LIVE
This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.
A couch potato warning is in effect, as direct TV transforms thanksgiving into stream
giving.
Direct TV's got free TV nationwide.
With a heavy front of 60 plus live channels and a steady stream of streaming apps, conditions
are perfect for non-stop entertainment.
So hunker down on the couch and sign up for your free trial of my entertainment from direct
TV.
I'm going to watch some free TV.
Start streaming my entertainment from direct TV now at streamsgiving.com.
My free is free paid services.
5 day free trial, then auto-renews monthly, cancel any time, temporary credit hold may
apply, restrictions apply, see streamsgiving.com for details, AI produced.
Hear that?
That's what it sounds like when you plant more trees than you harvest.
Work done by thousands of working forest professionals like Adam, a district forest manager
who works to protect our forests from fires.
Keeping the forest fire resistant, synonymous with keeping the forest healthy, and we do that
through planning more than we harvest, and mitigate those risks through active management.
That's a long-term commitment.
Visit workingforestinitiative.com to learn more.
With Black Friday's savings at the Home Depot, you can get up to $1,400 off plus get free
delivery on select innovative appliances like GE Profile.
Add a touch of ease to your holiday with the all-in-one combo to wash and dry your laundry
in one machine.
And refrigerators with built-in convenient features like the dual dispense auto-fill water
pitcher.
Shop Black Friday's savings on select GE Profile appliances plus get free delivery now at
the Home Depot.
Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.
Hello and welcome to Car Stuff, I'm your host Scott Benjamin, and I am Kurt Garen.
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 for sure you're going to stick around for today, right?
For sure.
I mean, you're not going to split or anything.
I know you've got double duty, you're the producer as well, which I'm not going anywhere
just between here and there.
It's not too far.
It's like six feet.
Yeah.
You're getting over to the board.
All right.
Well, you're doing your job remotely, I guess.
It's not even dilution.
We've been broken the fourth wall.
All right.
So today, you know, I promise, okay, first 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 RVs, which I don't know why you clicked on it then because the RV is
in the title, but I will tell you this, as you know, our shows aren't always about exactly
what the title says.
So if it's a show about RVs, we may wander off somewhere else and talk about something
different.
And I actually think that this one is interesting to people that aren't in the RV lifestyle
or don't know much about RVs.
I think there's a lot to be learned here and a lot that's eye-opening about the industry.
We're definitely going to tell you the truth as we know it.
I'll be up front about this too.
I think we maybe we should do this.
I didn't even, I'm going to hit you with this on the fly here, Kurt, but I don't personally
have any RV experience.
I don't know about you.
Do you have any?
Not me either.
Okay.
You never lived in one.
You've never owned one, anything like that.
No.
Okay.
Me either.
And all of the information that we're getting is secondhand.
You know, we're going by some reviews that have been written by people that are in the
lifestyle that have been doing this for some of them in some cases 50 years.
They've been RVing and they've been in the, I keep saying the lifestyle, but it's the
RV community.
Yeah.
The community.
That's a better way to say it.
They're in the RV community and they're knowledgeable about the equipment, about the
way things have changed over the decades.
They're knowledgeable about what to watch for, what not to worry about, 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.
Well, actually, I know, I know why and I'm laughing as I'm saying this because a little bit
embarrassed about this, a little bit.
I want to say that I almost wanted to call this episode not a hit piece on RVs and maybe
I will.
This is not meant to be a hit piece on RVs.
There's going to be a lot of negative information about RVs that if you pay attention, you'll understand
that that's a predominant thought out there online among people that are writing about
RVs 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 things aren't going that well.
And I want to make sure that people understand that we're not trying to be completely negative
about RVs.
There's some really positive things about RVs as well and RVing.
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, it's on the folks that buy RVs maybe with a jaded mindset
about the lifestyle.
Yeah, could be.
And about what owning an RV entails and your responsibilities and buying one and maintaining
one and driving safe and 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 mean by that.
But I do want to say this too, we're not trying to discourage anybody from buying an RV.
If that's what you want to do, by all means, do so.
But we want to make sure that you 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 idea when I dug into this.
I thought I was going to be a slightly different show.
I really didn't know it was going to be quite the way that it's going to turn out, I think.
And I'll tell you how this all came about in just a moment.
But I should refer listeners, listeners of car stuff, past and present, back to some
other car stuff shows that we've done that are related.
Of course, we've got how our RVs worked.
We did way back in 2009, so I don't know what that one's going to be like, but you'll
hear Ben and I discussing that.
And then we did the craziest custom RVs, 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 extrapolate.
That Living in a Car is a little bit like Living in RV, maybe not quite as luxurious as
Living in RV.
