America’s recreational vehicle industry has been on a rollercoaster in the past few years. The industry posted all-time shipment records in 2021 during the pandemic, just for sales to hit a near 10-year low soon after. Now, as more people are buying RVs again, the industry is showing signs of strain. The largest RV producers in America are now reportedly laying off 570 workers and closing down a factory, suggesting signs of a bumpy road ahead.
Some folks like to call the RV industry a bellwether for the American economy. RVs are expensive, discretionary purchases. When interest rates go up or if potential buyers’ incomes are hit by the changing economy, buyers may not darken the doors of RV dealer showrooms to pump money into the RV industry. It might sound obvious, but you might not be willing to take out a loan on that fancy overlander camper if you’re not sure you’re even going to have a job six months from now. Likewise, maybe you won’t buy that dream camper if you suddenly can’t afford it because everything else has gotten expensive.
Analysts sometimes look at the RV industry in an attempt to get a broader picture of the American economy. If the RV brands are hiring people, opening factories, and sales are up, that’s supposed to be a good sign. If buyers are turning away from RVs and folks are getting laid off, that’s bad.
The Ups And Downs Of RVs
As U.S. News writes, the RV industry took a bloody beating during the Great Recession. In the years leading up to the Great Recession, the RV industry had no problem selling over 400,000 units a year. By 2009, shipments fell below 166,000 units, or a drop of around 59 percent. Some publications claimed that the RV industry was one of the first industries into the recession, as, logically, discretionary spending is one of the first expenses people cut when times start getting tough.
The damage of the Great Recession, specifically 2008 and 2009, to the RV industry was depressing. Thousands of workers at RV makers around America all found themselves without jobs. It was so bad that banks stopped lending to RV buyers, and countless RV manufacturers also didn’t survive. Many other household names, including EarthRoamer, Fleetwood, Monaco, and Country Coach, either filed for bankruptcy or found themselves sold off to other brands. A lot of the brands that found themselves on the ropes in the Great Recession have managed to rebuild, but it didn’t come without the toll of closing factories and workers losing their livelihoods.
One of the organizations that supports the theory of the RV industry being an economic bellwether is the RV Industry Association. In 2019, Dayton Daily News reported that, at the time, RVIA recognized five distinct periods of RV sales falls since 1981. Three of those periods were followed by a recession. Typically, RVIA said, a recession tends to follow an RV sales drop of two straight years or more. For example, RV sales plummeted in 2007 right on time for the Great Recession.
Things got weird after that 2019 report. The pandemic hit, and while many parts of the economy lagged, the RV industry experienced its greatest boom of all time. Americans still wanted to have fun, but found themselves unable to go to resorts or cruise ships. So, people bought campers in crazy numbers, resulting in a record of 600,240 RV shipments in 2021.
In 2023, Bloomberg reported that RVIA’s prophecy did come true, noting that the economy went through a kind of recession after 2019, albeit a short and deep one:
When the US recreational vehicle industry has slumped in the past, it has often been a sign that a recession is on its way. RVs are discretionary purchases, often paid for with borrowed money, so they can signal a softening of consumer demand before it shows up in other spending categories.
Right now, times are tough in the RV business….But is that a sign that a recession is coming, or just that Americans have enough motor homes and trailers for now? After a buying boom that began in mid-2020 as RVs offered a unique means of escape from Covid-19 risks and restrictions, and continued through mid-2022, something probably had to give.
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One interesting thing about… charts [in the Bloomberg article] is that they all show a pretty significant retrenchment starting in 2018. It was that, along with a visit to the RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart (highly recommended), that got me interested in the industry’s role as economic bellwether. And yes, the RV downturn in 2018 and 2019 was followed by yet another recession. But it was a short deep one caused by a pandemic, not a standard cyclical downturn.
I highly recommend reading the Bloomberg piece and the charts within. However, Bloomberg also noted that times today may be different. While the RV industry of the past might have predicted general economic turmoil, it’s hard to tell if that will be the case today until the economy does something, from Bloomberg:
Now the Federal Reserve is trying to slow the economy to tame inflation, a more traditional path to recession. But in the aftermath of unprecedented pandemic shutdowns, unprecedented government aid and unprecedented changes in spending patterns, the economy is proving especially hard to read using conventional metrics. The RV slowdown could be the signal that cuts through all the noise. Or it could just be more noise.
At any rate, sales fell to 493,268 units in 2022, 376,673 units in 2023, and 333,733 units in 2024. Last year’s sales numbers represented a slump last seen in 2013, when the industry moved 321,100 units during its recovery from the Great Recession.
Some of this was reported to be just a market correction. Many of the Americans who bought RVs have sold their rigs and gotten back into going to resorts and on cruises. However, other factors, including higher interest rates and changing consumer preferences, have also been blamed for the beating the RV industry has taken over the past few years.
Bumpy Roads And Layoffs
We’ve even seen a return of bad news. Vanleigh RV was lost in 2023. Colorado Teardrops closed up shop in 2024, as did EarthCruiser. Forest River closed its two California-based factories last year, and it also finished up 2024 by laying off 160 workers in Indiana.
The big RV brands used to invite me to their dealer-only show, and I noticed that the atmosphere has changed over the years. In 2022, when the industry was fresh off its best year ever, the dealer event had liquor flowing and a concert blasting. I never expected to go to a Florida Georgia Line concert at an RV show, yet that was a real thing, and it was amazing.
