Not An RV Hit Piece

The Great Recession created a perfect storm for the RV industry. As the industry tries to emerge from the abyss of a systemic crisis, customers should be extra-vigilant in their quest to reside on the road. Listen as the Carstuff duo give you a snapshot of RVing in 2019. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to car Stuff. I'm
your host Scott Benjamin, and I am Kurt and Garran.
Kurt is back with me again for another week. I
hope Kurt, that you stick around because we've got a
lot to cover today. So well, for sure, you're gonna
stick around for today, right, for sure. I mean you're

(00:21):
not gonna like split or anything. I know you've got
to get double duty. You're the producer as well. It's
not I'm not going anywhere else between here and there.
It's not too far. It's like it's like six feet
getting over the board, all right, So well you're you're
doing your job remotely. I guess that's not we by
broken the fourth wall. Alright, so today, you know, I promise. Okay, first,

(00:45):
a couple of things here. One thing that I want
to do is if you're listening to this episode and
you're not particularly interested in r vs, which I don't
know why you clicked on it then because you know
the r V is in the title. But but I
will tell you this, as you know, our shows aren't
always about it exactly what the title says. So like,
if it's a show about r vs, we may wander
off somewhere else and talk about something different. And I

(01:05):
actually think that this one is interesting to people that
aren't in the RV lifestyle or don't know about the
r don't know much about r vs. I think there's
a lot to be learned here and a lot that's
eye opening about the industry. We're definitely gonna tell you,
um the truth as we know it. I'm not I'll
be up front about this too. I think maybe we
should do this. We I didn't even I'm gonna hit

(01:26):
you with this on the fly, Hair Kirk. But I
don't personally have any RV experience. I don't know about you.
Do you have any? Okay you never lived in one,
you've never owned one, anything like that? Okay, me either.
And uh, all of the information that we're getting is
is second hand. You know. We're going by some reviews
that have been written by people that are in the lifestyle,
that that have been doing this for some of them,

(01:48):
in some cases fifty years they've been rving. They've been
in the la I keep saying the lifestyle, but it's
it's the it's the r v U community. Yeah, the community,
that's a better way to say it. They're in the
r V community, and they're, um, they're knowledgeable about the equipment,
about you know, the way things have changed over the decades.
They're they're knowledgeable about you know, what to watch for,
what not to what not to worry about, what you know,

(02:09):
what's important. But I will tell you this, and I
feel like this is important at the head of this
one for some reason. And well, actually I know I
know why. And I'm laughing as I'm saying this because
I'm a little bit embarrassed about it a little bit.
I want to say that I almost wanted to call
this episode not a hit piece on r vs, and
and maybe I will. This is not meant to be

(02:30):
a hit piece on r vs. There's gonna be a
lot of negative information about r vs that if if
you pay attention, you'll understand that. You know, that's that's
a prominent thought out there, um online, you know, among
people that are writing about r vs is that things
aren't going so well for the RV industry right now.
And that hasn't always been the case, but right now

(02:52):
things aren't going that well. And I want to make
sure that people understand that we're not trying to um,
you know, um be complete eatly negative about our vs.
There's some really positive things about our vs as well
and r ving, but I don't know if a lot
of them are going to come out in this podcast,
because that's not what this podcast is about. We'll do
another one that is positive. Yeah, I mean if anything
that's on the folks that buy our vs, maybe with

(03:15):
a jaded mindset about the lifestyle, yeah, it could be,
and about what owning an RV entails and your I
don't know responsibilities and buying one and maintaining one and
sure driving safe in one, and just everything that goes
into the RV lifestyle. Just grasping that before you dive
in the moment you sign the paper, a lot of
things change and we will get to exactly what we

(03:37):
mean by that. But I do want to say this too.
We're not trying to discourage anybody from buying an r V.
If if that's what you want to do, by all means,
do so. But we want to make sure that you
do do your research, that you understand exactly what's going
on here. Because we've been looking into this for about
a week now and it was eye opening to me.
I had no I had no idea when I dug
into this. I thought it was gonna be slightly to

(04:00):
and show. I really didn't know it was going to
be quite the way that it's going to turn out,
I think. And uh, and I'll tell you how this
all came about in just a moment. But I should
refer listeners that, you know, listeners of car stuff, you know,
past and present, back to some other car stuff shows
that we've done that are related. Of course, we've got
how r vs worked, we did way back in two
thousand nine, so I don't know what that one's gonna

(04:20):
be like, but you'll hear Ben and I discussing that.
And then we did the Craziest custom r VS, which
I know was a fun one. I remember having a
good time with that one. And then we did one
that was a little bit related. It was called living
in a Car, which I guess you can kind of
you can kind of extrapolate that, you know, living in
a car is a little bit like living in r V,
maybe not quite as luxurious as living in an r V.

(04:40):
And and even well we'll talk about that too. The
luxury aspect of the whole thing, but again not a
hit piece. Um we and I say that because we
were accused of that when we when we did another
episode called the Amtrak Story back in two thousand and eleven,
and then maybe in a little slighter like a lesser note,
when we did car Tie It a Loans more recently

(05:01):
in two thousand and seventeen. So the Amtrak piece was
really we didn't mean it to be, but it was
very negative this one going into it, I kind of
understand that it's negative, but I think that it serves
a purpose, and I hope you feel the same way, Curt.
It serves a purpose in order to kind of open
people's eyes about the industry and what's happening right now.

(05:23):
And also the positive spin on this whole thing is
going to be how they're changing things, because there are
making some changes to fix some things, but in a
lot of cases, it's a little bit too late, a
little bit too late for a lot of people. Some
people have made the jump a little too early. I
just feel like there's so much here. I've I've done
it again, I've I've I've over prepared for today's show,
which is you would think you think that's good or

(05:45):
I'm bragging or something, but I'm not. It's actually actually
a problem because now I have far too much information.
We're not going to stretch it to two episodes. I
don't want to do that with with this topic. So
I know there's gonna be something we're gonna kind of
gloss over, and I'll just refer people to look up
at the end. But there's a direction that we need
to start heading, and I think we better start heading
there now. And uh, and just kind of let the

(06:05):
as Ben would say in the past, I'll let the
badger out of the bag, let the cat out of
the bag, think at the carrot back in the sack
or out of the sack or what. I don't know.
He had a bunch of sayings like that, and I'm
no good at them, but I'll get better, I promise.
So here's where we're gonna begin. Originally, I wanted to
start with an article that I had read that was
called The Truth about r VS, and I found it
really intriguing. It was written in September of two thousand nineteen,

(06:28):
so it's very recent. It's a long long form article.
It takes, you know, good fifteen minutes to read by
no means are we going to step through the whole thing.
There's no way we can do that. But from that
article came so many different interesting things that I had
to look up, and we started to kind of branch
off into our own direction and look at different items.
And one thing in there was this video. The title

(06:49):
of the video is called It's called Don't Buy an
r V, and it's written by a guy named Stephen Leto,
and Leto is the an attorney law in the state
of Michigan. He spent realizes in consumer protection and lemon laws.
Interesting enough and um um legal problems with cars and
other big purchases like that. So he has a seventeen

