Can you legally carry an open container of alcohol while traveling in your motorhome?

by Russ and Tina De Maris

Here's a question that can trip up an RVer in a hurry: Is it OK to have an "open container" of alcohol in your motorhome while traveling down America's byways?

A frequent comment made by the fireside and in Internet RV chat rooms is, "Sure, no problem!" In some places you'd be right and, in others, legally wrong. Here's the scoop:

Open container laws are generally written to keep a driver from having too easy an access to liquor while keeping his vehicle safely on the road. And those laws are not a federal mandate, but a state's rights matter. Hence, making a blanket statement could lead to a traffic ticket -- and some of them are pretty steep indeed.

In California, a passenger in a motorhome in possession of an open alcohol container is not a problem; neither is a situation like this "citation-able" in Maine, nor Montana. It gets trickier in Florida -- how big is your motorhome? If you've got a 20-foot motorhome, an open container is a violation.

Bottom line: If having an open container of alcohol while on the road is important to you, you're highly advised to check out the laws of any state you plan on RVing through before you get there. Here's a website with some guidelines.

Learn your RV's "tail swing" factor.

"Tail swing" is the term used to describe the effects of the length of a motorhome or trailer's overhang beyond the rear axle. Many an RVer has learned the hard way that pulling a sharp turn away from a fuel pump (or other object close to the side of the rig) that tail swing is a reality to be reckoned with. Repair bills for crunched corners are not fun.

Not sure how much tail swing your rig has? Find an empty parking lot and pull your rig's right side parallel to a paint stripe. With a spotter, turn your steering wheel to a hard left, and slowly pull forward. Have the spotter stop you when your right rear corner reaches the farthest distance "over" the line. This is your tail swing distance, and it can be much more than you expect.