Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about how they made over $23,000 on last year's road trip.
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Road Trip Time! And How We Made Over $23k On Last Year’s Road Trip
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about our upcoming road trip, one of our favorite times of the year.
Rob: All right, so today we are talking about one of mine and Melissa's our favorite and the kids' time of year is the summertime.
Melissa: Our picking road trip across the country.
So we were, I've been going through some content from last year's trip and looking at it, and so we thought we'd hop on and say like, we're getting ready for this year, and yeah, kind of talk about how this came about and what we do on the summer to go find these items.
Rob: Yeah, so we started three years ago.
Melissa: Actually, I was thinking about this, this'll be our fourth summer that we're doing, doing this, but it actually started in 2018 when we did the 127 yard sale. Oh, that's really what kind of spurred the whole thing was we loaded up the kids. I think Brody was like, not even two. Wait, yeah. 2018. So it wasn't even two yet.
And he, we, no, he was two. Yeah, two. He was two. Anyways and we loaded up the three kids and took them to the 127 yard sale, which is a, 800 or 600 mile yard sale from Alabama to Michigan.
Rob: It's like four, four or five states. Yeah. So, man, that's what we decided to do because it is a yard sale. Who doesn't want to go to a yard sale?
And I think it's four days long. Yeah. It's, so we started in Alabama, trucked up this 127 route, and we hit up so many cool yard sales and thrift stores along the
Melissa: way. I mean, it's basically like they have flea market like vendors set up. They have like a whole bunch of people come into one area and then there's like little mom and pop ones, like little ones around the whole way.
So we would stop. You go in around the whole big flea market basically, and some of them were antiques and collectibles and some of them were just used stuff.
Rob: So it was pretty cool. So it was a lot of fun. So we got hooked on it in 2018. We did it through, it was beginning of August, if I'm not mistaken.
Melissa: Yeah. This like the first week in August. Cool. So it was, it was fun. Like we had a great time. We went from sun up to sundown, stopped at where we could find a hotel and we wanted, the whole goal was to get through the whole thing and we, we just about made it. Yeah. I think it took us a little bit longer, but we just about made it through the whole thing.
Rob: So this is a good time, man. We picked some cool stuff, so definitely fun. And then three years ago, which would've been 2019, it was 2020 that we started. So 2020, my brother-in-law, got diagnosed with cancer, brain cancer, ended up passing away in 2020. In 2020. And I told my sister, two of my sisters were really close.
And they were going through this hard time with my brother-in-law taking care of him before he passed away. And I told my sister and my two nieces that we should do a road trip after this was, we decided after he passed away, we started talking about it. We started making plans to do a summer road trip.
And it was cool. So.
Melissa: You wanted to get everybody's mind off of things. They're like, let's pack up and go see some things we've never seen across the country.
Rob: Absolutely. So we ended up buying a 15 passenger van, pulling a enclosed trailer behind the van. And then we had one of my sisters that has two daughters.
And then I had another one of my sisters that those two sisters were close. She has twin daughters and then Melissa and I, teenagers, our three kids. So yeah, the, my, my nieces are all teenagers and our kids were young, and we decided to travel the country, go around, find cool stuff to cool stuff to buy throughout the country, and also see state parts and do stuff like that.
So, this was three years ago.
Melissa: It wasn't part, it wasn't really to go buy stuff. The whole thing was to go see. And then that just happened. Cause we brought, we found some cool stuff. We brought the trailer and of course you have to fill it, right? If you, absolutely if you have an empty trailer. So you'd find stuff on marketplace and we'd stop and go pick it up.
Rob: And I'd be curious, we didn't do this for the first year that we did it. We didn't check to see how much money we actually made on the items that we bought. Yeah. But I'd be curious to go back and actually look at that. Yeah. And see how much money we made the first year, second year, and third year.
Melissa: I wrote down Yeah.
This last year. Yeah. We should do that one on all of them. Yeah. We'll have to do a recap of all of them, but.