(07:10):
minute video online and again he has many many episodes
of this online you know that are about all kinds
of different things not but it's mostly car related, which
is interesting to our our listeners. But this one, again
is called Don't Buy an r V and he has good,
very good reason not you know that you don't want
to do this. And when I started digging into the
Don't Buy an RV video, what did you find that

(07:30):
would come up? In the related videos right next to
it horror stories. Yeah, more of the same, right. I mean,
it's always it's surprising how many people are telling you
don't buy an r V. And it's people that own
our vs or have owned r vs for decades and
are kind of in the U in the lifestyle, in
the community of r ving, and they're saying, right now

(07:52):
is not the time for you to get into this
this this activity. Yeah, they're so upset about it that
they're not ashamed to come out and talk about the
dorble mistakes that they've made just right from the get go.
Read the dealership, signing contracts, the paperwork that they shouldn't
have signed and agreeing to all sorts of things that
took a lot of their consumer protections the way. Sure. Yeah,

(08:14):
and and you know the funny thing is that I
didn't realize that all this was going on. I mean,
I see RVs on the road. I see some amazing
RVs on the road, you know, like every type. I
mean there's the toe behind, there's a little tear drop
ones that you can pull behind a compact car even
if you want, um, you know, there's the fifth wheel,
there's just regular trailers. There's campers that you can put
on the back of a truck. There's the type that

(08:34):
looks like busses, you know, the ones that are like
like giant tour busses that are you know, surely million
dollar coaches. I mean, no doubt about it. All all
different price points, all different ages, all different sizes, shapes,
you know, everything is air streams if you want to
go with the classic look and all that. There's they're
all over the place. They're everywhere. And I thought, well,
it seems like everybody seems generally happy that does this.

(08:55):
You know, they go to the campgrounds and they're generally
a happy group, and they're excited about the community that
they're in, and they'd like to share you know, tips
and tricks, and they love to see the country and
you know, do all that. It turns out that maybe
it's not quite as as rosy as we think, you know,
it's not it's not as exciting as not as simple
as we all think either to just hop in the
RV and go off for a weekend trip or a

(09:17):
week long trip and a national park. There's a lot
to it. So as uh, and I'll kind of step
through this this video kind of quickly, but notes from
the video, and I know that You've got some things
to add to this as well, Kurt, so interrupt me
whenever you need to, and uh and stop me, because
I'm going to kind of buzz through these so we
can get onto the truth about our vs and then
even some you know, there's more surprises to come. There's

(09:39):
a there's a lot here and now I'm furiously searching
through my notes, but I'll find I'll find all of
my stuff, I promise as we go. So the first
thing that he mentions is that, as we all know,
our vs are a huge purchase, and they're often more
than a car. They're often more than a house to purchase.
So they're they're not like buying a sedan and taking
it off a lot. You're talking about like something that
that may up costing you, not in every case, but

(10:02):
you know, a quarter of a million dollars two and
or fifty thousand dollar purchase for a bigger r V,
and then it goes up from there. Like you know,
you and I have seen these touring busses, you know,
that type of coach that is easily a million dollars
or close to if not more. It depends on what
you outfit that whole thing with. But here's the thing
that a lot of people don't know. Remember he's speaking

(10:23):
as an attorney at law in the state of Michigan
specializing in lemon laws. He says that r vs are
not covered by lemon laws in most states. And I
didn't know that. I thought that r vs would be
absolutely covered by lemon laws. What that means is they
will not buy back the vehicle if it's defective. They
won't buy it back from you. Um. And the way
that this all works is because r vs are subject

(10:44):
to something different. They're subject to something called the Magnuson
Moss Warranty Act. And a lot of people that are
ready to buy an r V don't quite understand that.
Get all excited about buying an r V. You've just
retired and it's always been your dream for the last
ten fifteen years. I don't want to squish that for anybody,
But maybe spend another couple of years looking into this
and talking to people and following some of the tips

(11:05):
that we're going to talk about, because this Magnuson Moss
Warranty Act is a much less well defined version of
the Lemon Law Act. And I'll tell you how that is. Um.
In most Lemon Law cases, if a vehicle cannot be
repaired under warranty and a certain number of repairs, and
let's say it's I'm gonna just throw this out there.
It's different by state, but six or seven times same repair,

(11:25):
you give them another chance for the final repair and
they don't do it. Still, that's one case. If they
have the vehicle for I think it's like thirty days
in most cases, and they can't repair it, and that's
another case. So there, and there's all these different stipulations
that fall under. Your vehicle has to meet all these
requirements to be purchased back again from you, by the
manufacturer from you in order for you to get a

(11:47):
new vehicle, a better vehicle. You know, when I said
that the reasonable amount of times, I mean the magnasin
the Magnusine Moss warranty does not define what a reasonable
number of times is. It doesn't say that. It says
a reasonable amount of number of times, but it doesn't
define the exact number as the Lemon law does. So
a manufacturer can claim that, you know, seven, eight, nine

(12:09):
times is a reasonable amount, or even twenty times, bringing
the same vehicle back for the same thing is a
reasonable amount of time or a number of repairs, rightly,
and from what I understand, it would be very hard
to get your RV in for twenty repairs within the
warranty period. Yes, exactly. It seems like it takes these
folks forever to get their r V fixed. Yeah. That's

(12:30):
another thing, is that we've heard scary numbers about how
often and how long your r V is is almost
expected to be in the shop every year, didn't they say?
Just the way it is, you know, you buy a
brand new one right off the lot, let's say your
brand new and which they say you never should do
and for an r V, which blows my mind as well.
But they say that if you buy a brand new one,

(12:51):
you can expect that something it was something like seven
or eight months out of the first year, you can
expect it to be in the shop for repairs some
ridiculous amount of time. Brand new RV, brand like, you
don't get to use it for seven or eight months.
And they say oftentimes it'll have issues on the lot
and they won't fix it until someone by Yeah, and
known issues. But they look at they see it every day,

(13:13):
but they won't do it. They have understand But it's
not just the service. I mean, there's a there's a
lot that goes into this, and it's all part of
this big story. Not that we're uncovering this. It's all known.
It's just that we're discovering this, I guess, and we're
helping you discover this as well if you didn't know.
So the question is why is there confusion with this ownership,
like this first year of ownership and you know that,
you know, let's say the manufacturer won't buy it back

(13:34):
after you've taken it back seven or eight or nine
times for the exact same situation, the exact same problem.
Why won't they take it back? And there's a lot
of confusion that happens, and and that's because, as Steven
points out in this video that there are a number
of factors. One factor is that it's not uncommon to
have three major companies involved in the build of an
RV's not built by one company like you might think,

(13:55):
like let's say you buy a Winnebago. Winnebago might build
the shell of the thing, the box that goes on
top of the chassis. However, the chassis might be built
by a truck and bus company, so it might be
a Bluebird chassis. And I don't know if this is
true for you know, winn a Bag or now. But
and the other thing is that you know the drive
train is coming from somewhere else. You've got three possibilities
here that you know, the box, the chassis, and then

(14:16):
the drive train. And they all tend to blame the
other guy for the problem. So no matter what your
issue is, they're going to send you to someone else.
And you might think, okay, well that's not really an issue.
I'm going to go to the dealer because I bought
it from the dealer and that's who is responsible for
this repair, right, And they were so friendly and helpful
when I was buying it, so of course, very helpful.

