and use a macerator to pump the liquids to the blue boy in the truck bed. Gravity will then work to empty it into the dump station. And perhaps we'll never need it..........We'll see!

Roy

musicman60 · RV-Dreams Community Member

i have a 35 gal one and i just pull it by hand to the dumpstation it is a hassel to carry it but i wouldent be without ours