New RV buyers apparently aren’t affected much by the price of fuel. Major RV manufacturers Thor Industries and REV Group both are reporting continued high demand for their products even as the average price of gas in the U.S. is now $5 a gallon.
Wisconsin-based REV Group, the maker of such brands as American Coach, Fleetwood RV, Holiday Rambler, Renegade RV, and Lance, announced second-quarter revenues of $595.6 million. Officials with the company said demand (and the resulting backlog of orders) remain strong. The company said the big negative in their news is that continued shortages of key components and a smaller-than-expected supply of chassis, wiring harnesses, radiators and axles are limiting the amount of RVs they can complete.
Despite all that, REV Group stock jumped nearly 6% this week.
Thor, with iconic brands including Airstream, Heartland, Keystone, and Jayco (among many others), had revenues of about $4.2 billion. Thor officials said they expect demand to remain strong throughout the rest of 2022. Like REV Group, Thor is working to lower a massive order backlog (more than $18 billion) and points the blame at a global chassis supply shortage.
Despite making progress in restocking dealer lots, Thor officials expect inventory to remain below normal levels until at least early 2023.
Thor CEO Bob Martin did say he is taking steps to ensure the RV manufacturing industry doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the past when builders produced far more rigs than the market could absorb.
“We remain disciplined in aligning production to meet current demand without overproducing and overloading our independent dealer channel,” Martin said.
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Interesting statistic: per ‘RV News’, April, 2022 RV retail sales were down 31% vs. 2021. The remainder of the year should prove to be very interesting…
“RV sales still booming”. Sounds like a politician talking.
There were statements last week by “RV Miles” that most- if not all manufacturers are tapping the brakes on production. As seen already supply and delivery issues affecting rv’s themselves as well as the parts that go into them is suffering from a sort of constipation.
Well shoot….there it is in the very next article!
Just went from Michigan to California and as Steve said, saw plenty of RVs on dealer lots that lined I80. RVs traveling along I80 were few and far between until I hit Wyoming where I saw quite a few in both directions. As for diesel fuel, both myself and my checking account cringed the closer to California I got, paying $6.98 a gallon in Jean Nevada before entering California. Good thing I’m parked in Bakersfield for a month or so while I finish taking care of final moving arrangements before heading back to Michigan for good and leaving this exorbitant cost behind. I’m pretty sure the sky high fuel cost is the main reason so few RVers were on the road at the start of the summer travel. Good luck everybody on weathering the current inflationary crisis and other crisis. May god help us all survive this nonsense.
We’re in the middle of a 16 state trip, FL to VA to Lake of the Ozarks to DFW then home to FL, and have noticed significantly fewer RVs on the road, especially motorhomes. RV dealer lots we’ve passed seem to have plenty of inventory. Not sure any of this means anything, just our observations.