(14:38):
Very good point. Okay, So that's another point is that
you know, you go into the dealership or the show
room for the you know, the r vs, and they're
falling all over themselves trying to help you out. You're
the king and queen of the day as you're there
trying to spend your two dollars or whatever on an
r V. Of Course, the problem is as soon as
you're done with that purchase, once you sign the purchase agreement,
you go down to the bottom of the list again,

(14:58):
and suddenly you your your gum on their shoe. There
you're nothing, you know, You're it's like um, you know.
And I shouldn't say it as as coarsely as that,
but you know what I mean. I mean, it's like
you're treated two completely different ways. And and a lot
of people have dealt with this. I mean, I don't
think that it's uncommon for people to be treated that way.
And there's there's some good reasons, I guess for the well,
you know what, there's no good reason to treat someone poorly. However,

(15:20):
there are some understandable reasons why they tell you what
they tell you. So there's you, the dealer and the manufacturer,
and you go back to the dealer. The dealer will
send you to the manufacturer to have it change, which
which to me again ridiculous. I don't know why you
would ever go to the manufacturer as a as a consumer,
go to the manufacturer and say you've got a problem,
and then the manufacturer will say you need to go

(15:42):
to the dealer. And the dealer will say, well, you
need to go to the chassis person because that's where
the issue starts. And you know, it's just this roundabout
the thing that could last literally months, and no one
will take responsibility for it, and and no one will
pay for it. It's always somebody else's fault. And that's
one thing that is a huge, huge problem in this industry.
You know, there's a lot of complexities to these vehicles

(16:02):
that you don't think of, that don't show up in
other cars and trucks. And we'll talk about that in
just a moment after we take a break and we're
back and you're listening to car stuff and um, well,
i'm one of your host, Scott Benjamin, and I'm the
other host, Kurt Garren. Kurt still here in there hanging

(16:24):
and they're talking about our vs and the complexity I
think is where we work hurt. Right, So these are
not like like a typical car truck. Oh no, no,
that you shouldn't look at it that way. If you're
trying to buy one, well, how should we look at it?
I mean it's kind of like you're buying a house
that you're going to drive down the road. That's good,
that's good way to put it, because I mean that's
that's kind of what you're doing, right, I mean you're
taking everything that you would have in a house. You know, um,

(16:47):
kitchen cabinets, you're taking appliances, counters with you know, um whatever.
You're taking your beds, showers, you know, all the plumbing everything.
Just imagine like shaking the hell out of your house
for about ten hours a day on the road. That's
that's what you're doing on the highway, right. I mean
it's it's shaken like crazy. It's the suspension is fine,
but it's still shakes. Um. You're going around turns, you know,

(17:07):
so you're leaning and subjecting it to forces that normally
wouldn't be there. It's all very very different, isn't it.
I Mean it's it's like it's like you're shaking your
house for hours and hours at a time, and then
later you would check and see what shook loose, and
something is inevitably going to shake. Well, I think just
about everything would would shake loose. I mean you have
to you have to prepare for that. And that's the
thing is that, you know, these are really complex vehicles.

(17:29):
They're not as as simple to put together as people think.
I mean, you might be able to do it an
extremely sturdy way in your own garage. You know, if
you were to take on this project, if you were
to you know, create your own camp or your own
you know whatever, your own toe behind. But it's gonna
be heavy, it's gonna be bulky. It's not going to
be as as refined as something that you will purchase
from a manufacturer. And that's the thing is that you know,

(17:50):
all of these have things that you might not have considered.
They have plumbing, they have electricity, they've got heaters, they've
got fans, a C units, refrigerators, microwaves, satellite issues, t
water heaters, hot water heaters. You've got a toilet that
has to sit in there somehow. You've got a shower,
um all of these things. A lot of them have
doors or drawers that have to be latched in some way.

(18:11):
They're not like, you know, just your standard kitchen door
hinge or whatever. It's a it's a lot different. There's
a lot fridge, it means some sort of a latch
on it, exactly, and you have to be able to
pack the fridge in a different way. I mean, you
can't set something on a glass shelf in a refrigerator
and expect that same item to be standing up or
you know, even on the same shelf. When you get
to wherever you're going, it's gonna be the bottom of
the fridge. You know, in a heat, after you make

(18:32):
several you know, left and right hand turns and stops
and you know, goes and and all that, it's just
gonna be a mess. It's a lot like if somebody's
on a yacht or something like that. You know, it's
always in motion. There's always other things to consider that
you don't think, so it's completely different. A lot of
owners are shocked and just they don't expect what they
get once they get into an r V. And I
think that's the case for a lot of people. You know,

(18:53):
they might have thought about it for years, but they
have problems. And every RV is going to have problems.
There's so many problems. In fact, you could spend twenty
dollars on an r V, you know, a crappy one
or two hundred thousand dollars on an r V and
you're still going to have problems. You could spend a
million dollars on an r V, You're still going to
have some of these problems. It's just the way. It
is even just what you would maybe consider standard expectation,

(19:14):
like having finished cabinets, things that you wouldn't imagine to
have any defects when you bought it. You may drive
it off the lot and find that some of the
laminate hasn't even been installed, much less laminate this installed,
and peeling or nails that haven't been properly concealed, and
just things that you wouldn't even think a new product
would have. These things tend to have on a regular basis,

(19:36):
just right off the law. Oh absolutely. In fact, that
Stephen Letto, I'm still following his his video here. He
says that, you know, he's he's seen people that have
spent again quarter of a million dollars on an r
V and they encounter you know, and we're talking instant,
like on the drive home from the dealership, instant problems
with plumbing, water leaks, if there's a rainstorm, you know,
water comes pouring in the windshield, broken cabinets, there's even fires.

