My RV Resource is proud to introduce Featured VIP Grant Carroll at GCRV Inspections LLC.
Tell us a little about your situation while running GCRV Inspections LLC.
I live in Tacoma, WA and operate GCRV Inspections LLC out of my home. I serve the entire Pacific NW region including the greater Seattle/Tacoma area, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and parts of Wyoming if needed.
Do you live in an RV full-time?
We own a 2008 Four Winds (Thor) Windsport 35B. We are not full-time RVers, but we do get out and enjoy our home-on-wheels throughout the entire year. It’s a great layout and one of the biggest reasons we decided on this one is because of the size of the kitchen, which is HUGE compared to most RV kitchens! We both enjoy cooking so this was extremely important to us when looking for ‘the one.’
What inspired you to start GCRV Inspections LLC?
I have lived in the Northwest my entire life, I’ve been camping for as long as I can remember and greatly enjoy the outdoors. We had a camper growing up which was great!
We bought our first motorhome in April of 2015 and I immediately took a shine to the RVing lifestyle and everything it has to offer.
I had to fly to Alabama to pick it up, and prior to purchasing it the sellers were willing to take it to a local RV shop to have an inspection done on it. As I have learned since then, it was not nearly as thorough and in depth as it should have been. I didn’t purchase a lemon by any means, but there were issues that any decent inspection should have revealed that weren’t, but what did I know at the time…?
There were several things that they didn’t catch in their inspection simply because they probably weren’t even looked at, there were several things that the previous owners didn’t disclose to me or outright lied to me about (a major water leak in the main slideout comes to mind) and there were things that just didn’t work properly.
Upon getting it home, within two weeks I spent about $10K in repairs. Had this been inspected as it SHOULD have been, I could have negotiated on the sale price or decided against it. I was new to RVing so I didn’t know what questions to ask or what to look for myself.
Once I started learning about how to work on things on my coach, I thought to myself that there HAS to be a way that I can help people not get into the same situation as me, and that is when I found the NRVIA (National RV Inspectors Association) and was impressed with the level of training and service that they provided.
Grant Carroll at GCRV Inspections LLC, inspecting awning rail on the roof. “Glad I’m not afraid of heights. Is that a SPIDER?!”
What RV services or RV products do you offer?
I am a certified NRVIA inspector and opened GCRV Inspections LLC in 2017. I perform full RV inspections, safety-only inspections and warranty inspections. I also offer fluid analyses: Pulling fluids from the major drive components (engine oil, transmission fluid, coolant and generator oil and coolant) which will give you an idea of the overall ‘health’ of those systems.
The reason that I only offer a full inspection (outside of the safety and warranty of course) is that I believe that anything less than that is actually a dis-service to my clients. When I first started my business, I did offer a ‘less detailed’ inspection. After about a dozen or so of these, 100% of those clients came back after the inspection and asked “Did you inspect this?” or “Did you inspect that?” The answer of course was ‘no’ since it was not offered in the level of inspection they had chosen, so that’s when I made the decision to only off The Full Monte, and it has served me and all of my clients well ever since.
I also offer orientation/learning sessions that I call “So What Now?” which is meant to help clients, or anyone for that matter, learn how to set up and use their new or ‘new to them’ coach. It’s actually a lot of fun doing these with people and every time I do one, I learn a little more as well. It almost becomes a ‘bonding’ experience between myself and my clients, I keep it light and easy and try to make it fun since I know how stressful it can be, especially since I had to learn it all on my own.
I’ll meet you at the RV park or campground of your choosing and work with you on learning how to use your coach. I definitely prefer the ‘hands-on’ approach, so while I am there as an instructor, you are actually doing everything for yourselves. I also will not necessarily ‘give’ you the answer to your questions, but I will steer you in the right direction with posing questions, etc. to help you find the answer for yourselves.
What is your background and how did you develop the skills to start GCRV Inspections LLC?
The vast majority of my working career has been in the customer service industry in one form or another, so I definitely know how to work with people from all walks of life. For almost 20 years I was a cabinet designer where attention to detail, down to the smallest degree, is extremely important. Once I discovered RVing and then the NRVIA, my attention to detail is what has gained me the success I have realized since becoming a certified inspector. I have been a certified inspector for four years now and have received nothing but 5-star reviews from my clients.
What has been GCRV Inspections LLC’s proudest moment?
I have now worked on a team of NRVIA inspectors with FEMA on two of their disaster relief efforts. I worked with them during the Hurricane Florence relief efforts in North Carolina in 2018/2019 and then again in 2020/2021 during the Almeda Fire relief efforts in Jackson County, OR.
For these relief efforts, FEMA will purchase travel trailers from dealerships which are used as temporary housing for all of the displaced victims of the disaster. These coaches need to be properly inspected prior to them being occupied by the victims, and FEMA will only use certified NRVIA inspectors.
Working with them is certainly beneficial and personally rewarding since we know that the service we are providing is paramount to all of those people affected by the disaster and getting them into their temporary housing.
What has been your biggest challenge?
There have been a couple of challenges.