Rob: That'd be fun to see. So anyways, that's how it was birthed. That's how we started into this crazy, fun summertime to where we go. We travel, we get to see state parks. We get to buy some really, really cool stuff too.
Yeah. National parks, it's just a really, really good time. It's a good time spending with the kids. This year we are implementing one cool thing that I had an idea about with the kids. Are we gonna talk about that or we later we're?
Melissa: Yeah, no, we can talk about it.
Rob: So one idea for this year's trip is we bought these big 27 gallon tubs. We bought three of them. So we have three kids, ages seven, nine, and 10. Seven, nine and 10. Seven, nine and 10. Good job. So what we are doing is giving each kid $100, which we probably don't even have to. They have a hundred dollars.
Melissa: They do. But I think it would be a fun challenge.
Rob: So we're gonna give them a hundred dollars and we want them to fill up this 27 gallon tub throughout the next, the, the time we were on the road trip throughout the next couple weeks.
We want them to fill it up from stuff at yard sales, flea markets, thrift stores, places that we'll stop. We want them to fill it up in into smaller stuff. And then when we get back, we are going to do a online auction and see who can make the most money with that a hundred dollars that they invested in this 27 gallon tub.
And our kids are gonna be super excited about this.
Melissa: Brody already tried to start, we got the tubs the other day and he's starting to look, he saw some stuff in the trash and he's like, can we go get that? Can we sell that? So it'll be interesting to see. It'll be fun. He's also, he's motivated by money.
He's the youngest, motivated by money, but he's also, I think he's a little more competitive. Yeah. Than the other ones. Me too. So he's like, he wants to win. So.
Rob: So that's gonna be a fun addition this year to that, but, and then along with that, we're traveling that throughout the country. We'll be able to stop, pick up some stuff.
Absolutely. We're still taking our trailer. We always travel with the trailer, it's easier to pack all of our stuff in the trailer. And then we find stuff along the way. Last year's numbers, this was pretty exciting. So last year we did it, we ended up spending, what was it, $1,600? Yeah, $1,600. A little over, $1,600 I believe.
And we sold?
Melissa: Well, we got $35,000 worth of inventory. Okay. And we've sold $23,900 of it.
Rob: So $23k from our last year, $24k. Almost $24,000 from our last year's road trip that we actually made, which well paid for our road trip. And then made some really, really good money on it. So that's gonna be our goal this year, is actually to do the same thing, is be able to buy enough stuff, pay for the road trip.
Yep. Have some fun. See some really, really cool stuff. And then come back and sell it and, and make some good money on it. So that's the plan, that's the exciting part.
Melissa: Yeah. So, i, I don't know, dude, you wanna talk about the stuff that we told? Sure. So last year, what we noticed, which is kind of, we came back and I think we got 17 items.
And one thing that we noticed was there were, we got a lot of appliances, so we definitely gravitate towards appliances because they're worth so much more money and.
Rob: And you can pick them up for almost dirt cheap. When people are renovating a kitchen, getting rid of stuff, they'll sell them really, really cheap just to get rid of them because they're larger pieces of equipment or larger units versus something that's small.
Melissa: And those are the big money makers. So the TurboChefs we sold, you picked those, you spent the most on those. Yeah, that was a little more than we normally invest. It was $400 each, and we sold one for $10,000, one for $8,500. So those were our big money makers, bulk, the bulk of it. And then that cooktop, I remember. And the double oven, we bought together a hundred dollars each. And one sold for $2,000, one sold for $1,750. I remember you had to go take them out of the house, like it was still installed, un installed. You had to uninstall it. You met, met with the guy, it was a Facebook marketplace post, I think. Yeah.
Yeah. You met with them and they were like destroying the house or something and you had to get them out and he needed them taken out, so. Yep. I remember going to get that stuff. It was hot too. I do remember that. Yep. I do. So, the Solo Flex was a freebie. Yep. On Marketplace.