(19:59):
I mean, he said he's he's had one that caught
on fire that he's represented in the past, or at
least tried to represent. And I guess what happened there
was like a six figure r V that had just
left a lot gets above fifty miles per hour and
the reaction caught on fire. I mean, that's crazy, that's
that's just unbelievable that something like that would happen. There's
this dealer manufactured disconnect. And the thing is like, you're

(20:20):
not really protected like you think you are, as Steven
says in here so many times, he says so many times.
And the idea is that you need to and everybody
knows this that when you sign something you should read
all of it, right. So let's say they put a
purchase agreement in front of you, and you read all
of the purchase agreement, no problems, right, everything looks really good.
You agree to everything on that purchase agreement, and you

(20:41):
sign it. Well, then what happens is they bring you
the warranties. And I say warranties because as we said,
you know, there's the box itself, then there's the chassis,
and then there's the drive train, and they're all made
by different manufacturers, and they all have their own warranties.
So you get maybe what he says, it could be
even a box of warranties that you yet and you've

(21:02):
already signed the purchase agreement, or you haven't signed it yet,
and they hand you these and you have a choice.
You either read all the warranties from cover to cover
and understand everything in them before you sign the purchase agreement,
or you sign the purchase agreement and then they hand
you the warranties, which I think you should probably take
the time to read everything. You know. One of the
main takeaway from the whole RV lifestyle that I think

(21:23):
should be hammered in from the get go is that
everything just needs to be slowed down. You know what.
That's going to slow down the purchase process, and then
everything after that gets Living is slower, Driving from place
to place is slower. You walk slower, Yeah, you just
you react slower. You just slow everything down. I think
that's good advice, and it's really hard to do though,

(21:45):
because you know, a lot of people, as we've said,
they have this dream, they have this idea from you know,
maybe my age, maybe forty plus years on that when
they turn seventy or sixty five or whatever or younger,
they're going to retire and they're gonna drive around the country.
They're going to tour the national parks. They've got this
very romanticized view of what it's going to be like,
and I don't think they have the full picture. They
don't really, they haven't gotten the best advice, and some

(22:08):
of some good advice, I guess, and this isn't the
best advice, but this is a good advice. Is you
don't ask the seller about a brand's reputation or quality
before you buy it. You don't go to the dealer
and you say, like, how, well, how reliable are the
is an egg brand X? And they'll tell you, of course,
well that's our top of line brands, or of course
we know we never have any problems with it, and
everything's fine. Step over this way and we'll talk about financing.

(22:31):
You know, that's how it goes you usually. But the
advice was given by Stephen, and this is something that
I'd never heard of before. And this is fascinating to me.
This is an idea. And you said, slow down, right,
you wait for the RV season. I guess whatever that is.
Go to the local campground and you find an RV
owner that has the same brand of r V that
you are looking to purchase. You know, you've already scouted

(22:51):
this out, You've already checked it out online, you've gone
to the dealership, you've looked it over kick the tires,
but you haven't purchased anything yet, and don't buy the
first time you go there. That's that's important as well.
Slow it down your right court. So so here's how
slow you're going. You're now at the campground. You're asking
a person that owns that type of r V how
reliable it is, what types of problems they've had, you know,

(23:11):
and this Stephen leto guy has said, you know, typically
these are really outgoing people. These are people that are gregarious.
They want to talk to people, they like company. Typically
be cautious about this, you know, approach somebody carefully, but
asked them about the real story about this brand, or
about this particular model, or you know, whatever you want
to know. But talk to the person running the campground
as well, because they see every type of r V

(23:33):
that comes through there, and they know all the problems
because they've had to deal with them. You know, they've
had you know, somebody that comes up and says, hey,
my plumbing hook up isn't working, or my electrical connections
aren't doing something. You know, whatever, and he's seen all
of it. I mean, he's seen rust on brand new
r vs. And there's a good reason for that too.
I mean, I think you alluded to that earlier. You
know why a brand new RV could have rust on
it before we even get to the rust. I guess

(23:54):
maybe that comes along with the inspection, right, and that
you should have every single one of these inspect whether
it's new used. I mean, I'm talking brand new on
the lot. Have somebody come in, a professional and outside
person come in and inspect that r V, and they
probably will give you a little bit of trouble about it,
a little bit of a little bit of guff about
it because it's brand new, right, what could be wrong?

(24:15):
But there's a reason for doing that. Yeah. Absolutely, Maybe
they've been on the lot for a while, but a
lot of them have been driven from Indiana, where a
lot of them are made. They've been driven down to
go to Yeah, it could be in the snow rain.
There's lots of snow in Indiana and they used salt
on the roads. So you gotta you gotta take that
into account. I mean, and if you get if you
buy the thing, you know, in a Southwestern climate where

(24:37):
you might think, let's brand new RV. There can't be
any rust underneath this thing. It's it had to have
been built somewhere near here, right, Uh, not the case.
A lot of them come from Indiana's We'll talk about
some numbers as we get a little further on in
the podcast here. But yeah, I mean you just check
all the hookups at the dealership. I mean, I'm not
gonna tell you how to inspect it, but essentially it's
akin to a house inspection that you want to do

(24:58):
on this as well as vehicle inspection. So you need
someone who is carefully trained in this, who's able to
test everything at the dealership, and I mean everything, all
the hookups, all the plumbing, look for delamination, you know,
check out the tires, check out the chassis, check out
the interior components, the electrical system, you know all that,
and it's a big, big purchase. It's a big job

(25:19):
to inspect that purchase as well. It's a good way
to vet a dealer as well. If they won't let
you take your time and have someone in look at it,
then you may not want to deal with this particular dealer.
So it's always a good um tactic when buying anything
big like this, and again take your time and and
make the dealer sweated out a little bit. Yeah, and
like we said, you know, we know, we know for

(25:41):
a fact, and this happens that car dealerships too, but
more so at an RV dealer. Unfortunately, according to everything
that I've read, I don't know if there's other sources
out there. I'm sure there are that have had great experiences,
but um, they'll treat you completely different before and after
a purchase. It's something that they in a way have to.
I'll tell you the reason why, not that they have
to do. It's just that they they do because of

(26:02):
this reason they're probably is a better way to put that.
But the deal is that they have, you know, these
giant sales departments, acres large, I mean huge place that
they've got, you know, like for sales, and they've got
the showroom floor of course, and that's you know, a
great big part of it. And they've got this tiny
little area that is the service department. That's all they've got,
and they're trying to service everybody that's coming in there
through maybe two three, four bays that they have and

(26:23):
that's it. When you look at the overall size of
the property and the dealership, it's almost as if they
should have, you know, five times what they have for service,
but they don't. And that's the case in most of
the dealerships. There's so many different parts on r vs
as well, and parts availability is probably an issue, and
how many RVs are made with parts that are standardized.
Maybe year from year they change, maybe season from season

(26:45):
they change. So a lot of it comes down to
I think parts availability and and that sort of thing. Well,
it has to, I mean, there's no way around it.
But I think maybe that one of the biggest things here,
maybe maybe the most important part of this or are
why it's so frustrating or so maddening for an owner
to come back to a dealership for service is because

(27:05):
there's no doubt about this, dealers are really not in
any hurry to service your r V. They're not going
to move you up in line because you've got an
issue that you need fixed, you know, before next weekend's
camping trip. They're not going to do that. They're gonna
tell you bring it back in five months, or leave
it here for five months and maybe we'll get to
it before then. And all the while they're running out
the clock on the warranty. Well and yeah, that's right.