And even, well, we'll talk about that too, the luxury aspect of the whole thing.
But again, not a hit piece.
And I say that because we were accused of that when we did another episode called The
Amtrak Story back in 2011.
And then maybe in a little slider, like a lesser note, when we did car title loans more recently
in 2017.
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, Kurt.
It serves a purpose in order to kind of open people's eyes about the industry and what's
happening right now.
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.
Yeah.
A little bit too late for a lot of people.
Yeah.
Some people have made the jump a little too early.
I just feel like there's so much here.
I've done it again.
I've over-prepared for today's show, which is, you would think that's good or I'm bragging
or something, but I'm not.
It's 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 this topic.
So I know there's going to be some that we're going to 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 just kind of let the, as Ben would say in the past, let the badger out of the bag, let
the cat out of the bag.
Sounds good.
Let me get the carrot back in the sack or out of the sack or whatever.
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 going to begin.
Originally, I wanted to start with an article that I had read that was called The Truth
About RVs.
And I found it really intriguing.
It was written in September of 2019, so it's very recent.
It's a long, long form article.
It takes, you know, good 15 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 of the video is called Don't Buy an RV.
And it's written by a guy named Stephen Leto.
And Leto is an attorney at law in the state of Michigan.
He specializes in consumer protection and lemon laws, interesting enough, and legal
problems with cars and other big purchases like that.
So he has a 17-minute video online, and again, he has many, many episodes of this online
that are about all kinds of different things, but it's mostly car related, which is interesting
to our listeners.
But this one, again, is called Don't Buy an RV.
And he has a very good reason 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 would come up in the related
videos right next to it?
Horror stories?
Yeah.
More of the same, right?
Yeah.
I mean, it's always, it's surprising how many people are telling you Don't Buy an RV,
and it's people that own RVs or have owned RVs for decades and are kind of in the lifestyle
in the community of RVing.
And they're saying right now is not the time for you to get into this activity.
Yeah.
They're so upset about it that they're not ashamed to come out and talk about the terrible
mistakes that they've made just right from the get-go.
Yeah.
They've read the dealership, signing contracts and paperwork that they shouldn't have signed
and agreeing to all sorts of things that took a lot of their consumer protections away.
Sure.
Yeah.
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 tow behind.
There's a little teardrop ones that you can pull behind a compact car, even if you want.
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 looks like buses, you know, the ones that are like like giant tour
buses that are, you know, surely million dollar coaches.
I mean, no doubt about it.
All different price points, all different ages, all different sizes, shapes, you know, everything.
There's 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.
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 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 as exciting
as not as as simple as we all think either to just hop in the RV and go off for a week
and trip or a week long trip to a national park.
There's a lot to it.
So as, and I'll kind of step through 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.
Okay.
And stop me because I'm going to kind of buzz through these so we can get on to the truth
about RVs.
And then, oh, even some, you know, there's more surprises to come.
There's a lot here.
And now I'm furiously searching through my notes, but I'll find all of my stuff, I promise,
as we go.
The first thing that he mentions is that as we all know, RVs are a huge purchase and
they're often more than a car.
They're often more than a house to purchase.
So they're not like buying a $20,000 sedan and taking it off the lot.
You're talking about like something that may end up costing you, not in every case.
But, you know, a quarter of a million dollars at $250,000 purchase for a bigger RV and then
it goes up from there.
Like, you know, you and I have seen these touring buses, 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.
And remember, he's speaking as an attorney at law in the state of Michigan, specializing
in lemon laws.
He says that RVs are not covered by lemon laws in most states.
And I didn't know that.
I thought that RVs 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 back from you.
And the way that this all works is because RVs are subject 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 RV don't quite understand that.
You get all excited about buying an RV.
You've just retired and it's always been your dream for the last 10, 15 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 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.
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 going to just throw us out there, it's different by state,
but six or seven times.
Same repair.
You have 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 30 days in most cases and they can't repair
it.
That's another case.
There's all these different stipulations that fall under, your vehicle has to meet all
these requirements to be purchased back again by the manufacturer from you in order for
you to get a new vehicle, a better vehicle.
When I said that the reasonable amount of times, the Magnuson Moss Warranty does not define
what a reasonable number of times is.
It doesn't say that.
It says a reasonable number of times, but it doesn't define the exact number as the Lemon
Law does.
A manufacturer can claim that seven, eight, nine times is a reasonable amount or even
20 times bringing the same vehicle back for the same thing is a reasonable amount of time,
or a number of repairs.
Yeah.
For what I understand, it would be very hard to get your RV in for 20 repairs within the
warranty period.