Rob: That was in Idaho. Yep. I do remember in Idaho was somebody getting rid of it for free, didn't even meet them.
They left it on the porch, told me to come pick it up. And then we sold one portion of that for $750. $750. $750 for a portion of the Solo Flex. Killer, killer deal.
Melissa: Just a portion? Wow.
Rob: Yeah, I don't think we sold the whole thing.
Melissa: Cause I saw, oh, I didn't have the, the bands. Yeah. Yeah. And then the warming drawer, another appliance, it was $5.
Got that at thrift store. I found that I, I get the credit for finding that one. Yep.
There are two of those. And bought them both. Five a piece, five bucks and $400 is what you sold it for. Yep. The purifier cells, I don't know what those are, but they're just like the purifier cells. Yeah.
Rob: So they're aluminum cells that go into a purifier machine, to yeah, purify the air, so I don't need either, they're just a cartridge store. Yeah. They're nice sized cartridges. They're either stainless steel or aluminum. I think they're aluminum and yeah, we got those at a thrift store, turned around and sold them. Didn't pay that much for them. Yeah. And sold them for about $150.
Melissa: $150. And then, the last one was a NordicTrack you got for free also. That was when we were in Arizona. Yeah. I remember we were at that conference and so.
Rob: I even tried to give the guy money for it. I wanted to buy him lunch for giving me the NordicTrack. Tried to give him like $20 I think I did. He said, no, don't worry about it.
You can just take it. So we did that.
Melissa: You sold it for $350.
Rob: Yep. Sold it for $350. Killer, killer deal on that. So, moved a couple things. A couple things I still do not even have listed yet because we have been so busy throughout this last year doing.
Melissa: That's the problem. It's not that the other inventory is not necessarily selling. It's that it's not listed.
Rob: It's not been listed. And we're a year past it now, because we're diving into the next road trip.
Melissa: Think it's about time that you hire somebody to help you.
Rob: Yeah. We need to go to that next level. But still made $20, yeah, almost $24,000 on a summer road trip, which was so much fun and very profitable.
Melissa: That was only a thousand dollars and $1,010 invested. So.
Rob: Just over a thousand dollars to make, over make $24,000. Yeah. Close to $24,000 which is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. The return on that is insane for a 20, 20 some thousand dollars return on a thousand dollars investment. I love it.
Totally love it.
Melissa: Yeah. So we're getting ready for, this year.
What would you say if somebody was gonna go on a a road trip, like picking however long, like maybe do in the 127 yard sale, this year? There's a couple of them actually different states, but that's the one that we had done and know, and know it. What would you say to make sure people bring on a trip like that?
Rob: For us, we don't drive new vehicles, so all of our cars, the newest car we have is 20 years old, so like even right now I'm doing brakes. I'm doing, ball joints and stuff like that on our, make sure you make sure your car is ready, make sure your car is ready to go, and that's what I'm working on.
But for us also the trailer, make sure you have, spare tires, for the vehicle, for the trailer, what else? And then packages and stuff. Tools, oh, and blankets. If you get, if you do get stuff, blankets, straps, all that kind of stuff to be able to put in your trailer. If you're not taking a trailer, just packaging, you know where you can throw blankets in the back of your trunk, where you can package stuff, where it will last. Because we, if we find something, it might be in the trailer for a couple weeks before we get back and it has to be in there tight and safe to where it's not gonna get damaged on the road trip. So you bring the blanket so they don't get rubbed or anything.
Absolutely. I do remember our first year I bought a popcorn, vintage popcorn machine. And you remember that? And it got damaged. Yeah, it broke one of the pieces of glass broke because, that trailer was not really set up to hold that thing and it, I think it hit a bump and bounced and broke one of the pieces of glass in there.
So I know that. Definitely, and we've learned a lot on our years past traveling. So, now we're very, very careful. We have a lot of blankets. We do that. So we package everything in there. The railings now on the trailer, right? So you can tighten them to the sides. So yeah, we do all that stuff. So, anything else that you can bring?
