Strong RV sales in forecast
Dealers seeing increased demand for small units
In the recreational vehicle business this year, if it’s small, it’s selling big.
Driven by consumers who want the ability to tow a camping trailer without having to invest in a huge pickup truck or sport utility vehicle, RV dealers in southern Wisconsin say smaller products are selling briskly.
So much so that dealers say manufacturers can barely keep up with demand for smaller travel trailer type RVs.
“The bigger stuff is (still) selling, but the newest part of the market and a high volume area is the smaller travel trailer,” said Tim Wegge, owner of Burlington RV Superstore in Sturtevant.
The trend is part of continued strong sales of RVs in Wisconsin and the U.S., dealers say. As the calendar moves toward spring and summer, they expect strong sales to continue.
In Wisconsin, outdoor recreation is a big deal. The state Department of Natural Resources says that camper nights — the number of nights state park and southern forest campsites are occupied — grew to 392,903 during calendar year 2016. (Northern forests are not included.) While some of those folks were camping in tents, many of them were using their pop-ups and motor homes at the sites.
The RV industry expects to ship 383,000 trailers and 55,000 motor homes this year, the eighth consecutive year of growth.
“The last couple years, the industry has been strong,” said Gary Roskopf, general manager of Roskopf’s RV Center in Richfield. “Things have been good. I anticipate it will stay that way.”
Dealers say they are optimistic about sales for the coming warm weather season. “Frankly, at the end of last year, all the dealers were kind of going into a defensive posture where we were thinking, ‘OK, we’ve had a nice run. We’ve done very, very well the last few years since the recession ended and we all just need to watch our Ps and Qs and start controlling our inventory very, very closely and be prepared for a potential recession,’” Wegge said. “So we all collectively did that.
“What’s ended up happening is quite the opposite.”
Wegge said manufacturers are having a difficult time meeting demand. “The problem we are running into right now is that the supply of RVs is short,” he said. “There is so much demand, that the manufacturers can’t keep up. We are having a very, very hard time keeping the inventory that we need.”
At Roskopf’s RV Center, an old standby has made a comeback amid the trend toward smaller RVs.
“We’ve seen a resurgence of the popup campers once again,” Roskopf said. “As of late we’ve had a lot of inquiries into those.
“People are finding out that their smaller vehicle, as much as they’d like to pull a 16-foot travel trailer, the reality is it can’t,” Roskopf said. “But they still want to get off the ground. The pop-up camper is a great alternative. It gets you off the ground and sets up fast. The smaller sport utilities with a 3,500-pound towing capacity can tow just about any pop-up camper made.”
Many manufacturers now offer smaller-sized trailers, using lightweight materials, small propane-powered coolers and stoves and flat-screen televisions, to keep the weight down.
Besides the trend toward smaller RV products, the dealers are reporting members of a newer generation are walking into showrooms.
“We are seeing a younger, diversified clientele,” Roskopf said. “(People who
say) ‘When I was a kid, we went camping. Maybe they are feeling better about the economy and that they can spend the money and move forward and get their own vehicle.”
The typical age of an RV owner is 48, according to 2011 research from the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association. That number represented a one-year decrease from 2005 data, and the organization believes the average age of customers continues to decline, RVIA spokesman Kevin Broom said. Those figures indicate younger people, including millennials are moving into the market, he said.
Even with the trend toward smaller products, traditional large RVs continue to sell.
At least one manufacturer has told Wegge that all the chassis it has allotted for 2017 “are already on limited supply,” he said. “Some are already sold out (for 2017) and the calendar has just turned. They are obviously selling out faster than maybe they had forecast.”
Roskopf said customer demands for RVs are so strong that he plans to buy 13 additional acres of land adjacent to his site to expand his inventory footprint.
“We’ll have the breathing room we need,” he said.
Meanwhile, the trend toward smaller RVs fits right into the sweet spot of CampInn Trailers, the camping trailers division of Necedah-based Petenwell Industries. None of the company’s trailers weigh more than 1,430 lbs.
“This part of the RV industry that we are in, the small aspect part of it, is growing and expanding,” said Cary Winch, coowner of Petenwell Industries.
Business has been “nice and steady,” Winch said. “It’s going well enough that we are looking at expanding.”
He called it “the trend of fully utilizing space without having to go large.”
Part of that is a wider variety of smaller vehicles that are engineered to have expanded towing capacity. “The manufacturers have all been improving on their towing capacity and marketing vehicles that can tow,” Winch said.
For now at least, all the trends continue to distance the RV industry from where it was during the depths of the recession.
“The industry has roared back, particularly on the towable side of the business,” Wegge said. “We’re excited. These are good times. And the good times are always easier to manage than the bad ones.”
The latest models will be on display at the Milwaukee RV Show, scheduled for March 2-5 at the Wisconsin Exposition Center at State Fair Park in West Allis.