Yeah.
Exactly.
It seems like it takes these folks forever to get their RV fixed.
Yeah.
The thing is that we've heard scary numbers about how often and how long your RV is almost
expected to be in the shop every year.
Yeah.
Didn't they say that you buy a brand new one, right off the line?
Let's say you buy brand new, which they say you never should do in front of RV, which
blows my mind as well.
But they say that if you buy a brand new one, 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.
Yeah.
A brand new RV, brand like you don't get to use it for seven or eight months.
Yeah.
And they say oftentimes it'll have issues on the lot and they won't fix it until someone
buys it.
Isn't that crazy?
Yeah.
They know an issue, but they look at they see it every day, but they won't do it.
They have understand it, but it's not just a 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, let's say the manufacturer won't buy it back 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 that's because as Stephen 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.
It's not built by one company like you might think.
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 Winnebago or not.
And the other thing is that the drivetrain is coming from somewhere else.
You've got three possibilities here, the box, the chassis, and then the drivetrain.
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, 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, they're going to help me out here.
Very good point.
So that's another point is that you go into the dealership or the showroom for the RVs 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 $200,000 or whatever
on an RV.
And 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.
And suddenly, you know, you're gum on their shoe, you're nothing, you know, you're, it's
like, you know, and I shouldn't say it as, as, of course, Lee is that.
But you know what I mean?
I mean, it's like, you're treated two completely different ways in it 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, 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 the, the manufacturer will say, you need to go 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 round about 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 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.
It gets messy, spills, stains, and kid chaos.
But with Anneve, cleaning up is easy.
Our sofas are fully machine washable, inside and out, so you never have to stress about
messes again.
Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics, that means fewer stains and more peace of mind.
Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh
your style any time.
Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly, perfect for cozy apartments
or spacious homes, plus their earth-friendly and built to last.
That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch.
Get early access to Black Friday pricing right now, sofas started just $699.
Visit washablesofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life.
That's washablesofas.com.
Customers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
And Doug, here we have the Lemo Emo in its natural habitat, helping people customize their
car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.
Fascinating.
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
Lemo, is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
Cut the camera.
They see us.
With Black Friday's savings at the Home Depot, you can get up to $1,400 off, plus get free
delivery on select innovative appliances like GE Profile.
Add a touch of ease to your holiday with the all-in-one combo to wash and dry your laundry
in one machine, and refrigerators with built-in convenient features like the dual dispense
auto-fill water pitcher.
With Black Friday's savings on select GE Profile appliances, plus get free delivery now
at the Home Depot.
Free delivery on appliance purchases of $396 more, offer valid $11,512,312 US only sees
store-run life for details.
And we're back and you're listening to car stuff, and well, I'm one of your hosts
got Benjamin.
And I'm the other host Kurt Garin.
Kurt's still here.
Still hanging in there.
Hang in there.
And they're talking about RVs and the complexity, I think is where we work, right?
Yep.
So, these are not like a typical car truck.
Oh no, no.
You shouldn't look at it that way if you're trying to buy one.
Well, how should we look at it?
I mean, kind of like you're buying a house that you're going to drive down the road.
No, that's good.
That's a good way to put it.
Because I mean, that's kind of what you're doing, right?
I mean, you're taking everything that you would have in a house, you know, kitchen cabinets,
you're taking appliances, counters with, you know, 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 10 hours a day on the
road.
That's what you're doing on the highway, right?
I mean, it's shaking like crazy.
The suspension's fine, but it's still shakes.
You're going around turns, you know, 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 like you're shaking your house for hours and hours at a time and then later
you would check and see what shook loose.
Yeah.
And something is inevitably going to shake loose.
Well, I either 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.
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 camper or your
own, you know, whatever, your own toe behind, but it's going to be heavy.
It's going to be bulky.
It's not going to be as refined as something that you will purchase from a manufacturer.
And that's the thing is that, you know, 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, AC units, refrigerators, microwaves, satellite dishes, hot water heaters,
you've got a toilet that has to sit in there somehow.
You've got a shower.
All of these things, a lot of them have doors or drawers that have to be latched in some
way.
They're not like, you know, just your standard kitchen door hinge or whatever.
It's a lot different.
There's a lot of fridge.
It needs a, 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.
You do the bottom of the fridge, you know, in a heat after you make several, you know,
left and right hand turns and stops and, you know, goes and all that.
It's just going to 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 RV.
And I think that's the case for a lot of people.
You know, 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 $20,000 on an RV, you know, a crappy one or $200,000 on an RV,
and you're still going to have problems.
You could spend a million dollars on an RV.