I'm not sure.
Melissa: I like a map. I'm gonna add that because I think it's smart to have a physical map. Because you never know, like you're out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. And if GPS stops working, your phone stop doesn't have reception. I know GPS usually still works, but sometimes it might not. So it's good to know how to read a map and to have a map.
Rob: So, absolutely.
And cash. Definitely cash. You might not be able to find an ATM so bring some cash. Doesn't have to be a lot of cash, but just bring some cash to where if you do find something in a small town or something like that and you can't get to an atm. Yeah. But you have some cash to pay for stuff.
So, that's, that those would be our recommendations of the stuff that we do when we travel. And I always bring tools. Yeah, tools. You never know anything to change tires. Anything to, if I have to change, if you have to uninstall a double oven in someone's house, almost exactly. Almost every year the first year, three days into our trip with that van, the 15 passenger van we bought, oh, the air went out. The air went out. So I did a full,
Melissa: We got 11 people in this car in Texas in June, and it was hot.
Rob: So I did a full ac, swap over or whatever, compressor, condenser. I did all that stuff in the parking lot of a hotel. So we would have air throughout the rest of the trip, and that took me about a day to do.
Got it done. But yeah, tools are definitely a must for us. If you drive new vehicles, yeah. Maybe not as much. Yeah, we don't, we don't do the new vehicle thing. Like I said, 20 years old is our newest vehicle that we have. But we do drive diesels too. We, the, this first year was a gas car in diesels.
We feel like are, they're up for the challenge for doing a lot of miles in a short amount of time.
Melissa: We also do have AAA. We are their platinum.
Rob: Definitely a must for us. It's AAA, just in case something happened. So.
Melissa: And we did have, do you that was the van too. It broke down again in Arches National Park.
We're in the middle middle of nowhere and like we're leaving arches. We were already past it. Cause we were almost to the highway trying to go to my brother's house, which was two hours away. And there is nothing. It's desert. There's nothing there. And what happened? The, the, it broke.
Rob: It was crazy. I don't know exactly.
Melissa: So you don't know what happened? You don't know.
Rob: I don't remember what it was. You didn't fix it. I know, but it started, pushing out oil out of the engine and I didn't know what happened. Like it overheated or something like that. And we were in the middle of the desert, nowhere. Yes, but we did have reception.
Melissa: We did thank the Lord.
Rob: The one thing we were worried about is we had how many people? Four. Eight, 11. There was 11 of us, 11 people. And AAA usually will take one person when they tow something. Yes. This guy actually was amazing. They brought a flatbed truck. And put us with the van on the back of the flatbed and left us in that flatbed while he towed us to Melissa's brother's house.
Took the trailer, he hooked up the trailer, put the trailer on the back of the tow truck and put the van up on top of it and towed us to, it was amazing. Melissa's brother's house, which was like two hour, like an hour and a half or two hours ago, hour and a half away. So praise the Lord. We are close to her brother where we could get there.
I trouble shot it. We got it fixed the next day.
Melissa: We couldn't have asked for a better person to come pick us up. Like he was amazing. No, he definitely knew what he was doing. Very, because we've had a couple people who don't know what they're doing. Yeah. He was very experienced. He let us ride up there. This was also Covid, so like rules were weird.
Anyway. Yeah. So who knew what was going on? But I mean, we got some videos of you. Almost driving the car with that was funny. Yeah, but that was a, definitely an experience. Never.
Rob: That was a lot of fun. So, for anything, we will be having some cool stories coming your way. We're gonna try to do some podcasts on the road as well.
We'll see how well that goes. But we'll have some cool videos, it's a little harder to get done. But if you guys don't follow us, definitely check out our Instagram. Melissa's really good at posting videos and doing stuff on Instagram.
It will
Melissa: definitely be in our story. Some of the stuff that we find and flip and and yeah.
