The RV Industry is bouncing back, what does that mean for you? Well obviously the covid19 fiasco has played out on the RV industry as well as all the other businesses throughout the U.S. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Covid affected the Grand Design plant and delayed our trip to the factory until this fall.

In the meantime let’s talk about the current shipments for the month of May. This was the first month back for the RV industry following the large-scale shutdowns to combat the COVID-19. Some manufacturers began opening up at the beginning of the month and others opened up later; but none of the manufacturers were running at full capacity.

As I have mentioned before, there are many touch points in this industry. It’s not as simple as saying the RV industry is ramping up. They need all the other suppliers in that industry doing the same thing, and at the same time. Due to this, RV manufacturing was not at full throttle in May.

By the end of May, wholesale shipment totaled 27,999 units, down (-29.7%) from the 39,838 units shipped in May 2019 (pre-pandemic); according to the RV Industry Association’Ls survey of manufacturers. Even though the numbers are down over last year, many showrooms have reported record sales. People want to resume a normal life again!

Of course, RV sales changed depending on whether a state issued lockdown orders. It’s hard to shop for an RV while you are on lock-down.However, things have changed—officials now list camping as one of the few activities that pose no risk of catching Covid.

Unfortunately, this is what all us Travel Trailer folks knew all along. Camping in a travel trailer (or any form of camping) is a safe activity. Camping has always involved social distancing. So when the State Parks closed, the news completely shocked and surprised us.

Last year, prior to covid, I blogged about the glut of campers on the market. My guess is that many of those campers are now spoken for. As the Travel Trailer Manufacturers begin to hit their stride again, I hope they have learned something from issues that were occuring before the pandemic:

  1. First and foremost – Quality DOES matter to the buyer. Please don’t tell us how good your product is – prove it! A great customer service organization is awesome, but if the product was manufactured better, we wouldn’t need it. Better quality would save the manufacturers in warranty repairs too. Quality Control at the manufacturers appears to be lacking to most buyers.
  2. Weed out dealerships that focus only on selling units and lack qualified service staff to fix problems. Customers are tired of losing camping time while waiting in long service lines. Owners express frustration when technicians fail to complete the work correctly. Worse yet, when the trailer returns in worse condition than when it went in. That is unacceptable.
  3. Hold your suppliers accountable for the components they install. Please don’t push the buck off to someone else in your supply chain. When we buy a car we don’t expect that we will be dealing with the company that supplied the transmission if we have a problem. We want one point of contact.

Indeed it appears the numbers are rising for the RV industry, and I’m happy about that. It means more choices for the buyer and a return to normalcy for all of us. I look forward to see if the “New Normal” has any improvements instore for us.