You're still going to have some of these problems.
It's just the way it is.
Even just what you would maybe consider a standard expectation 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.
It's much less laminate 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 just right off the lot.
Oh, absolutely.
In fact, Steven Leto, I'm still following his video here.
He says that, you know, he's seen people that have spent, again, quarter of a million dollars
on an RV and they encounter, you know, and we're talking instant, like, on the drive
home from the dealership.
Some problems with plumbing, water leaks.
If there's a rainstorm, you know, water comes pouring in the windshield, broken cabinets.
There's even fires.
I mean, he said he's he said 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 RV that had just left a lot, gets
above 50 miles per hour and the re-rax will caught on fire.
I mean, that's crazy.
That's just unbelievable that something like that would happen.
There's this dealer manufacturer disconnect and the thing is like, you're not really protected
like you think you are, as Steven says in here, so many times.
He says it 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 sign it.
Well, then what happens is they bring you the warranties, and I say warranties because,
as we said, 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'll have their own warranties.
So you get maybe what he says, it could be even a box of warranties that you get.
And you've already signed a purchase agreement, or you haven't signed it yet, 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.
One of the main takeaway from the whole RV lifestyle that I think should be hammered
in from the get-go is that everything just needs to be slowed down.
You need to slow down the purchase process, and then everything after that gets slower.
Living is slower, driving from place to place is slower.
You walk slower.
Yeah.
You just react slower.
You just slow everything down.
I think that's good advice, and it's really hard to do though 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 40 plus years on, that when they
turn 70 or 65 or whatever, or younger, they're going to retire, and they're going to 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 good advice, I guess, and this isn't the best advice, but this is a good advice,
because 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, well, how reliable are the, this is a brand
X, and they'll tell you, of course, well, that's our top of the line brands, or of course,
we never have any problems with it, and everything's fine.
Step over this way, and we'll talk about financing, you know, that's how it goes usually.
But the advice that was given by Steven, and this is something that I had 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 RV that you are looking to purchase, you know,
you've already scouted this out, you've already checked out online, you've gone to the dealership,
you've looked it over, kicked 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, you're right, Kurt.
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 RV, how reliable
it is, what types of problems they've had, and this Steven 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 ask 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 RV
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
hookup 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 RVs, 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?
Oh, before we even get to the rust, I guess, maybe that comes along with the inspection,
right?
Yeah.
And that you should have every single one of these inspected, 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 RV, and they probably will give you a little bit of trouble about
it, a little bit of a, a little bit of guff about it, because it's brand new, right?
What could be wrong?
But there's a reason for doing that, right?
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 20% of the area you're going to, yeah, could be in the snow,
rain.
There's lots of snow in Indiana, and they use salt on the roads, so you gotta, you gotta take
that into account.
Yeah.
If you buy the thing, you know, in a southwestern climate where you might think, well, it's brand
new RV.
There can't be any rust underneath this thing.
It had to have been built somewhere near here, right?
Yeah.
Not the case.
A lot of them come from Indiana, as 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 going to tell you how to inspect it, but essentially it's akin to a house
inspection that you want to do on this, as well as a vehicle inspection.
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 a 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 to inspect that purchase, as well.
That'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 yeah, it's always a good tactic when buying anything big like this, taking again, take
your time and make the dealer sweat it out a little bit.
Yeah, and like we said, you know, we know, we know for a fact, and this happens at 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 they'll treat you completely different before and after
purchase.
It's something that they, in a way, have to, I'll tell you the reason why, not that
they have to, it's just that they, they do because of this reason.
There 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 places that they've got, you know, like
for sales and they've got the showroom floor, of course, and that's a, you know, a great
big part of it, then 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 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.
Yeah.
There's so many different parts on RVs as well, and parts of availability is probably an
issue.
Sure.
And how many RVs are made with parts that are standardized, maybe year from year, they
change, maybe season from season, they change.
Oh, sure.
So a lot of it comes down to, I think, parts of availability 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 the most important part of this are why it's so frustrating or so maddening
for an owner to come back to a dealership for service, is because there's no doubt about
this.
Dealers are really not in any hurry to service your RV.
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 going to 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, yeah, that's right.
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, the warranty only lasts a 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 Magnus and Moss Act that they can adhere to, which 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 they're taxed.
I mean, 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, if they're trying to hurry things through
and, you know, rush to repairs.
You don't want that as well because you're going to be taking this house essentially down
the road at 70 miles an hour, you know, whatever the speed is, and living in it and you're
going to be in rainstorms and snowstorms 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 just give and take that happens.
It's essentially, it all boils down to this.
