Forest City

[John Hilley]

We have been in Forest City since Friday afternoon at the Winnebago Visitor Center. Last night there were 12 motor homes plugged in at the Visitor Center and about the same number at the Service Center. Walk-ins might get called on Wednesday the 10th of April. Took the tour at 9:00 AM, nothing has changed since the last time I took the tour. They have between 2,000 and 3,000 units that are sold and waiting for delivery. They are having a hard time finding drivers and production workers. There is a back log of about the same number. We took an airport-limo type of vehicle from the Visitor Center, they are now building those.

 

[John Canfield]

I also heard from my contact at Winnebago Industries that they are having a difficult time getting production workers, that's a good sign the economy is turning around.

 

[Getting Old]

John, I look at it from a different angle. When the need for workers is greater than the employee pool the quality of the employee can be less than what is desired and the product suffers. I have seen numerous examples on this site and others lambasting quality of the RVs.

In years gone by many employees were family farmers supplementing their income, getting health insurance, building retirements and the like and were happy working at less than optimum salaries, unfortunately agri-business is now the norm and that worker pool has dried up and moved away and so forth.

Some years back there was talk of building a prison nearby and hiring prisoners to work in the factory or even importing Nationals so this is not a new problem, I only hope the quality will continue to be as John K. Hansen expected it to be continues.

Don G.

 

[Lindsay Richards]

Each year about this time, Winnie sells 700 to 800 unit for rentals to Alaska. They keep them across the street. People can take them up there for a fairly cheap rental of 10 days or pay for longer, The rental pays the fuel. We talked to several that had done it for a number of years. They took 2 weeks to get there and flew back home. Love it and didn't have the expense of owning an RV. They were from small C's to midsized A's.