I am siting here in Salt Lake City, UT waiting for a load (truck driver) and blowing time by watching YouTube videos on cycle touring. Well I think the bug re-bit me. I am looking for the realistic cost of living on the road would be today.

Depends on how much you want to spend. Homeless people seem to do it without much in the way of income.

Provided you can control your frivolous spending (liquor especially) your traveling costs are mostly lodging and food. Do you want to stealth camp (free), campground camp, couchsurf, stay in cheap motels or mid range hotels? Do you want to stop everyday at diners and restaurants or are you okay with some pasta, a can of tuna and a few vegetables? Doing touristy stuff can also add up. Imo it's difficult to go cheaper than $20/day and eat enough while resembling anything close to clean. $30-40 allows for a relatively comfortable travel and $60/day is fairly comfortable but definitely not hotel rooms everyday. These costs also vary per country. it's significantly cheaper to tour in SE Asia than it is in the US.

This doesn't include up front costs that can be sizeable like air/train/bus travel to the start and from the end or gear costs. Additionally everyone should have some sort of emergency medical coverage.

If you can zero out expenses to keep a house paid off, at the same time,
, Etc, while not living there, not too much..

Recent thread ...

How much did your tour cost?
https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...our-tour-cost?



How much does it cost you to live now ... as a truck driver? After all, you are living on the road.

Here is a resource

https://bicycletouringpro.com/blog/ It is an advantage if you can earn income while touring I am in the position that i have everything needed for a tour but the money to go . . So i have decided to tour from home . . . back to home . .

In these threads, I always say to subtract the cost of staying home. The difference can be negligable, door to door, depending on your comfort demands and normal lifestyle. The biggest expense is often logistical when not door to door.

As a truck driver, you might could hitch with a fellow trucker from home to start point and back.

$25/day for ride, camp, eat is quite doable. Less with discipline.

Low cost per day should not be a goal when touring unless dictated by budget. Whatever it takes to enjoy, hang the cost, is best. If that's a $100 motel room every night, so be it. Cost is emphasized often due to our normal 50 miles/day pace vs 500/day in a car. Much cheaper to cover ground in a car or with commercial transport, for most.

I've never seen a truck driver bust out a camp stove, and food is a major expense. Though a truck driver would have to eat less. . . I don't think truck driving and bicycle touring correlate in terms of price : P

Why not?

A person who is planning to travel mainly by bicycle has to eat ... a lot.
A person who drives a truck has to eat too.

They both have to find a place to stay for the night ... one might sleep in the truck or in a hotel, the other might sleep in a campground or hotel.

They both might decide to put some household stuff in storage so that they don't have to maintain a house somewhere.

They'll both have insurance costs.

They may both have additional transportation costs as well.


And I'm not sure what a camp stove has to do with anything.

I think these "how cheap can I tour" threads are a waste of time. How about, "How long can I sit here waiting for a load while watching You Tube vids?"

+1 It's really comes down to what you want to do, as CC tourers we easily spend over $100/day (for two) for food & lodging because that's what it takes to make it enjoyable for us. The 1st question you must answer is what do you want to get from touring, then the cost needs to align with your budget.

I actually didn't think of this thread as "how cheap can I tour" ... but then I don't think of touring in that way.

"Realistic" for me, includes restaurant meals, hotels and B&Bs, alternate methods of transportation, and spending money for things I'd like to see and do. These things might not happen every day, but a couple times a week is good.

And "realistic" for me does not include any bush camping. If I camp, I want to camp in a decent campground. So "realistic" for me also includes the cost of camping.

I also like to eat quite well ... I'm not an oatmeal and brown beans sort of tourist/traveller. So "realistic" for me includes fruit and veg and yogurt and cheese and pastries and ice cream ......

My GF and I enjoy wine with our dinners, either at home, out or in camp. How is that "frivolous?"

Well put, and I like your style. Personal preferences will affect one's realistic cost.

A couple of years ago, in a similar thread, Valygrl remarked how she won't deny herself some good ice cream or coffee just because it would require her to open her wallet. (Not her exact words, but that was the point.) I am the same way. I am not out to see how much money I can spend. At the same time, I am not out to see how little I can get by on.

I did my first X-USA back in 1987 with a budget of $20 per day.
The CPI has roughly doubled since then - perhaps more for things cyclists need/use.