If you're going to buy an RV, you should expect to have a lot of problems, even longer
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, 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 RV.
You just have to deal with certain things or wait for that opportunity, that slot to open
to the dealership and take it in for the repair.
Yeah, or you get creative, maybe build certain things within the RV that make better what
the problem was or get used to fixing problems yourself, that sort of thing.
A lot of RV owners are pretty good at DIY.
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 the know how to use
those tools in order to be able to do this.
But if you can, you know, logically or, you know, if you're mechanically inclined even
a little bit, 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 RV service area, you can take it somewhere else and have it served.
There's certain things, axles catching on fire and window seals leaking.
You can't, you can't overcome that, right?
Well, then that can't happen with a new RV.
No.
No.
And you're not going to just pull into the local, you know, quick oil change place and
have service as well.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a different beast all together.
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 going to buy an RV, keep all of this in mind, just protect yourself,
make sure that you know that RVs in general, in general are trouble.
Yeah.
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 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, the know how to get around this or to understand what you're getting into
and to be able to accept that because otherwise, you're going to 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 RVs, a little bit about the industry and another video
that I watched that I found interesting that talks about construction issues and quality
issues in current RVs.
And to me, this is a really eye-opening video that brought up a lot of issues, the construction
issues, because this comes down to the quality of build that's going into current RVs
and why maybe they are suffering in modern day.
And we'll talk about that in just a moment I can take a break.
Tired of spills and stains on your sofa?
Wash away your worries with Anabay.
Anabay is the only machine washable sofa inside and out.
Where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices.
That's right, sofa started just $699.
Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slip covers
made with performance fabric, experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's
hyperallergenic and never needs fluffing.
The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime.
Shop washablesophys.com for early Black Friday savings up to 60% off-site-wide, backed
by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.
If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund.
No return shipping or restocking fees, every penny back.
Up right now at washablesophys.com offers are subject to change and certain restrictions
may apply.
And Doug, here we have the Lemo Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize
their core insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.
Fascinating.
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
Lemo, is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
Cut the camera.
They see us.
Only pay for what you need at LibertyMutual.com.
Savings vary.
Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts.
With Black Friday's savings at the Home Depot, you can get up to $1,400 off plus get free
delivery on select innovative appliances like GE Profile.
Add a touch of ease to your holiday with the all-in-one combo to wash and dry your laundry
in one machine.
Even refrigerators with built-in convenient features like the dual-dispense auto-fill
water pitcher.
Shop Black Friday's savings on select GE Profile appliances plus get free delivery now
at the Home Depot.
Free delivery on appliance purchases of $396 more offer about $11,5123 US only sees store
on live for details.
And once again we are back and you're listening to CAR stuff and I'm Scott Benjamin and I'm
Kurt Garren and we are just getting past finally.
The video from Stephen Leto, an attorney at law in the state of Michigan that he warned
you not to buy an RV and you'll find that that is very common unfortunately on a lot
of websites and a lot of online forums.
I'm sure you'll find a lot of other RV promotional type material that comes from the dealers
and from people interested in selling RVs 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 have experiences from maybe not the recent era, maybe not a modern RV
because I think there's a lot of problems that are happening right now with modern RVs
that we're not necessarily happening, I wouldn't say a decade ago but more than a decade
ago.
Yeah.
It seems like pre-2008, 2008 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
crash?
And 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 RVs is the main article that we're going to kind
of skip over here now.
It's definitely worth about 10 or 15 minutes of your time to read.
It was written in 2019 by a writer called Andrew Zaleski and it comes from curb.com if
you want to find that article, curb.com.
And it's a couple of different stories here.
It has both sides.
It has well actually three different sides or even more.
Comes from 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 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 talk to in this article that come from the industry.
Of course they talk to Stephen Leto, 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
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 contradicts that.
It does slant a little bit towards, it's not a good idea to buy an RV.
It slants that way only because in my own opinion what I heard from the owners, the people
that experience these things out on the road and the people that you have actually hands
on experience with RVs, 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 are
promoting this type of living, they're the ones that are saying, hey, everybody's great
here.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Approval of rating, everybody has either a good, great or a fantastic experience at my
dealership and I don't know 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 some of the real stories I guess about what these things are like once you
take them outside of the dealership or 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 $200,000 and then you drive it off a lot and then it depreciates and then
you have problems with it.
It's hard to find the silver lining.
I guess when you've already lost 10% of the value and you're having all these issues,
you just feel like you made a big mistake.
You feel stupid.
Yeah, and how are you going to get out from underneath that, right?
I mean, you've got to sell that pile of junk to somebody else and you're going to feel
terrible about it unless you tell them all about the problems and then you're going to
take a huge hit if they even buy it.