The first was just getting GCRV Inspections LLC up and running! Once I decided to start my own business (the boss can sure be grumpy at times…) it was learning just how to open and operate your own business, not to mention how to work with social media, etc. from a business perspective I had never done anything like this before, so it was a huge learning curve.
Once my doors were ‘open for business,’ the next challenging thing was of course waiting for the calls to start coming in. Of course every business owner hopes that potential clients start calling right away, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who jumped every time the phone rang or I received an email! It was slow-going at first and everyone said that it would probably be a good 2-3 years before things started really happening, and boy were they right!
Also, the fact that the RV inspection industry was still fairly new at the time (and even now really just starting to gain recognition with potential buyers and sellers alike) didn’t help, but I have made it work and things are going pretty well now. There is always room for growth, though, and I look forward to what lies ahead.
The other challenge, which was hinted on above, it just getting the word out there about the RV inspection industry. This is an industry that is still, for the most part, in its infancy. It is, however, rapidly growing and expanding as word-of-mouth gets out there, people posting on social media, forums, groups, reviews, etc. about the necessity of an inspection, so this is an exciting time to be doing what I love!
Describe your typical work day at GCRV Inspections LLC.
Grant Carroll at GCRV Inspections LLC, pulling a fluid sample. “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid, ’cause it kind of looks like it, right?!”
“Typical work day…?” HA! You’re funny…! A lot of my inspections are within a relatively short distance, but I do a LOT of inspections that are a few or several hours away, sometimes necessitating the need for a one or two night hotel stay.
I am always up before the crack of dawn (even on my days off, darn it) so I can get ready to leave for the day’s inspection and/or travel.
When I am not performing an inspection, these days are typically spent as ‘admin’ days: Following up with clients, getting paperwork taken care of, formatting upcoming inspection reports, finalizing the report from that day’s inspection or from the previous day if long travel was involved, and all of that sort of fun stuff.
It typically takes about 2-3 hours of work both before and after an inspection with all of the work involved in getting ready for it and finalizing it afterwards, so a 6-8 hour inspection is really more like a 10-14 hour day, plus travel to and from the inspection.
Tell us something interesting/fun about GCRV Inspections LLC.
The name says it all! When I was trying to come up with a name for my business, all sorts of things came to mind and I’m old school so I was writing them down as I thought of them. NW RV Inspections, Tacoma RV Inspections, Puget Sound RV Inspections, were just a few, but none of them ‘did it’ for me. It needed to be something that sort-of rolled off the tongue. I even thought of Grant Carroll RV Inspections and that wasn’t quite right either. But wait just one darn minute here… If we shortened it to all first letters, “GCRV,” that worked! It says who I am, it says what I do and it actually rolls off the tongue just as I had hoped. So there you have it!
Also, I’m pretty happy with the logo I came up with, which I designed all on my own! I didn’t want it to be straight-forward and business-like. I wanted it to be somewhat whimsical and playful, just like my personality. So we have Mt. Rainier (and the little peak ‘Little Tahoma’ mostly only known by locals) in the background, and the RV that is rockin’-and-a-rollin’ down the highway towards Mt. Rainier and the great beyond. It was a lot of fun coming up with it and I still have all of the drawings that I made while working on it.
Did you notice the ‘GCRV’ on the license plate…?
If you could go back to the beginning knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently?
I wouldn’t have been so hard on myself. I expect a lot out of myself, and even knowing that things are not always going to be right the first time, I still set my expectations to that degree. It’s not a perfect world and I am certainly not perfect.
Starting your own business is challenging, exciting, stressful, fun, worrisome.. “D – All the Above.” I certainly would have taken some learning courses on how to properly set up a business and all of that good stuff. I learned by trial and error which, in a business setting, is not always the best way to learn. But I’ve persevered and here I am today!
What’s your best advice for someone who wants to start his/her own RV business?
Patience, patience, patience. Be patient with yourself, be patient with clients, be patient with vendors and dealerships. You’re going to get frustrated and there are going to be days that, to be quite honest, are going to suck. But know you’ll get through it and persevere.
The RV inspection industry is not a cut-and-dry industry. It’s still new. It’s still gaining recognition across North America. It’s still growing. So just be patient.
Also, NEVER be afraid to say “I don’t know” rather than trying to fake an answer just to give an answer to someone. If you don’t know… YOU DON’T KNOW! Period. There’s no shame in that. But if you REALLY want to impress someone you follow that up with something like “…But I will certainly look into it and let you know what I find out…”
Any other comments or advice you'd like to share?
Learn something new every day! Take online training courses, visit RV repair facilities to see if they’ll allow you to spend the day with them, go to RV shows to see what new and exciting RVs and equipment are out there and, if you have one, tinker around on your own RV. You’ll be amazed at how much knowing how things work on your own RV will help you with your inspection business.
Glad to chat with you, Grant!
To read more about Grant Carroll at GCRV Inspections LLC, click here to check out his company listing page.
You can also follow Grant on Facebook or visit his website at https://gcrvinspections.com/.
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