Popular RV myths seen on social media— BUSTED!

If you spend any time on social media, first of all, how do you recover from some of the absolutely ridiculous things people write? I was trolling through a few groups recently and noticed that a lot of the same myths keep getting spread around, so I thought I’d create some answers to those myths so that, when you come across them, you can share this article as an answer. 

In fact, this is something I do frequently: Someone asks a question, and an article I read on RVtravel.com makes a great answer. By sharing that article, it also shares RVtravel.com, thank you, so maybe they’ll have a great resource to find other answers. 

So, here are some things I read a lot and my answers to those. 

Don’t buy an RV from Forest River, Thor, or Winnebago

This might be one of the most common things I see. I wrote a story about how some of the quality issues in RVs are just the companies responding to demand from buyers. But the myth that all RVs from any company are bad just isn’t true. 

Both Forest River and Thor are more like a collective than a cohesive company. Essentially, the way they operate is by encouraging the various brand names under them to compete both inside the company and with outside competitors, too. The individual brands have a lot of autonomy to make decisions on components they use, processes they employ, who makes design and manufacturing decisions, and all of that. 

The objective of the brands is to provide what customers want, but also to provide products competitive in the marketplace. 

So, some brands, like Cherokee from Forest River, or Springdale under Keystone, or Open Range under Jayco, are very specifically designed to target the entry-level market where price is absolutely key. 

More affordable rigs sell well

By no coincidence, these more affordable rigs also sell really well—they’re affordable! Often, they sell on a combination of low monthly payments and the vision of being able to spend time in the great outdoors. 

But they also sell to people who tend to know little about RVs, as is evidenced by the questions posed on social media. So, those people have a lousy experience with the rigs through a combination of their lack of knowledge of how to optimize systems and care for the RV, and, quite frankly, sometimes awful RV dealers. 

I have very regularly written that you should always shop your RV dealer first. 

So, they blame Thor or Forest River (the ones who sell the most RVs of this type) and share that on social media. 

But Thor and Forest River have some very high-quality brands in their collection. Brands like Airstream under Thor, Rockwood/Flagstaff, and Columbus under Forest River. When you look at the components used in the higher-end brands, they absolutely do favor a better-quality experience. The processes at these brands are also indicative of greater care being exercised in the manufacturing process. But these are also at the higher end of the price spectrum. 

Even Keystone, a Thor brand, has everything from Coleman to Montana, and that’s just one Thor division.

Oh, and Airstream was there at the start of Thor Industries in 1981—they didn’t recently acquire the brand. In fact, it was flailing to a degree when it became a cornerstone of Thor and is now doing quite well, thank you. 

Shop from the ground up

If you look at the RV reviews published here, you’ll see that there are very different quality aspects of various RVs. This is why I encourage you to shop from the ground up. If I were shopping for a new towable RV (and who isn’t always shopping!?) and I saw off-brand tires, no tire pressure monitoring system, and leaf springs, I wouldn’t even consider that unless I were buying a seasonal camper. 

And that’s another thing: Not all campers are ideal for all situations. So, a seasonal buyer might have a totally different checklist than someone who plans to visit Alaska or do a lot of traveling. Which will result in a different quality experience, as well. 

By the way, even Thor realized that Heartland was lousy, as we reported here. 

So, yes, you can get a relatively high-quality RV from Thor or Forest River. But even some entry-level RVs, with the proper care, can last a very long time. Consider that I had a 1971 Aristocrat—a stick-and-tin build with pressed wood cabinets and leaf spring suspension—and it was still rocking and rolling 50 years later. How you understand and take care of things is also a factor. 

Don’t buy a used COVID RV

This is another thing I see all the time. The reasoning behind this is that it’s true, RV demand skyrocketed, and some RV brands (remember how autonomous they are?) brought anyone with a heartbeat, sometimes even barely detectable, on board to put together as many RVs as possible as quickly as possible. 

But, again, not all brands did. Some just kept their existing team, and everybody put in some overtime. But the quality processes and attention to detail remained. 

And, by now, how the rig was cared for is almost more important than how it was built. Almost. 

All RV builders suggest quarterly inspections of all the seals on the RV. Even if a rig were very well made at the factory, if it weren’t maintained, it likely already has water intrusion. If the appliances weren’t cared for and attention wasn’t paid to keeping the screws in, a great RV may already be ready for permanent retirement even after a few years. 

COVID was nuts for RV companies, even some of the better ones, having to swap components that they didn’t normally use into rigs. Instead of brand X refrigerator, maybe they had to choose a different brand. I remember seeing RVs sitting waiting for some major components because they just weren’t available, so they sat in a field with pieces missing or sometimes even were shipped to dealerships with the promise that those pieces would come later. 

Rather than specifically avoiding an RV built during the COVID era, I would strongly suggest hiring a certified RV inspector for any used RV and, perhaps, even a new one. But, again, this goes back to finding a great RV dealership first. 

I don’t need insurance on my towable RV

Many incorrectly assume that your towable RV is covered by the insurance of whatever is towing your RV. While there is some truth to that, consider this. 

I was at an RV park. The work campers were cutting a tree above my RV. A limb swung down and punched a hole in the sidewall. The best repair was replacing that entire sidewall—almost $5,500. Now, this was covered by the park. But if something like this happened in storage or in my own yard and the trailer wasn’t hooked to the truck, that repair would be on me. 

That’s true if the trailer is broken into or someone damages it while you’re camping. Imagine the errant football taking out a window. 

Or what if there’s hail damage? Or your pet rhino gores someone at an RV park? 

Towable RVs should be insured for the most part, and that insurance is usually pretty affordable. Interestingly, I got to speak with the underwriter for Progressive for this podcast episode, and the conversation was eye-opening. 

It’s taking forever to handle my warranty claim

I’ve seen a lot of complaints from people where an RV warranty claim is taking a very long time. There’s really no reason for this. 

We have an article about how the whole warranty process happens (I used to work at a dealership and handled warranties, if you didn’t already know). But RV warranties are generally pretty quick unless the part itself is unusually difficult to get. 

This article ought to be called “Shop Your RV Dealership First”. Yes, I’ll do that one soon, but this is one of the reasons you do that. Aside from waiting for parts, RV warranties are rather quick to handle unless the dealership is sitting on its hands or just doesn’t care. 

Now, certainly, there are times when parts are difficult to come by, and I even had one instance where it took three separate shipments to get a replacement windshield for a travel trailer. Each time the truck would show up, and the windshield was cracked, so that claim took for-two-evers. 

Also, if the RV is otherwise safe and serviceable, there’s no reason it should sit on the dealer’s lot waiting for a part. For example, if the furnace is foul but it’s summer, then just take it camping while the dealership is waiting for the replacement. 

What other myths have you seen? 

What other myths have you seen on social media or elsewhere that we can look at? I think there are easily more columns like this one, and I’m happy to use my resources within the RV industry to help find the truth of the matter. Please leave a comment below. 

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