It can be a serious problem and this is a lot like people that I hear that buy a great
big boat or any boat really.
They say that the best two days when you own a boat or the day you bought it and the day
you sell it.
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.
As you go through this story, you'll hear about a couple that bought a $140,000 RV brand
new.
It was a Winnebago brand.
I'll tell you that.
It had a bad suspension and 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.
We talked about how the 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 2008, right?
2007, 2008, 2009, somewhere in there.
The number of units sold of RVs total.
This is all different types of RVs.
Between 2008 and 2009 was around 170,000 per year.
That's not a whole lot when you listen to some of these other numbers and that was down
from previous years but I don't have the previous year numbers.
In 2017, so you fast forward, nine years forward, they sold 500,000 plus units in 2017 so the
number went up enormously.
By 2018 last year, they dropped down just a little bit.
It was 482,000 units.
2019, it's down about 20% over the year prior so again, I don't know what that number
is.
I guess it's down about 440,000 something like that.
By 2020, however, they are expecting an increase again.
You would think, okay, 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.
Millennials are tied into the resurgence of the RV lifestyle of the 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 in
this.
In fact, most actually a lot of households have a part in this because last year I think
it was something like 78.8 million households at least spent one day camping or in an RV
in 2018, which I found as a high number, 78.8 million households.
Yeah.
That's a lot of people.
A lot of households.
Yeah, it really is.
So here's the way this whole thing plays out.
It's not just aging baby boomers that are buying these things because that's who you think
are buying them or people that are already tired beyond that even, but millennials were
actually 41% of those campers that went out and enjoyed the great outdoors in 2018, I guess.
So here's the cycle.
If the economy is good, people become kind of interested in the nomadic lifestyle and they
simply want to take vacations, they want to get out, they want to relax a little bit,
right?
So the times are good.
They're working hard, they need their relaxation and enjoyment, etc.
So that makes sense.
This kind of leads to an increase in the number of units that are then needed.
The supply or the demand rather goes up, so they build more to meet that and to supply
that.
And as the public demand goes up, of course, they have to meet that supply by building
more units faster.
They have this sudden rush on the factory, instead of needing 20,000 units this year, we're
going to need 30,000 or whatever it is, the manufacturer is producing.
They need to create more RVs and create more RVs faster.
And so what that leads to is the speed course goes up, but the quality goes down.
And that kind of makes sense, right?
They're trying to turn them out a lot faster.
In turn, the dealers from the manufacturers are receiving already like a faulty product.
So maybe not all the connections are made, maybe something was forgotten along the assembly
line.
A lot of flaws can happen in that quick build.
Yeah, they're more manually constructed, too, I believe.
It's not as automated of a process as a car would be.
They're entirely hampered.
We've already 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, you 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's not hooked up properly.
The water just floods out underneath or 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, it right along to you and 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 online horror stories for RVs and it's as simple as doing
a search like that, you can find the quality of build issues.
There's missing items.
There's just poor design.
There's outdated design.
A lot of people have a lot of problems with RVs 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 open this week and we mentioned L-Card Indiana, right?
L-Card Indiana is like the hub, the center of everything RV.
And I think they even have an RV museum that we talked about in some other episode here
on car stuff.
There's a lot of manufacturers, a lot of RV lots there.
There's an infamous dealer that's there that has, his name's Tom Raper and he has at least
to live in Indiana.
And there were always Tom Raper RV ads on TV always and they have X number of acres of RVs
available at any time.
You know, you can go and look at them there.
It's this huge lot.
You wouldn't believe how many there are.
But on September 23rd, which is the week that we are recording this show, they opened
a brand new $10 million facility called the RV Technical Institute in L-Card, Indiana.
This is something brand new for the whole industry.
It's something they've never had before.
It says that two-thirds of the RVs in the U.S. along with the appliances and furniture
that outfit them are made in L-Card, Indiana.
So it gives you an idea of how important L-Card, Indiana is to the RV industry.
This new training center, which trains the nation's RV technicians, it's not just the
technicians from L-Card, 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 it better, et cetera.
It's kind of a train-to-trainer situation there.
Right now, there's about 13,000 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 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 going to be able to service and better
help the customer a lot faster and have better knowledge.
I have more up-to-date knowledge and be able to go back for update training and 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 old rebirth
process of bringing RVing back into favor, I guess, into something that people want to
participate in, because right now it's kind of getting a negative rap, which I guess you
and I both didn't know about.
I for sure didn't know about it.
I'm just not part of the community.