(27:26):
The warranty is another thing you know that might only
last a year. And you know, of course that was
all buried within one of the warranties there that you
know that the warranty only last year, but you're thinking
that you have a warranty on other parts for maybe
two years, but they are letting that clock out. But
the crux of this whole thing is that they don't
have to adhere to the Lemon Law. They've got this
this Magnus, Magnus and Moss Act that they can adhere to,

(27:47):
which is is a lot different. And for them to
be able to sit on your RV and say like
we just can't get to it for five months, that's
not unusual, that's not unheard of. In fact, it's common
for them to do something like that because again, the
service department is very small and their attacks, I mean,
that's the service guys. It's not their fault. They're under
a lot of pressure to get things done as well,
and that may also lead to some issues. You know,

(28:07):
if they're trying to hurry things through and you know,
rush to repairs. You don't want that as well, because
you're gonna be taking this house essentially down the road
at seventy miles an hour, you know, whatever the speed
is on living in it, and you're gonna be in
rainstorms and snow storms and whatever. You want them to
do a quality repair and you want them to do
it right, and you don't want them to be rushing
through the job. So I don't know. It's this give

(28:28):
and take that happens. It's essentially it all boils down
to this. It's it's if you're gonna buy an r V,
you should expect to have a lot of problems, even
long repairs, of course. And the other thing that you
could do, I guess, and this is awful, is that
you can just kind of learn to live with what's wrong.
I mean, you can learn to live with some things
that are not quite right, you know, like the maybe
you can't wash your laundry as you go out because

(28:48):
you know, the washer dryer doesn't work, or maybe your
microwave shakes loose every time you drive, so you have
to take that out of the console and put that
on the floor of the r V. You just have
to deal with certain things, or wait for that opportuny
munity that slot to open it the dealership and take
it in for the repair. Or you get creative, maybe
build certain things within the RV that make better what
the problem was. A lot of get used to fixing

(29:10):
problems yourself. A lot of RV owners are pretty good
at d I Y and and that's one thing that
a lot of you know, the veterans of this community
will tell you, is that you get good at fixing
things yourself, and you have to rely on yourself, and
you have to have the tools and then know how
to use those tools in order to be able to
do this. But um, if you can you know logically,
or you know, if you're mechanically inclined even a little bit,

(29:32):
you can think your way around a lot of these
problems and have your own solutions on the road. And
a lot of times you have to on the road
in order to be able to make it work or
to make it at least usable for that trip. And
then maybe maybe then if you have an opportunity to
take it somewhere, even if it's not an r V
service area, can take it somewhere else and have it service.
You know, but there are certain things axles catching on
fire and window seals leaking. You can't you can't overcome that, right, Well,

(29:56):
then that can't happen with a new RV, no now,
And you're not going to just pull into the local
um you know, quick oil change place and have its
serviced as well. I mean, it's it's a different beast altogether.
It's it's something unique. So you know all of this,
and we're definitely just beginning to scrape the surface on this.
We've got more to cover and I will do that.
But remember, if you're gonna buy an r V, keep

(30:18):
all of this in mind. Just protect yourself. Make sure
that you know that r vs in general in general
are trouble. It's like when you buy you know, someone
who warns you about buying a boat or something like that.
I mean, you have to kind of enter this, this community,
this lifestyle, whatever you want to call it, with your
eyes wide open, and you know kind of the you
have to have the understanding. The knowledge is to know

(30:39):
how to get around this or to to understand what
you're getting into and to be able to accept that,
because otherwise you're gonna have a really difficult time with
this whole thing, and I think that might be a
good place to stop for a break right now, and
we'll come back and talk about the truth about r vs,
a little bit about the industry and uh and another
video that I watched that I found interesting that talks
about construction issues and quality issues in current r vs,

(31:02):
and to me, this is a really eye opening video
that brought up a lot of issues to construction issues
because this comes down to the quality of build that's
going into current r v's and why maybe they are
suffering in modern day. And we'll talk about that in
just a moment. I could we take a break through,

(31:22):
and once again we are back and you're listening to
car stuff and I'm Scott Benjamin and I'm Kurt Garin
and we are just getting passed. Finally, the video from
Stephen Letto, an attorney at law in the state of Michigan,
that he he warns you not to buy an r V,
and you'll find that that is very common, unfortunately, on
a lot of websites and in a lot of online forums.
I'm sure you'll find a lot of other r V

(31:43):
promotional type material that comes from the dealers and from
you know, people and interested in selling r vs or
the RV lifestyle communities, you know whatever, people that are
campsite owners, that type of person, and people that just
have generally had a good experience. But I would bet
Kurt that a lot of those people will have experiences
from maybe not the recent era, maybe not you know,

(32:05):
a modern RV, because I think there's a lot of
problems that are happening right now with modern r vs
that we're not necessarily happening. I wouldn't say a decade ago,
but more than a decade ago. It seems like pre
two thousand eight, like two thou eight was the time
that things started going downhill for probably a bunch of
different reasons. Interesting timing, isn't it, right along with the
right along with the housing market crashia and uh and

(32:27):
of course the recession that followed that, and there's some
good numbers that matched that, and interestingly enough in this article.
And I'll tell you what the article is, because I've
determined that we just are not going to be able
to cover this in the way that I wanted to
cover it. But the truth about our fees is the
is the main article that we're going to kind of
skip over here now, it's definitely worth about ten or
fifteen minutes of your time to read. It was written

(32:47):
in two thousand nineteen by a writer called Andrew Zeleski,
and that's it comes from curbed dot com if you
want to find that article curb dot com. And it's
a couple of different stories here. It has both sides.
It has actually three different sides, or even more comes
from you know, some people that have been living in
the RV community for a while, they have been for
several years, they're experienced, and they buy a brand new

(33:09):
one and some of the trials and tribulations that they
go through with their brand new one and stuff that
they didn't expect with the brand new one versus the
old one. Then there's some people that they talked to
in this article that it comes from the industry. Of course,
they talked to Stephen Letto, the attorney, but they also
talk to people that are in media relations and presidents
of manufacturers. And they really actually did quite a decent

(33:30):
job of getting everybody's voice into this article. And I
don't want to just gloss over that because it's a
relatively well balanced piece. Even though now that I say
that I'm going to say something that that contradicts that,
but it does slant a little bit towards it's not
a good idea to buy an r V. It slants
that way only because, in my own opinion, what I
heard from the owners, the people that experienced these things

(33:52):
out on the road, and the people that have actual
hands on experience with r vs, some of the things
that they're talking about here just frighten the hell out
of me. I would not be able to go in
and make a purchase knowing what I know now after
reading this article as easily or as readily as I
would have before if I wanted to do that now.
On the other side, the manufacturers and the people that
are in the industry that you know, are promoting this

(34:14):
type of living. They're the ones that are saying, Hey,
everybody's great here. I don't know what you're talking about.
There's an eighty eight percent approval of creating everybody has
either a good, great, or a fantastic experience at my dealership.
And I don't know what you're what all the negativity
is about. But you go out in the community and
you read the forums and you read, of course some
of the horror stories that happen. That's where you get
you know, some of the real stories I guess about

(34:34):
you know what these things are like once you take
them outside of the dealership, or you know the treatment
that you receive after you've made that purchase. It's just
one of those things that's such a high dollar purchase
for most people, and they've built it up for so
long that when you finally do get to the point
where you buy one and say for two hundred thou dollars,
and then you drive it off the lot and then
it depreciates and then you have problems with it. It's