About 10 years ago I tried to do parts of trips on $1 per day.
Because I actually prefer random camping - I can wash up pretty good at a rest stop - and church dinners are delicious.
But it's pretty demanding, not to mention the desire to pig out or get a motel in the rain.

Despite what some say, many of your regular expenses back home continue -
Your various insurance payments, rent, utilities, college loan, c.c. payments, etc.
Unless you are gone for a long time and get rid of everything or get a sublet -
You need to be able to cover these costs AND budget for your tour.

It is always best to SAVE for a tour - putting it on plastic is an invitation for disaster.
So if you want to do a 90-day tour - a moderate budget might be $4000.
$40 per day plus $400 for transportation - provided you already have bike and equiment.

If you do that it is entirely possible that touring might save you money in some cases. Gasoline alone can really add up when at home. I know that my wife commented that on one of my tours I was spending less than at home. I was avoiding a long daily commute by being away from work at the time.

People seem to manage to spend anywhere from almost zero to $150 or more per day depending on their preferences. I figure that if you are reasonably frugal $15 is doable and $25 is fairly comfortable, even allowing a fair number of diner meals, and a room now and then.

Staehpj1 -

I found myself saying $25 ?!?!?!? One motel room per week can easily blow that number - esp. in touristy locations.
Then I realized that you have done your big tours with other people - that's a big difference.
No one has mentioned - but the cost of solo touring (per person) is significantly more than touring with others.
A single motel room might be $60 and only $80 for four people.
Similarly, a pint of OJ might be $1.50 - but a half gallon is $2.50 - divided by 4.

So that $4000 figure might be lowered to $3000 each for 2 - and maybe $2500 each for 4.

I said control, not eliminate. Splitting a $5-10 bottle of wine is controlling your frivolous expenses.

I soloed the Northern Tier route last summer and spent $25/day, over 55 days. I got a motel room every ten days or so at an average $50 rate. I mostly free camped, stayed a handful of nights with warmshowers.com hosts, spent about $15/day on food. I'm a middle-aged, retired guy with a credit card so I didn't have to go cheap, but I am frugal. I was surprised that I was able to keep it under $30/day, which was an estimated budget. (I was also planning on 75 days, and that was a bigger surprise.)

I had a warmshowers.com guest a few weeks ago who was in his third year of touring at about $5/day! He was clean, healthy, had all his teeth and great gear and was having a great time. I met folks on the Northern Tier ride who were in the $100/day range and it didn't seem like they were having any more fun. One guy simply had to get to a motel with WiFi every night so he could upload photos and write his CGOAB journal.

People have a tendency to always forget about the cost of transportation, insurance, wear and tear on gear/electronics, communication and stuff just happening. I'd say my normal daily costs in a developed country are about $25 bucks a day (food, accommodation, sightseeing), plus transportation cost/insurance/etc of another $5 to $25 bucks.

I usually just count on spending $40 bucks a day anywhere I go.

The real cost of bike touring is not the day to day expenses, it's the money you are not earning while on tour. If you can afford that, you can afford to bike tour. I am speaking of extended tours here, not 1-2 week jaunts.

This is what I was looking for. The real nitty gritty of bike touring cost. Living in a truck is easier and cheaper than cycling. I do have case of water, fridge full of food, a George Foreman Grill to cook, a coffee maker to make that morning coffee and a microwave to nuke stuff. If I dont eat out, I can live on a max of $40 a week on food. The deal is I am not going to be able to stock up on food and eat as well as I do for as cheap as I do.
I did bust out the camp stove and cook on it before I was able to get these modern appliance;s in my truck. I also has a portable charcoal grill I would carry and cook on when the weather was nice and there was more than just me. Eating out every meal was killing me about $45+ a day in food.
As far as plans on getting to the starting point and home afterwards really depends on where I plan to go so those cost will get figure up later. I have all the gear needed, so those cost are already covered. I dont have a house note, rent or storage fees and I plan to pay my vehicle insurance off before I leave. I do plan to be completely debt free before this trip happens so I dont have to worry about any bills. I am going to roughly plan on 40$ a day to do this trip.

I almost always stealth camp. And cook most of my meals, so I usually stop at actual grocery stores to resupply.
That's where the costs add up... roadside grub and campgrounds.

Private campgrounds around here vary between $25 and $30