Blacksford RV Rentals takes quality seriously.
This premium rental company focuses exclusively on providing top-tier experiences and customer support with their RVs based around bucket list locations and the surrounding national parks. For instance, near the Las Vegas location, families can visit Grand Canyon, Zion, Joshua Tree, Red Rock Canyon and Death Valley. That’s in addition to the Bozeman, Montana and Phoenix, Arizona locations.
Blacksford recently joined the FTA, a perfect fit considering a majority of their customers are families. So we talked with co-owner David Greenberg about what makes Blacksford a step above other options, and what more people should know about RV travel.
How did you and CEO Becky Goodell, your wife, get involved with Blacksford?
Becky and I found Blacksford as customers. We knew from the beginning it was unique, because it was different from anything else we found. We were trying to rent for some friends who wanted to join us on an RV trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton and Glacier, and we were very disappointed in what we found.
There are big behemoths which are like traveling billboards, so everyone knows you’re renting, and they tend to be older. And then there are peer-to-peer rental platforms kind of like Airbnb, but for RVs. The problem with those is that a lot of people are renting their only RV. Well, what if it's broken at the time you rented it for, in six months? With Blacksford, we have 70 RVs. In fact, we get a significant number of customers at the last minute who failed with one of the other systems.
So, what’s unique about Blacksford?
New vehicles. A lot of RV rentals out there are old vehicles. Ours are brand new, or no more than one year old. We specialize in helping people who've never been in an RV before understand it's easy to do. They've dreamed about it, but they're a little afraid.
We do an extensive orientation—we'll spend two hours with the customer showing them everything, how to work all the systems. It's not like a car rental where you just pick up your car and you're on your own. We’re very customer focused.
We pick you up and drop you off at the airport. You have our local manager’s cell phone number if anything goes wrong, and if something does go wrong, we can usually talk you through it, but if we can’t, we’ll send a mechanic. And if a mechanic can't fix it, we'll get you a new RV. So, we are white glove customer service.
Our RVs come with everything you need. All you need to do is bring your bring your suitcase, because all your linens, all your kitchen stuff, all your bedding, your camp chairs, it’s fully equipped, and it's all priced in.
We don't nickel and dime people. Big thing is, we don't charge for mileage. We don't charge for generator use. These are all things that people who look into the RV rental space figure out quickly, there's a lot of nickel and dime pricing, and that's not our business model.
Why is family travel important to Blacksford?
In this very connected world, family time has become much more precious, and spending time in nature with the family is a dream of a lot of families. An RV is an amazing way to go and see some of the most beautiful parts of the US. A family can do it all together and unplug from the rest of the world if they want. Part of it is the ability to not be tied to someone else's schedule. You're not tied to hotels. You're not tied to airplanes. You can literally almost stop anywhere, and park anywhere and sleep anywhere.
Do you have any common myths about RVs you’d like to dispel?
One is, it's a lot easier than people think. Most of our RVs are like driving an SUV. It's not hard, and as I said, we spend a lot of time educating our renters about how everything works.
The second thing I would say is it can be a lot more affordable than people think, because it combines housing, transportation and food all in one, if you want.
The third thing is that RV parks, either in a national park or an RV park next to one, are some of the nicest communities I've ever encountered. I think people don't always know that. They're wondering, “Are they safe? Are they clean? What kinds of people are there?” The answer is: Every kind of person is there, and it's an incredibly friendly, helpful community. If you're in an RV situation and you're walking around, people will invite you into their RV, ask you to sit down at their campfire and chat or have a coffee. It's a shockingly friendly experience.
Do you hope to expand?
In the end, in the end, we want to be near every bucket list vacation that people want an RV for. We can see 15 or 20 or more Blacksford locations across America. Anywhere RVs are rented for special trips, we should be, and we intend to be.
How are you feeling about family travel in 2025?
Amazing. We doubled bookings in 2024 and look for strong growth in 2025. Our Phoenix location (think Grand Canyon, Sedona, The Painted Desert) is now open to go along with Bozeman (think Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier) and Las Vegas (think Utah’s Might Five national parks).
To learn more and check out their RV offerings, visit blacksford.com.
Photo courtesy of Blacksford.