(34:57):
harry to find the silver lining. I guess when you've
already lost ten percent of the value and having all
these issues, you just feel like you made a big mistake.
You feel sep and how are you gonna get out
from underneath that? Right? I mean, You've got to sell
that pile of junk to somebody else, and you're gonna
feel terrible about it unless you tell them all about
the problems, and then you're gonna take You're gonna take
a huge hit if they even buy it can be

(35:18):
a serious problem. And this is just this is a
lot like people that I hear that by you know,
a great big boat or any boat. Really, they say that,
you know, the best two days when you when you
own a boat, or like the day you bought it
and the days sell it. But I don't know if
that's true or not. I've never owned one, but I
could understand all the problems in between. You do get
a lot of enjoyment out of it in the meantime,
but there are also a lot of headaches, and I
think that's what they're getting at here. And yeah, as

(35:40):
you go through this story, um, you'll hear about a
couple that bought, you know, a hundred and forty tho
r V brand new. It was a Winnebagol brand, I'll
tell you that. And it had a bad suspension, and
you know, there are a lot of issues with it,
and they eventually did trade up and trade out of
this thing. They're already having problems with their new unit
by the end of this article, you know. But and
I'll tell you, like you we talked about how the

(36:01):
industry has taken a little bit of a hit. I'll
tell you why this happens in just a minute. But
we should understand the numbers and the housing market crash
happened around two thousand eight, right, two thousand seven, two
thousand eight nine. Somewhere in there. The number of units sold,
you know, r vs total, this is all different types
of RPS between two thousand eight and two thousand nine
was around a hundred and seventy thousand per year. So
that's not a whole lot when you listen to some

(36:22):
of these other numbers, and that was down from previous years.
But I don't have the previous year numbers in two
thousand seventeen, so you fast forward nine years forward. They
sold five hundred thousand plus units in two thousand seventeen,
so the number went up enormously by two thousand eighteen.
Last year they dropped down just a little bit. It
was four and two thousand units two thousand nineteen. It's

(36:42):
down about over the year prior. So again I don't
know what that number is. I guess it's down about
about four dred forty thousand something like that. By twenty however,
they are expecting an increase again. You know, you would think, Okay,
what's the what's the correlation here, what's the tie in? Well,
it turns out that it is more tied to the
economy than anything else, and more than you would expect.
And it's people that you would not expect as well.

(37:05):
Millennials are tied into the resurgence of the RV lifestyle
of RV community. And I would never have expected millennials
because you would think that this is kind of, for
lack of a better way to put it, in an
old person's sport, right, I mean, it's an old person's
game and that you retire and you take your RV
and you travel around, you see the country or whatever.
But millennials actually have a huge part of this, and

(37:26):
in fact most actually a lot of households have a
part of this because last year, I think it was
something like seventy eight point eight million households at least
spent one day camping or in an r V, in
which I found as a high number. Seventy eight point
eight million households. That's a lot. That's a lot of
people in the households. Yeah, it really is. So here's
the way this whole thing plays out. It's not just

(37:47):
aging baby boomers that are buying these things because that's
who you think you're buying them, or you know, people
that are already retired beyond that even but millennials were
actually forty one percent of those campers that went out
and enjoyed the great outdoors in eighteen. I guess. So
here's the cycle. If the economy is good, people become
kind of interested in in the nomadic lifestyle, and you know,
they simply want to take vacations. They want to get out,

(38:08):
they want to relax a little bit. Right, So the
times are good, they're they're you know, they're working, they're
working hard there they need their relaxation and enjoyment, etcetera.
So that makes sense. They this kind of leads to
an increase in the number of units that are then needed.
You know, the supply are the demand whether goes up,
so they build more to meet that and to supply that.
And as the public demand goes up, you know, of
course they have to meet that supply by building more

(38:30):
units faster. They have this, uh, this sudden rush on
the factory. Instead of needing you know, twenty thousand units
this year, we're going to need thirty thousand or whatever
it is. You know, the manufacturers producing they need to
create more r vs and create more r vs faster,
and so what that leads to is the speed speed
of course goes up, but the quality goes down. And
and that kind of makes sense, right, they're trying to

(38:51):
turn them out a lot faster. In turn, the dealers
from the manufacturers are receiving already like a faulty product,
you know, so be not all the connections are made.
You know, maybe something was forgotten, you know, along the
assembly line. A lot of flaws can happen in that
quick build. They're more manually constructed to I believe, it's
not as automative a processes, say a car would be.

(39:13):
It's they're entirely hand built. And we've already kind of
hinted at this or talked about it, maybe even a
little bit. But the dealers are receiving faulty products from
the manufacturers, and they may or may not know it.
We don't know, you know, he can't say for sure.
But then those sometimes will sit on the lot and
then be sold to somebody. And then when you bring
it back and say, hey, my shower is not hooked
up properly, the water just floods out underneath, or you know,

(39:35):
whatever the toilet does, you take it back to the dealer,
and of course they're going to just pass that problem
right along, I mean right along to you, and you
know say that you need to go to the manufacturer,
et cetera, and that's where that whole turmoil begins or
that whole process. So, oh my gosh. If you look
at if you look at online horror stories for r vs,
and it's as simple as doing a search like that,
you can find you know, their quality of build issues,

(39:56):
there's missing items, there's just poor design, there's outdated design.
Lot of people have a lot of problems with r vs.
And one thing that I do want to say that
is interesting and kind of exciting that happened this week,
which is really good for the industry, I think, is
that there was something opened this week. And we mentioned Elkhart,
Indiana right. Elkhart, Indiana is like the hub, the center
of everything r V and I think they even have

(40:17):
an r V museum that we talked about in some
other episode here on car Stuff. You'll see that there's
a lot of manufacturers, a lot of r V lots there.
There's an infamous dealer that's there that has his name
is Tom Raper, and he has at least to live
in Indiana, and there there were always Tom Raper r
V ads on TV always and they have X number
of acres of r vs available at any time. You know,

(40:39):
you can go and look at them there. It's this
huge lot. You wouldn't believe him any there are. But
on September twenty three, which is the week that we
are recording this show, they opened a brand new ten
million dollar facility called the r V Technical Institute in Elkhart, Indiana.
This is something brand new for the whole industry. It's
something that they've never had before. It says that two
thirds of the r vs in the US, along with
the appliances and furniture that outfit them, are made in Elkhart, Indiana.

(41:03):
So it gives you an idea of how important Elkhart,
Indiana is to the RV industry. This new training center
which trains the nation's r V technicians, it's not just
the technicians from elk Art, but it's everybody. They can
all come there for training and to learn exactly how
to repair these things, how to do it faster, how
to do a better, etcetera. It's kind of a train
the trainer situation there right now, there's about thirteen thousand

(41:25):
RV technicians in the United States, which is actually a
pretty big number really when you think about it. But
they're also going to they're going to train all of them,
plus they're going to train brand new technicians to work
in dealerships across the country. So the idea is that
they get more technicians, they're gonna be able to service
and better help the customer a lot faster and have
better knowledge, you know, I have more up to date

(41:45):
knowledge and be able to go back for update training
and you know, refresher courses and things like that. So
I think it's a really good point to make that
this is a vital part of this whole rebirth process
of bringing rving back into in in favor I guess
into you know, like something that people want to participate in,
because right now it's kind of getting a negative wrap,
which I guess you and I both didn't know about. Um.

