The following are my opinions but I’d love to hear yours!

If you follow any RV pages on Facebook chances are that you have heard people complaining about the “Covid Trailers”.  These are travel trailers, fifth wheels, etc. that were manufactured during the pandemic.

You will hear over and over how the quality dropped off during the pandemic.  While this is true to some degree, quality has been dropping for at least 15 years.  Now, I will temper that statement by saying that some manufacturers have had blips of good quality when starting a new company.  This is ordinarily followed a few years later with a buy-out from a larger company that doesn’t have the same thoughts on quality.

I’d also like to say that all travel trailers are not the same quality. Some are better than others.

I’ll date myself here and briefly talk about the 1970’s and US car companies.  Cars back then were made by the big three, GM, Ford, and Dodge.  There was a foreign car presence at the time but it was in no way how it is today.  If you bought an american car back in the 70’s you would be lucky to get 100,000 miles on it…really lucky.  The quality, not just with the mechanicals, but overall was quite shoddy.  When there is little competition and all the manufacturers are happy with the way things are, the consumer suffers.

My first brand new car was a 1976 Chevy Chevette.  It was great on gas mileage, however, not a car you could trust to start in the winter; and Wisconsin gets very cold in the winter. However, the market was moving in the right direction at this point due to the influence of the foreign market.

The foreign car market grew, driven by reliability, quality, price, and fuel efficiency.  These were all factors that were missing with US manufactured cars at the time.  Import Sales grew every year and in 1980 Japan became the world’s leading auto producer.  This forced a correction in the auto industry but it would take until 1993 for the US to recapture the number 1 spot.

Today, you can be sure when you buy a new American car, it is going to last a long time with proper maintenance.  So how does this relate to the RV world?

Well, the opposite happened in the RV world.  There were many manufacturers prior to 2008.  Quality was important then, because consumers had so many choices.  Many choices lead to competition based on quality.  As I have mentioned before, our travel trailers purchased between 1988 and 2007, had almost zero issues. Then with the great recession of 2008, many of these financially struggling companies got gobbled up by huge conglomerate companies.  Now, basically three big manufacturer’s control the RV market.  So, it is much like the auto industry prior to the foreign market dragging the US market into better quality. Our trailers purchased post 2008, have had long punch lists of repairs needed when they were purchased.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like any foreign made travel trailers are going to be coming to the US to right the quality ship.

Here’s a brief example:

Fleetwood owned the Mallard line of travel trailers since 1992.  In 2008, Fleetwood announced it was closing several factories across the United States.  On March 10, 2009, the company filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11.  On February 2, 2010, Heartland Recreational Vehicles acquired the remaining active trademarks of the towable brands of Fleetwood.  Six months later Heartland was purchased by the conglomerate Thor Industries.  Thor happened to acquire many trade mark travel trailers during this period.  Brands that were privately owned before Thor purchased them are all brands you would remember;

Airstream

Hymer

Dutchman

Keystone

KZ

Cross Roads

The point I am trying to make here is that the conglomerate now owns these trademark names but they are not the companies they once were.  They are just an old name placed on a mass-produced trailer.  So, how they were made prior to 2008, is not how they are made today.

This is why I state that while Covid certainly resulted in some poor quality being pushed out the doors of manufacturing plants, the fall of the RV industry started many years before that.

You have probably seen this personally when a food company decides to purchase another brand.  Once they acquire it, they decide to see if they can continue with the same sales numbers after reformulating the recipe to save money.  You have probably bought the reformulated product and thought to yourself “Gee what happened, this doesn’t taste good anymore”.

Of course, changes in quality aren’t as obvious on a travel trailer; until it’s too late.

I speak from experience when I say that travel trailers were made much better prior to 2008.  That’s not to say that they were perfect, nothing is, but they were much better.

I am still hopeful that at some point in the future the RV industry will somehow be forced to produce a better trailer.  I hope its through competition.  Having a better trailer might end up costing more money BUT the total cost of ownership would probably be much less to the consumer.  No one wants to buy a trailer only to have recalls, repairs, and failures.

I don’t want to pay for a name brand cookie only to have it taste like a cheap knockoff.