So definitely check that out.
Rob: Put some links below so you guys can check it out. Super excited.
Melissa: One thing I did wanna, before we absolutely end, I, one question that we get a lot is the kids. So how do the kids travel for that long? How do they because this year, like we're planning to go all the way to California, so we're headed all the way around the whole country pretty much.
So how do they act, like, how do you get them to do that? And we've been doing this for a long time, like since they were babies, and I think that does help. Yeah. Like we have that, like even they were in diapers and like, we still made the whole thing work. Yeah. Now I think they're just used to it, but, this, I think the competition's gonna help.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: Like have them be involved. That'll give them more excited about stopping that yard sale, stopping at thrift stores because they're gonna wanna find some really cool stuff. So instead of being like, oh, we have to stop at another thrift store.
Rob: So make some games. If you have kids, figure out how to do something like this.
Make some games where you can get them involved in it. So I think this is gonna help a ton for us. Yeah. But our kids, like Melissa said, we've been driving to, I think you just gotta do it. New Jersey, we've been doing this stuff. We see her family once or twice a year where we'll make that trip in the car.
They get used to it, but you can't get them used to it until you start doing it. So no matter what age they are, almost every year, that's it. No matter what age they are, you guys can, get them started and make some games out of it and it'll be so much fun for them to, to get involved with it.
Melissa: Yeah, and we do, like, they do have an I or a whatever. A tablet. A tablet that they don't really get access to unless we're on a road trip. So that helps. And that is something they look forward to being able to use that cause they don't get to do it all the time. Yep. And we have books and whatnot for that, movies for them to watch. But I think that just doing it, so if you're nervous about like taking your kids with you, I think just the more you do it, the better it gets.
Yeah. The easier it gets. And then it's not like, It's perfect anytime, but it'll, it just, it gets, they get used to it, I guess. So.
Rob: I think our kids behave better on the road than they do in at our house. At our house. I honestly believe that because it's just new scenery, new stuff, fun stuff to look forward to.
And I think that's one of those things that our kids, I enjoy our kids over the summer so much, and I know a lot of parents in the summertime, they're like, please get my kids back to school. I can't handle this anymore. But us, it's a really, really fun time to be able to do that and get them out of the element to, to experience new things and do have fun, fun times with them.
Melissa: And I think also, because we do incorporate a lot of like, hiking in different parks and if we can make it to the national parks or we'll find state parks, we'll find just new places that there's, sometimes we'll have like a 10 hour stretch and they're like, okay, well where, what's along the way? What can I find to go?
We found that one when we were going to Indiana last year. We started the road trip. I, I was like, we gotta get these kids outta the car. They need to get out and let's see what's here. And we found that one remember with the back bowl. Turkey something. Yeah, Turkey. It was in Indiana. It was really cool. It was big.
Just, I don't know. We got to this bowl., it was a blast and it was, how do you describe it? Rocks and a little river and it was just super cool. So it was really cool. Just you can find that stuff we would've never known that was there if, you know, we weren't driving there. Were like, okay, where can we stop?
What can we do? So even just for an hour, a hike. And just being outside I think helps them a lot, so. Absolutely. So yeah, so definitely follow along the adventure. We'd love to yeah, we'll share with you what we find this year. Hopefully, we can keep up with what we did last year. Last year was only 17 items, so. Yeah.
I like you having a smaller amount with a large scale.
Rob: Exactly. So. We'll, and if you do see us on Instagram and you, you do that, throw in a shout out. Say, hey guys, listen to the podcast. I love it. We'd love to know that you actually were on the podcast or you listened to us and that's how you found us on Instagram as well.
But yeah, we're excited for it. You guys will be, trust me, it'll be a experience if you start to see some of the stuff that we do. It's gonna be so much fun.
Melissa: So thank you guys so much for listening. We appreciate you so much.
Rob: You guys rock. Have an amazing day and we will see you on the next episode.