(42:07):
I for sure didn't know about it. I'm just not
part of the community, just didn't know the extent into
which is like a systemic problem within the industry, I guess. So,
I mean the owners themselves have said, you know, the
quality and I'll quote one of them here. Since the recession,
the quality has gone down the drain. There's been just
a wide range of concerns, not just by them, but
among everybody that they talked to. When they go to

(42:27):
r V events or r V campgrounds, they find that
parts are missing, They've got faulty appliances. You know, it
runs the whole gam out. I mean, electrical systems that
don't work, hookups that don't work for whatever reason. Of course,
they're not going to get any satisfaction with the dealership
for months on end, so they're kind of stuck. You know.
It just seems like there's a lot of problems in
this industry right now that I really didn't know about.
And if you read this article, and I encourage you

(42:49):
to do so, it's again it's called the Truth about
r vs. You're gonna get both sides of the story.
And there's probably more here that I should talk about,
but I really want to get onto the quality issues,
the quality of build issues, because is there's a couple
of things here that I hadn't really thought about, and
and it all makes sense. We'll start by saying that
this is a video that was called why are modern
RVs Junk? Now you're going to think that that is

(43:09):
really why would I pick that one, right? Because my
first one was called don't buy an r V. Now
I'm looking at a video that's called why are modern
r vs junk? Well, the truth is there's hundreds of
these videos out there, if not thousands. I don't know
how many there really are, but this is predominantly the
videos you'll find right now about modern RVs. And modern
is always the key word here, even in the other
video that we've talked about, modern is the key word

(43:31):
because I think that the quality has gone down so
much since two thousand eight, and this technical institute, this
technical building that's being built in in all Card is
going to help with this. But again, this video talks
about construction videos mostly, and I wanted to talk about
construction because I find this part fascinating and just like
some things you can think about about why the build
quality has gone down, because I was kind of wondering

(43:52):
the same thing. It's not just all about speed, it's
about the actual quality of the materials themselves. So they're
trying to build not only lighter weight units and Okay,
again side note here, I guess this is according to
this uh, this person that that posted this video. The
idea is that manufacturers are building these ultra light vehicles,
these light lightweight campers. They even call them this, they'll

(44:13):
call them light ultra light, you know that hyper light
or whatever. You can tow them with a sedan or
even a compact car. And we've all seen this probably
on the road. You've seen the car that looks way
too small towing a big trailer behind it. And that's
probably not a good idea for a lot of reasons,
for the car and for the trailer itself. And I'll
tell you why for the trailer in just a minute.
But the idea is that you get somebody to come

(44:35):
into the dealership and look at a camper. You want
them to leave with a camper. You want to be
able to convince them that, yeah, I know you're driving
a Ford tourist, but you can pull this camper with it.
So hey, why not once you have a cup of
coffee in the waiting room, we'll put a hitch on
that and you'll be able to drive right out of
here with your new camper today. How about that? And
and that's very you know, enticing to people, intriguing to people.

(44:55):
So the idea is for the the manufacturer is to
build a lighter weight product so that can happen more
often than not, you know, than to have to say, well,
you're gonna need a truck or an suv to pull this.
How are you gonna handle that? You know, unless you
drove in in one, you have to go get one
or you know, buy one or whatever. That put that
delays the whole process. So they're trying to build these
lightweight units, and all of them, all the new units

(45:18):
are lightweight er. They're trying to be lightweight in some
way so that you know, again the compacts or even
the smallest evs can pull them. But they're not just lightweight.
They're they're not using lightweight materials. They're using less material
in them, and that's one of the weight savings that
they're one of the ways they're trying to save weight.
They're also using less selans and less resilient compounds that
don't last quite as long. And they're also using get this,

(45:41):
they're using smaller screws. They're using thinner and shorter screws
in order to get this done. So they're using also
lightweight screws. So the quality of the screws themselves, even
though they're smaller, they're thinner, they are lighter weight, and
they're trying to use them for the same purpose as
I did before with the you know, the heavy duty

(46:02):
you know, wood screws or whatever they were using before that,
and they're using not only that, they're using less of them,
so less fasteners are going into this whole thing, into everything.
The results, of course, is that you're going to find that,
you know, a lot of components fail, or you're gonna
find things that go just miserably wrong. Screws that back
themselves out as you drive, screws that strip themselves out,
or just simply pull out of the wood. It's gonna

(46:23):
be a lot of problems. Seals are gonna leak because
they're cheap sealants, or there's not enough of the sealant used.
That's very, very common. You're also going to find that
because of this enticement, I guess to sell more r
V units faster and maybe even lower the price. You
could have a better deal on them surprisingly on a
newer product. Right, You're gonna find that you're going to
have to compromise in quality and um and longevity in

(46:44):
these in these products, and that's really too bad. I
guess when you're when you're buying something that is this expensive,
even at a deal, you're still paying a lot of
money for them. Of course we talked about this already,
but plumbing connections are poorly done or you know, even
something simple as they're not using enough teflon tape in
the connection is to make a watertight seal. A lot
of that stuff happens. There's misthreaded connections and because they're

(47:05):
too rushed at the manufacturer in order to put them
together correctly, so you have to be We've already said
this once, but you have to be mechanically inclined at
least a little bit in order to do this, have
the right tools, have the right equipment you know, and
then know how to make it work. Be able to
do these basic repairs on the road, you know, at minimum,
and have some basic supplies. It's just overall, I guess

(47:25):
maybe we'll move on here at this point. I feel
like I've done enough damage to the RV industry with
with this uh this podcast. But there's just overall a
lot of pressure on the builders at the factory have
to can turn out the product that the customer wants
at the speed the dealer's need. And that's kind of
this back and forth battle that so many of them do.
And and you know that's where the problem happens. You know,
a lot of the backup is happening at the service

(47:46):
department of the dealership and that goes back again to
this magnusent Moss act and you know why, maybe they're
not getting the satisfaction of the dealership that they necessarily should.
But well, thanks snowball too. When the industry starts to struggle,
and right now they're in a position where they need
to start producing better product in order to I guess
build the reputation of the industry. Back up, well, very
hard to do when you're already kind of working at

(48:08):
a disadvantage, like when you lose your I guess, your
base customer and you have to start broadening and appealing
to people without SUVs for example, or people without maybe
even them know how to take their life on the road.
You start to create more repairs and more costs for
the company. It just seems like it. It creates all
these issues that don't necessarily lead to a rosie in. Yeah, sure,

