Traveling in an RV is one of the greatest ways to get out and visit great places. No matter where you are, you always have your home with you. For full-time RVers, this is especially true.

However, one thing I have observed in our seven years of full-time RV living is some people tend to forget about safety. I would like to suggest a couple of RV safety tips that may help the seasoned, as well as the occasional, RV traveler.

The first and most important tip is to know how much your RV weighs. If you have no idea what your fully-loaded RV is carrying, you should consider weighing it.

The biggest argument I hear against taking the time to get this done is, "I still have more storage space, so I must be OK." That may be true, but it does not always work that way.

If you look at the data plate that specifies the gross vehicle weight rating and subtract the weight of your empty RV, you get the carrying capacity of the vehicle. Depending on the class of RV, there are several other factors to consider. But, for this discussion, let's keep it simple.

From there, you would have to know how much water you want to carry and add that weight to the vehicle's empty weight. Then, you would have to weigh each individual item going into the RV and stop loading any more items when you reach the gross vehicle weight rating. But how can you know that you have the vehicle loaded evenly?

What if you have not exceeded the RV's gross vehicle weight rating, but have more weight on one side of the RV than on the other? This condition might be overloading the tires and axles on one side and possibly create a situation where a tire failure could occur. Damage may also occur to the axles themselves if this condition continues for extended periods of travel.

When my wife Pam and I bought another RV earlier this year, I put weighing the RV on the top of the list of things I wanted to accomplish. We got a Class C RV, and we are pulling a cargo trailer with all our stuff, so I knew that this RV would be easy to overload.

Even in our fifth wheel, we had to watch the carrying capacity closely. All the appliances and three slides were on the street side of the RV, and only one slide with little weight in it was on the curb side. We had to put the heavier items on that side of the RV to balance out the carrying capacity of the RV.

Once we loaded our new RV, we made it a point to find a service that could weigh our RV. These types of services can be found at RV owners' group rallies and RV shows.

Now, this is not like taking your RV to a Pilot or Flying J truck scale. That only tells you the total weight of the vehicle. What you need to know is how much weight is on each axle, and more importantly, each tire so that overloading can be avoided.

We started this weighing process by filling out a form that asked questions about the RV, axle ratings, tire type and weight ratings of those tires. Once the RV was weighed at each tire, and including our trailer, a report was generated to determine where we were at with our loaded RV.

We found out our vehicle was slightly overweight on the rear axle and slightly underweight in the front axle. This included the weight of our trailer on the hitch of the RV. Also, the trailer was slightly underweight, and the cargo was weighted evenly on each side of the trailer.

Our major concern was the rear axle of the RV under its current load. But, according to the folks who weighed the RV, as long as we keep the tires at the correct cold pressure values and don't exceed 65 mph, we are well within acceptable limits.

Given that Pam and I are never in a hurry when we travel, and maintain our speed between 60 and 65 mph, we are good to go. I will also add that as we continue to live the full-time RV lifestyle, we will continue to get rid of things we don't use. That will help us to continue to lighten the load.

I would like to comment on one more RV safety tip. Please be sure when you are traveling in your RV that you have your propane system turned off. Should something happen on the road — a tire blowout, hitting a road alligator (road debris) or some other unforeseen circumstance — you don't want to have your energized propane system create a catastrophic event when the system is damaged during travel.

Most people travel with their propane tanks on in order to keep their propane refrigerator cold. The truth is that if you do not open the refrigerator during travel, it will remain at acceptable temperature levels.

If you have a motorized unit, you can use your generator and switch over to electric power to keep it cool. If you don't have that option, you can put a small block of ice in the fridge to help with cooling. We have used both methods successfully in order to travel safely when it comes to avoiding the use of propane to run the refrigerator.

I hope both these RV safety tips will help you to continue to enjoy safe RV travel. Happy travels!