Yeah, this didn't know the extent into which it was 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 talk to when they go to RV events or RV campgrounds, they find that parts are missing,
they've got faulty appliances, you know, it runs the whole gamut.
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.
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 to do so, it's again, it's called the
truth about RVs.
You're going to get both sides of the story and there's probably more here that I should
talk about, but I really want to get on to the quality issues, the quality of build issues
because there's a couple of things here that I hadn't really thought about 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 really why would I pick that one, right?
Because my first one was called Don't Buy an RV.
Now I'm looking at a video that's called Why Are Modern RVs 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 keyword here.
Even in the other video that we talked about, modern is the keyword because I think that
the quality has gone down so much since 2008 and this technical institute, this technical
building that's being built in Elkhart 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 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 again, side note here, I guess.
This is according to this person that posted this video.
The idea is that manufacturers are building these ultra light vehicles, these light weight
campers.
They even call them this.
They'll 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 in to 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 Taurus, but
you can pull this camper with it.
So, hey, why not, why don't 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 that's very enticing to people and treating to people.
So the idea for the manufacturer is to build a lighter weight product so that that can
happen more often than not, you know, than to have to say, well, you're going to need
a truck or an SUV to pull this.
How are you going to handle that?
Unless you drove in and one, you have to go get one or buy one or whatever that delays
the whole process.
So, they're trying to build these lightweight units and all of them, all the new units
are lightweight or they're trying to be lightweight in some way so that, you know, again, the
compacts are even the smallest UVs can pull them.
But they're not just lightweight, they're not using lightweight materials.
They're using less material in them and that's one of the weight savings that are one of
the ways they're trying to save weight.
They're also using less sealants and less resilient compounds that don't last quite as long.
They're also using get this, 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 purposes they did before
with the heavy-duty, 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 result, of course, is that you're going to find that, you know, a lot of components
fail or you're going to 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 going to be
a lot of problems.
Seals are going to 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 RV units
faster and maybe even lower the price, you get a better deal on them, surprisingly, on
a newer product, right?
You're going to find that you're going to have to compromise in quality and longevity
in these products.
And that's really too bad, I guess, 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've talked about this already, but plumbing connections are poorly done,
or even something simple as they're not using enough teflon tape in the connections
to make a watertight seal.
A lot of that stuff happens.
There's mistreated connections because they're too rushed at the manufacturer in order
to put them together correctly.
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, the know how to make it work, be able to
do these basic repairs on the road and minimum and have some basic supplies.
Just overall, I guess, maybe we'll move on here at this point.
I feel like I've done enough damage to the RV industry with this podcast, but there's
just overall a lot of pressure on the builders at the factory.
To turn out the product, the customer wants at the speed the dealers need, and that's kind
of this back-and-forth battle that so many of them do, and that's where the problem happens.
A lot of the backup is happening at the service department of the dealership, and that goes
back again to this Magnus and Moss Act, and maybe they're not getting the satisfaction
of the dealership that they necessarily should.
Things snowball, too, when the industry starts to struggle, so right now they're in a position
where they need to start producing better product than in order to, I guess, build the reputation
of the industry back up.
Well, sure.
Very hard to do when you're already working at a disadvantage.
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 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 creates all these issues that don't necessarily lead to a rosy
end.
Yeah, sure.
A lot of people's lives depend on this industry.
There's 600,000 employees in the United States that work in the RV industry right now, 600,000.
That accounts for something like $32 billion in wages, and $12 billion in federal, state,
and local taxes, so it's a huge part of the economy.
It's a great big part of the economy.
There's like, I think just in Indiana, just to give you an idea of how important, again,
Indiana is to the RV industry.
126,140 people are working for 644 RV businesses in Indiana alone, so that's a huge part
of Indiana's economy, and that also includes, there's other places that have similar economies
like that with RV employees.
California, Texas, Oregon, and Ohio are both really, really tied to the RV industry, and
so there's a lot going on there, and the industry has slowed down as this article points
out.
They're hoping that in 2020, it's going to come back.
That's the projected numbers are showing that it is going to come back slightly, but maybe
not to the fervor that it had for the last several years, kind of rebuilding after the recession,
but hopefully it will for the people that are employed in the industry.
Now, really until I read 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.
That's within the industry.
It seems to be just standard.
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 shop for five or six months at a time.
That's always been unnecessary.
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 a way to publish.
You just go on your laptop, go on your phone, and here's my opinion, and no one's really
checking that.
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 check in balance, so for businesses, that's the more reason for the industry to step
it up.
It is.
And to be fair, I think that they're doing what they can, or at least at the epicenter
of the whole thing in Elkart, Indiana, in Elkart 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 sound, but they're trying to step in the right direction.