(48:32):
and you know, a lot of people's lives depend on
this industry. I mean, there's six hundred thousand employees in
the United States that work in the r V industry
right now, six hundred thousand. Uh. That accounts for something
like thirty two billion dollars in wages and twelve billion
dollars in federal, state, and local taxes. So it's it's
a huge part of the economy. It's a great, big
part of the economy. You know, there's like, uh, I
think just in the end, just have to give you

(48:54):
an idea of how important again Indiana is to the
RV industry. One hundred and twenty six thousand, one d
and forty people are working for six hundred and forty
four RV businesses in Indiana alone, So that's a huge
part of Indiana's economy. And and that also include you know,
there's other places that have similar economies like that with
RV employees. California, Texas, Oregon and Ohio are both really

(49:19):
really tied to the r V industry. And so there's
a lot going on there. And you know, the industry
has slowed down, as this article points out, they're hoping
that it's gonna come back. That's the the projected numbers
are showing that it's it is going to come back slightly,
but maybe not to the fervor that it had for
the last several years, you know, kind of rebuilding after recession,
but hopefully it will for the people that are employed
in the industry. Now, I mean, really, until I read

(49:41):
all of this, until this week, I have been kind
of blind to all of this. I knew that there
could be problems, of course, but that's with any vehicle
and standard. It's it's the way it is. It's more
and bigger than it's bigger than I thought. It's also
uncommon to leave a vehicle at a at a shop
for five, ever six months at a time. That it's

(50:01):
always it's always been unnecessary. But then again, has it
always been that way? And now we're just hearing about
it because everybody's got, you know, a way to publish
the Can you just go on your laptop, go on
your phone and here's my opinion and no one's really
checking that. And how many times do you go online
and write about something great? You don't you go online
and write about a bad experience. That's what happens people.

(50:23):
People great check and balance. So for businesses, that's all
the more reason for the industry to to step it
up it is and things the right way, and and
to be fair, I think that they're doing what they
can at least at the at the the epicenter of
the whole thing in Elkhart, Indiana, in Elkhart County. I
think with that RV Technical Institute that they've opened, I
think that's a great start. I think that's a fantastic

(50:44):
sounds like they're trying to step in the right I
really do. I feel like this is something that can
be turned around. There's kind of a dark era here
where people are unhappy, and I feel like if they
just turned around right now, just start right now, like today,
get it and they did this week, right, I mean,
start a Monday. With this institute, they can maybe wipe
the slate clean going forward, maybe in a few years

(51:06):
from now. I don't expect to happen overnight. I never do,
but it can happen soon enough that people will maybe
get to a point where they forget what happened between
two thousand and eight and two thousand nineteen. And the
thing that the industry has going for it is it
is a dream. Many people have it, and that dream
is not going to go away, and in order to
fulfill this dream, they need the r V. Yeah, so
it's always going to be a product that people are

(51:27):
going to be fantasizing about. Well, ever since the advent
of the automobile, people have have wanted to get you
out of their present environment and into a more peaceful environment.
You know, take it up to the lake, take it
out to the woods, take it to the mountains, or
you know whatever. And to be able to do that
in an RV and to enjoy yourself and not have
to worry about these piddling repairs the aptitude all the time.

(51:48):
It would be somebody's dream that would be fantastic. Is
just not going to happen that way. You're always going
to have problems of some sort. But I think that
there's a lot that they're doing right now to prevent
some of the bigger issues that are playing in the industry.
Think that there's something more going on here than just
you know what has always been there. It's not the
same as it always was. It's not like, you know,
that nostalgic camping trip that you took with your parents

(52:09):
back in the nineteen fifties and you know, a pop
up camper or whatever your head. It's not the same
as it was then. It's a little different. I think
they can get back to that if they if they
really put everything they've got behind it, I think they
can get back to that the kind of the glory days.
Maybe you should think about it like you're stepping back
in the time and have expectations of you know, I'm
going to have problems with this. I should learn how

(52:30):
to fix certain things myself rather than take it back
to the dealer for us, say, like a screw falls out, Well,
be a little more independent. That's what you're saying. Yeah,
fantastic point. And a lot of these articles and videos
and you know everything, you know, even the ones that
tell you don't do it or whatever they'll say. If
you are going to do it, you know, here's what
you do. And and one of the main things that

(52:50):
they say, one of the main focus points is that
you have to be just even a little bit mechanically inclined.
You have to be able to just kind of think
your way around these problems and so you know, up
with solutions on your own, because you're gonna have to
on the road. And that's just the way it is.
If you're gonna live with this nomadic lifestyle, you have
to treat it in a different way than if you're
parked in your home and you can call somebody or

(53:10):
you can have somebody come out and pick up your
vehicle and take it away, or whether you can't do that,
you just can't do that. So um, I hope we're
balancing this enough with you know, like you know, still
give it a shot, give it a chance, you know,
look into it, investigated, see if it's right for you.
I really don't want to discourage anybody, but I personally
have been discouraged a little bit this week by reading
all this. I've read so much negative material and some

(53:32):
bad things. Again, I don't want it to be like,
you know, the end all reason that you don't do
this and your retirements or whatever. I don't want that
to be the case. I investigated. Do your own homework,
check out everything about it and learn all about it,
and take some of the advice that everybody gives you online.
You know, I mean, good, bad, whatever. Just just protect yourself.
Make sure you protect yourself because it could cost you
in the end, big, big, all right, So if you

(53:56):
want more information about any or all of this stuff,
you can. You can check us out on social media.
We are on Facebook and Instagram and we are Car
Stuff hs W. And of course you can check out
our show's website at car Stuff Show dot com and
that's where you can check out our podcast archives where
we have gosh, it must be about nine hundred or
more episodes at this point, it seems like. Anyway, that's

(54:17):
where we stored all of our episodes of Car Stuff,
So you can give that a try. I'm sure there's
something there that you'll find. If you do a search,
you'll find something that you like, almost guarantee it, almost um.
And if you do, of course like what you hear,
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if you want to, you can refers to a friend.

(54:38):
That's always a good way for us to gain listeners.
And you know, for you to kind of I don't know,
beyond the the edge is something that you know maybe
your friend doesn't know about. You can you know, say hey,
I don't know if you've heard of this one, but
you know, car Stuff is pretty good. I like that show.
Or you know what. That's the other thing you could do,
because there's so much information there, maybe you hide it
from your friends and uh and you use this as
like a trivia source. Right, you can go, I can

(55:00):
listen to all of the episodes of car Stuff. You
can be the one that answers everything automotive for all
of your friends and they don't know that you're getting
all the information from Car Stuff. That's the other option.
So either you tell your friends we get new listeners.
You don't tell anybody, we don't get new listeners. But
you're the know at all. That's your options at that
good options. I don't think I've ever told people not
to listen. Okay, I think we've exhausted just about everything

(55:23):
on this topic. Hurt, what do you think? Okay, well,
let's let's get out of here and we'll wrap it
up with this and we'll come back next week with
a new exciting topic. How about that sounds good? All right?
Take it easy, everybody, and we appreciate it, and thanks
for joining us. Car Stuff is a production of I
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(55:45):
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