August Rv sales show some rebound

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KandT

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https://www.rvia.org/news-insights/rv-shipments-august-2019

Still down in August compared to last year but "less down" than previous months.  I am amazed that only 1300 class A's were sold in August.  That seems like such a small number especially when you compare that to 30,000 towables sold. 

The last few months have been "less down" and I wonder if we are seeing the signs of a rebound to growth?

Now that I have a full sized truck though, I see the appeal of a towable.  We haven't bitten yet but maybe this winter.  Towables certainly aren't made like a DP on a freight liner chassis  :D :D. I am sure they need to keep the weight down but I was a little surprised at how light they are built.
 
KandT said:
https://www.rvia.org/news-insights/rv-shipments-august-2019

Still down in August compared to last year but "less down" than previous months.  I am amazed that only 1300 class A's were sold in August.  That seems like such a small number especially when you compare that to 30,000 towables sold. 
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If you only stay in full hookup RV parks and only read this forum, it seems like the entire RV world is in Class As. If you go to a national, state, or county park where young families gather or a fishing spot or a small family campground, you will find towables are much more numerous. We have frequently found ourselves the only motorhome in a campground while the other sites, all 50-60 of them, are filled with towables. In the Midwest and the Pacific northwest where I am now, I pass numerous RV dealers without a single motorhome on their lot, either Class A or C. That probably tells you a lot about what kind of campgrounds we prefer.
 
UTTransplant said:
If you go to a national, state, or county park where young families gather or a fishing spot or a small family campground, you will find towables are much more numerous.
Click to expand...


Yup. Campground I was in this summer, 120 sites, I probably saw 10 Class A's total. Of the towable, 80% were TT
 
Last memorial day weekend we spent a night in a poplar lake front Texas state park, out of about 120 sites which were nearly all occupied we were the only motorhome, though to be fair several of the sites were occupied by tent campers even though they were in water and electric RV sites.
 
We just left a popular lake front full hook up campground in MO.yesterday. Were there a week. One day while walking the dog, I counted the towables. (Can?t explain why) The next day counted the drivables. 3 to 2 in favor of the towables.
 
We went Friday to the Indianapolis Boat & RV show just to see what?s new. There was one Class A, maybe three Class Cs and the rest was towables. We were really wanting to look at some As, so was some what disappointed. We did check out the new fifth wheels but really didn?t see anything we liked any better than the one we have. Of course we?ve made several modifications to make it into our home, but even the basic layouts aren?t any better than what we started with.

One new trend seems to be to elevate the living area in the rear of the fifth allowing more storage underneath. One unit had the living room there and another had the kitchen. The only problem is they are adding another set of stairs. So in the rig with the raised living room, to go to the bathroom, you go downstairs, thru the kitchen, then upstairs to bathroom, back down again thru kitchen, then upstairs again to living room. That?s a lot of stairs every day! One set is almost too many for me!!

Vicki
 
Hi Vicki and Mark,

My wife and I also went to the Indy RV Show when we were first were looking to buy about 3 years ago. Similar to your experience, there wasn't a whole lot of class A's or C's and more tow types. So not much has changed. I figure that the tow types are better sellers for them and they only sell the bigger units less often. If you can go to the RV Hall of Fame Show in Elkhart, it has more overall types of RV's. You can also tour the museum with RV's.

I live in the Elkhart area and the manufactures are saying the sales are more or less as they were predicting and that they are not having a sales slump as reported by some media outlets (our local stations have reported good sales). They had a couple of great years in the past 3 or so years and they are saying this is about where they were wanting to be based on their expectations.
 
The steps is the number one reason we didn?t want a fifth wheel. Adding more might be fine for more agile folks, but both Kevin and I have enough knee problems that it just wasn?t a choice for us. It is hard to see a bunch of Class As from different manufacturers. Vicki, are you going to be in Arizona this winter? La Mesa has a large range of Class As they bring to the Quartzsite show. Besides, we would like to see you again plus pick your brains about your Alaska trip.
 
UTTransplant said:
If you only stay in full hookup RV parks and only read this forum, it seems like the entire RV world is in Class As.
Click to expand...

We were on the road for nearly 4 months this summer and stayed at full hookup parks the entire time.  Often we were the only Class A motorhome or one of only a couple.  Maybe if you frequent fancy "high end" RV resorts you will find a preponderance of Class A's but not anywhere else. 

At our winter "home park" which is of the "ownership" variety we are one of only two Class A's out of ~40 which is in line with the "couple of percent" sales ratio of Class A's to towables.
 
UTTransplant said:
The steps is the number one reason we didn?t want a fifth wheel. Adding more might be fine for more agile folks, but both Kevin and I have enough knee problems that it just wasn?t a choice for us. It is hard to see a bunch of Class As from different manufacturers. Vicki, are you going to be in Arizona this winter? La Mesa has a large range of Class As they bring to the Quartzsite show. Besides, we would like to see you again plus pick your brains about your Alaska trip.
Click to expand...

Pam,

Unfortunately, we aren?t going to make it to Arizona this winter. Mark is seeing an eye specialist in Ft. Myers this winter and it?s a lot cheaper for us to fly to Cayman from Florida than anywhere west so we decided to try boondocking in Florida this winter. Where will you be around end of March/April? Are you planning on going toward Alaska from Arizona?

Vicki
 
Just a note for those close to northern Indiana, the RV Hall of Fame Museum will  host a RV Show on October 17 - 20th in case anyone is interested in going. Tickets are $10 per adult. If you go to Total Value RV before the show starts, they have tickets they pass out usually. Could save the admittance. Not associated with the show, just trying to help out.

https://rvboatfishinghuntingoutdoors.com/midwest/indiana-rv-boat-fishing-hunting-outdoors-shows/item/midwest-rv-super-show.html
 
On our trip to NFLD this past summer, there were no shortage of class A motorhomes. It is the rv of choice for NFLD. Many are travelling in caravans, others like us, on our own. There were many TT as well, but each campground we stayed in had probably 40 class A s, many of them tag axle.
 
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