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, they started Monday with this institute.
They can maybe wipe the slate clean, going forward, maybe in a few years now.
I don't expect it 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 2008 and 2019.
The thing that the industry has going for it is it is a dream.
Many people have it, and that dream's not going to go away.
In order to fulfill this dream, they need the RV.
It's always going to be a product that people are going to be fantasizing about.
Ever since the advent of the automobile, people have wanted to get out of their present
environment and into a more peaceful environment.
Take it up to the lake, take it out to the woods, take it to the mountains, or whatever,
to be able to do that in an RV and to enjoy yourself and not have to worry about these
piddling repairs, the end to do all the time.
It would be somebody's dream, that would be fantastic, it's 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 the industry.
I think that there's something more going on here than just what has always been there.
It's not the same as it always was, it's not like that nostalgic camping trip that you
took with your parents back in the 1950s in a pop-up camper or whatever you had.
It's not the same as it was then.
It's a little different.
I think they can get back to that if they really put everything they've got behind it.
I think they can get back to that kind of the glory days.
Maybe you should think about it like you're stepping back into time and have expectations
of, I'm going to have problems with this, I should learn how to fix certain things myself
rather than take it back to the dealer for say like a screw falls out, find a way to fix
the screw.
And it's like you're saying fantastic point and a lot of these articles and videos and
everything, even the ones that tell you don't do it or whatever, they'll say if you are
going to do it, here's what you do.
And one of the main things that they say, one of the main focus points is that you have
to be just to even a little bit mechanically inclined.
You have to be able to just kind of think your way around these problems and come up with
solutions on your own because you're going to have to on the road and that's just the
way it is.
If you're going to live in 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 you can have somebody
come out and pick up your vehicle and take it away or you can't do that, you just can't
do that.
So, 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 and investigate it, 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
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 retirement 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.
Alright, so, if you 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
HSW and of course, you can check out our show's website at carstuffshow.com and that's where
you can check out our podcast archives where we have, gosh, it must be about 900 or more
episodes at this point, it seems like anyway, that's where we store 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.
If you do, of course, like what you hear, you could leave a review on Apple podcasts
or on, you know, I heard Radio App or wherever you listen to your podcast, that's always
fair to do.
And if you want to, you can refer us to a friend, that's always a good way for us to gain
listeners and, you know, for you to kind of, I don't know, be on the edge of something
that, you know, maybe your friend doesn't know about, you can say, hey, I don't know if you've
heard of this one, but, you know, car stuff's pretty good, I like that show, oh, 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 you use this as like a trivia source, right?
You can go back and 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-it-all.
That's your options.
How about that?
Good options.
I don't think I've ever told people not to listen.
Okay, I think we've exhausted just about everything on this topic, Kurt, what do you think?
I think so.
Okay, well, 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 iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Venmo stash, a taco in one hand, and ordering a ride in the other, means you're stacking
cashback.
Nice.
Get up to 5% cashback with Venmo stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your
Venmo debit card.
From take out to ride cheers, entertainment and more, pick up under with your go-to's and start
earning cashback at those brands.
Earn more cash when you do more with stash.
Venmo stash terms and exclusions apply.
Max $100 cashback per month, see terms at Venmo.me slash stash terms.
And Doug, here we have the Lemo Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize
their car insurance, and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.
Fascinating.
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
Uh, Lemo, is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
Cut the camera.
They see us.
Only pay for what you need at LibertyMutual.com.
Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty.
Savings vary.
Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and Affiliates Excludes Massachusetts.
Amazon Five Star Theater presents Real Customer Reviews, performed by Eva Longoria.
Tonight's review sports briefs.
Oh, boy, where do I even start with these performance mesh boxer briefs?
These boxer briefs are like a magician's trick.
You know the one where you go, where did that rabbit come from?
So if you're looking for underwear that not only performs well, but also gives your package
the attention it deserves, then look no further.
Five Stars.
Nickelicious.
Shop the perfect gift this holiday season on Amazon.
This is an I Heart Podcast.
Guaranteed Human.
About this episode
Exploring the complexities of the RV industry, this episode dives into the challenges faced by RV owners and potential buyers. Hosts Scott and Kurt discuss the misconceptions surrounding RV ownership, including hidden costs, maintenance issues, and the disconnect between manufacturers and dealers. They highlight the importance of thorough research before purchasing an RV and share insights from industry experts, revealing a trend of declining quality in modern RVs. The episode aims to inform listeners about the realities of RV life, encouraging a cautious approach for those considering this lifestyle.
Original notes
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.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
CarStuff
iHeartPodcasts
0:00
55:53