Beyond the headlines with Tony Barthel: RV sales stall, new RV parts site, state park reservation chaos

RV sales have stalled

RV sales have mostly stayed flat, according to industry watcher Statistical Surveys, part of Trader Interactive. According to a report in RV Business, essentially, things remained flat, showing an overall increase of just 1 percent. Not much. 

So what does this mean to you? There’s a lot of buzz in the industry that sales still aren’t where dealers and manufacturers would like to see them, and that may mean the opportunity to make a good deal.

This is especially true if a unit has been on the dealer’s lot for a while. You can see when an RV was manufactured on the data sticker—typically near the front of a travel trailer or fifth wheel and near the driver’s seat on a motorized rig. 

The longer it’s been since it was built, the better the deal you might be able to work, as dealers generally pay to finance, or floor, their inventory and don’t like things sitting on the showroom floor for extended periods of time. 

The trends were really interesting, at least to a nerd like me. Essentially, more affordable RVs, things like entry-level travel trailers, saw increases while mid-priced units weren’t quite as popular.

At the other end of the price spectrum, premium RVs (typically motorized) also saw a tiny bump in numbers. 

Class B RVs, fifth wheels, and Class A RVs all saw modest reductions in sales. Travel trailers saw a 2 percent increase in registrations within the sub-$25,000 category, with one very notable exception: Those aged 18-24 actually were less prevalent. Hmm… Could the continued negative sentiment on social media be affecting sales? 

How do you find RV parts?

One of the issues facing the RV industry, and keeping us from camping, is the difficulty for even dealerships to find RV parts. An article in RV Business held out hope through a company called RV Partfinder, where a dealership, or even one of us normal campers, would be able to put in the serial number of our RV and find parts we need. 

I hope you didn’t just pass out. 

We all know if we have a regular ol’ American pickup, because we’re red-blooded Americans who might need to haul a refrigerator once every 10 years, that if we need a part for said truck, we can put the serial number in and, blammo, we find that part. But RVs are different. 

Minutes after the last iteration of whatever you have rolls off the line, you have a snowball’s chance on a Key West summer day of easily finding that part. 

In fact, recently, a tree limb brushed off the vent cap on my sewer vent stack on my 2025 trailer. Just figuring out which of the hundreds of similar products out there that I should replace it with was an exercise in frustration. Fortunately, my rig was new enough that the folks at Forest River were very helpful in working with me to order a replacement. 

In the article, it details how the business had been bought up by Airxcel, which is part of the THOR family. I hope that integration helps move this along more quickly. 

The company has actually been around since 2000, and the THOR acquisition happened in 2024. The story indicates that, already, 1,200 RV dealerships are using the service. 

Hey, Oregon, I have an idea 

It seems things ain’t pretty in Oregon. Oh, the parks certainly are; but the system that oversees them isn’t. What’s at stake here is that the cost of running Oregon’s state parks is exceeding what they’re bringing in under the system they have now. 

So RV Travel has already shared that Oregon State Parks are going to start charging a dump fee, even if you’re already camped there. There is also a proposal to raise some full-hook-up campsites to up to $80 per night. 

Oregon isn’t alone in price hikes, of course, with other states also reporting increases. 

But since this column is about how I look at things and, hopefully, provides insight into the news, let’s be blunt here. I looked at Oregon’s website to book a campground—I honestly did. After various clicks and responses, I had seven browser tabs open and still hadn’t really been able to make a reservation. 

While a good website won’t solve the world’s problems, Oregon might want to take a look at KOA’s reservations system. In fact, every lousy reservations system should have a standard to judge its own web reservations system by KOA’s. 

Create a user profile once for the type of rig you have (even if that’s a tent) and then use that profile to find a place. I shouldn’t have seven browser tabs open and still not have a reservation. Imagine the finagling behind the scenes and the stupidity going on.

Oh, and it’s not just Oregon. We recently stayed at Homolovi State Park in Arizona. Whoever designed the system they use should be left in the desert for a month in August. While the park itself was one of the nicest state parks I have ever been to and was just a great experience, that website was bleh. 

Also, a friend who traveled with us said the local parks in his state, New York, still hadn’t gotten their reservations system up and running. 

Seriously. What is going on here? Perhaps streamlining this kind of stuff might at least help some of these state parks with their budgetary issues. 

Read all recent RV and RV-related news here. 

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