Data center workers increase their per diem by living in RVs

Seventy Amazon packages were piled up in an RV park near Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

They weren’t intended for tourists passing through to see an antique show or visit nearby historic German villages, says Jamie Wolter, manager of the Amana RV Park & ​​Event Center. They are intended for the hundreds of data center employees who now live in the park.

Typically, the 450-campground park accommodates up to 60 long-term campers, but now that Google and QTS are both building data centers in the area, workers are coming from as far away as Oregon and Washington. Some bring their spouse and children to school at home. Staff who previously received complaints about missing homes must now decide whether to ask someone behind on rent to move out.

“It’s like you’re an owner now, and you never were,” Wolter says.

Still, she credits data center workers with helping to mitigate a decline in RV tourists due to gas prices. “Without these long-time guests, it would have been terrible.”

As construction workers crisscross the country to find well-paying jobs in data centers, some are spending their per diem on purchasing an RV. While working on one of the largest infrastructure builds in U.S. history, they might stay on a site from a few months to a few years, often in places where hotels and short-term rentals are rare or expensive. If they find a place in crowded campsites, a caravan can further increase their housing allowance, shorten their commute, and make room for family and pets, all while “chasing the data center money.” He can also accompany them to the next site once construction is completed.

This trend provides a much-needed boost to the RV industry, which has fallen from the height of the pandemic. Wholesale U.S. RV shipments fell 13.7% through September compared to the same period last year; Sales to data center workers are helping some dealers weather the crisis. Meanwhile, campgrounds built for tourists are filling up with data center workers — and their operators are learning what it means to be inundated with long-term tenants.

At the ATC RV Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, data center employees helped keep unit sales roughly flat compared to the previous year. “Without them it would have been very slow for us,” says manager Joel Philipp.

Because RVs are largely a leisure purchase, sales are particularly exposed when households cut back on spending. “It’s usually the first to go into a recession and the last to come out,” he says of the industry. “You don’t need it, you want it.”

Its dealership used geofencing to target ads to people using their phones around data center construction sites. The idea was to reach workers interested in RVs during their breaks, when they’re browsing Facebook or ESPN on their phones — and it worked. A number of those people came to buy campers, he said.

In Louisiana, Bayou Outdoor Supercenter offers workers at Meta’s Hyperion project a calculator that compares the cost of a hotel stay with the cost of purchasing an RV they can take to their next job.

At Clear Creek RVs in Abilene, marketing director Shannon Calkins estimates that about half of the dealership’s business now comes from data center workers. Before construction, workers buying RVs for housing, including people working on pipeline and solar projects, made up about 15 to 20 percent of its business. Calkins credits his new customers with helping Clear Creek continue to grow in a challenging market.

Most data center buyers opt for smaller, less expensive trailers, Calkins says. His financial team has seen per diems ranging from about $100 to $300 per day. A smaller travel trailer can cost around $20,000 and, depending on the loan, payments can be $400 per month or less. A $400 trailer paired with a $600 campsite would cost $1,000 per month before electricity, insurance or food.

Calkins says some buyers have limited credit histories, which can make loans harder to get and more expensive when they qualify. But a worker who would otherwise spend that money on hotel rooms can put some of it toward a trailer that he or she will still own when the job is done. In Cedar Rapids, Philipp saw some demand for larger fifth-wheel RVs, which he estimated could cost $60,000 to $70,000, but those usually came from co-workers looking for bunkhouse models they could share or tradesmen bringing their families.

At Abilene RV Park in Texas, all weekly and monthly spaces as well as long-term cabins were full when I spoke with manager Debbie Coffey. Data center employees make up most of her long-term guests, and she says there is continually a waiting list of 20 to 30 people.

Coffey spends so much time handling deliveries that she feels “like a postman about half the day, every day.” There is also more work maintaining showers, toilets and laundry. The park recently increased its monthly rate by $50, to $600 plus electricity, to help cover higher property taxes and maintenance costs.

She keeps about five of the park’s 66 spaces open to transients, the guests she plans to return to when construction of the data center ends.

Near Meta’s sprawling data center campus in Richland Parish, La., Corporate Mobile Housing’s Dunn Village offers construction workers rooms in mobile homes as well as 170 spaces so they can bring their own RV. Heather Kleinpeter, the company’s director of strategic growth, says the data centers have brought new life to a company whose owners were considering retirement. Founded after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to house workers pumping water in New Orleans, the company later shifted its focus to housing oil and gas workers. Prior to the announcement of Meta’s Louisiana data center in late 2024, Corporate Mobile Housing provided 300 beds. There are now 1,500, and Kleinpeter expects that number to double next year.

Two of Kleinpeter’s sons work in data centers and both have lived in modular housing in Dunn Village. In her parks and around Richland Parish, she sees all kinds of workers living in RVs, from younger people who don’t need a lot of space to retirees returning to work to people traveling with kids or dogs. This means campers with small fences, swings and children’s bikes out front. In some parks, food trucks have set up to sell breakfast.

“People are taking advantage of opportunities at all levels,” she says.

The opportunity comes with an end date. Meta says its expanded Richland Parish campus will support more than 7,500 jobs at peak construction and 1,000 once it is operational. Once the data construction projects are complete, the traveling crews will need another job – and another place to park their RV.

Kleinpeter says Corporate Mobile Housing plans a five- to seven-year project. Eventually, the company could move some of the modular homes to another workplace or find a new use for land it has already equipped with water, sewer and electricity. It depends on what the parish is like at that time.

“It will be a collective like: ‘What does the municipality want?’” Kleinpeter explains.

Future data center projects also face a tougher political climate. In this month’s midterms, Texas elected Gina Hinojosa, who supports a statewide moratorium on new data center approvals, as governor. Texas accounts for about one in five data center buildings in the United States that are planned or under construction, according to industry tracking organization Cleanview. Michigan endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, who called for a pause on new developments, for Senate. Voters in several cities across the country also approved measures to restrict or ban new data centers.

Around Abilene, Calkins has seen new RV parks popping up in fields, some little more than crushed gravel and utility hookups. Some of these parks have plenty of space, she said, although established parks turn away monthly renters. When work dries up, she figures crews will hitch up their trailers and take them to the next job.

She says it’s the parks they leave behind that will sell “for pennies on the dollar.”