Nowadays, it’s a lot more business than fun as dealers and manufacturers are both laser-focused on getting units into consumers’ hands.
Things have been looking up in 2025. In March 2025, WSBT 22 News reports, RV shipments were up 15 percent over 2024. CNN Business also reported in late 2024 that the RV business was beginning to pick up. But there’s still some bad weather ahead.
According to WNDU 16 News, Thor Industries has announced the closure of its Heartland RV plant in Sturgis, Michigan. The plant was brought online in late 2023 to the tune of $35.9 million and was supported by a $700,000 grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. Now, Thor is scrapping the plant, and the 121 workers within it will be out of work on June 20.
Sadly, the news gets worse. The Cruiser RV division of Thor is laying off 251 employees across five plants in Howe, Indiana. Heartland is cutting 147 more employees at seven plants across Elkhart, Indiana. Finally, Thor brand DRV is laying off another 51 employees in its Howe facilities. As The Elkhart Truth reports, these workers will not be getting separation or continuation of health coverage benefits, and they will not have bumping rights (the ability of more senior employees to displace less senior employees), either. Cruiser RV and DRV are brands acquired by Heartland in 2015. However, now Heartland is being reorganized under Thor brand Jayco.
By WNDU 16‘s current count, 570 folks will need to find new work on June 20. The RV capital of America, Elkhart and its surrounding areas, is bracing to handle the aftermath of these layoffs.
Others are worried if this is a warning of things to come. RV sales have been down for years, and now the closures and layoffs have come. It seems too early to call, so you’ll find no speculation here. At the very least, sales are no longer trending downward, and conditions are still better than they were in 2008. But it’s also hard to ignore what’s been happening lately. Additionally, it’s possible that supply costs have been hit by the tariffs, or at least the possibility of tariffs.
I have reached out to Thor Industries for comment.
Hopefully, these RV industry employees will be able to land work and keep on trucking in these trying times. I’ll continue to monitor this situation as well as how tariffs and other decisions from Washington might impact your next RV purchase.
Top photo: Heartland RV
Just when you think you know a person they drop a line like this on you. My worldview has been rocked.
I think the sins of the pandemic are coming home to roost. They saturated the market with even more shoddily built products than usual. Consequently a lot of used units are out there, and a lot of people who have sworn off RVs. There are some interesting new ones out there but lack of economy of scale means they cost too much
If you want a vehicle sales indicator to predict a recession look at Class 8 sales. Most are bought by large fleets for a purely business purpose and custom ordered instead of stocked on dealer lots.
April 2025 orders are 40% of average. Lowest month since May 2020.
Freight tonnage is also at 2020 Covid lockdown levels
Nothing is moving, so new trucks are not affordable, and here soon the market will be flooded with 2020 trucks that were defaulted on. Hard to pay $50k Ballon interest that most of those trucks were bought on with 5 year loans. Especially when freight hits this low
RVs to me seem like an even dumber investment than boats: They’re not well made, the vast majority of them are only suitable for seasonal use, and whenever you aren’t using them (which is most of the time), you’ve got to store them somewhere where they aren’t getting actively destroyed by the elements, sun, rodents, etc.
It just seems like buying an RV means that alone is your vacation identity, in order to justify the cost and effort. My family would much rather drive/fly somewhere and stay in a hotel.
My family and I took our camping trailer (one that has had zero issues since we bought it 2021) out last weekend. We typically do about 6 trips a year. It’s the only way I can get my wife into the woods.
Also, rather than pay for a hotel we’ll often tow ours to wherever we’re visiting and find an RV park nearby. It’s usually cheaper and the kids love it.
Next week we’re flying to Germany for three weeks. Why you think only one type of vacation is possible is beyond me.
Well, fair. That’s just my anecdotal experience with everyone I know who has a RV, but that’s admittedly a pretty small sample size.
What size trailer are we talking though? By camping trailer, do you mean tent trailer? I can see those making sense as they’re relatively low cost, lightweight, and more compact.
Going back to the boat comparison, I could see a tent trailer being more like a canoe or a pair of kayaks vs a ski boat.
It’s an 18ft trailer with a full bathroom and kitchen in it. It also has a queen bed and bunks for the kids. One of my favorite features is an outdoor shower for hosing down mud covered children.
Poking around Elkhart and surrounding towns on Google is FASCINATING. Huge sections of town are devoted to industrial parks supporting mostly the RV industry. I hope they can pull their heads out and start building higher quality products.
It was indeed worth the lookup, thanks. Just all those industrial pockets is interesting to see.
I have been looking in the used market for a good deal. Going through a divorce and thinking about ways to live cheaply and build up some savings – but prices haven’t crashed as much as I’d expected and it really is quite shocking how terrible construction is on most of these things.
I’m at the point where I think a Class B camper + living with a roommate in a house might be the better choice. But, why the hell are the Class B’s so much more expensive – the math just doesn’t math to me. It’s like they have the same premium that “overland” campers do, even if the material and construction is the same other than the enclosed shell that came from Mercedes/Ford.
Mercedes – if you read this and have a potential suggestion on something that would work well for short-term living (<2 years) and support regular visitation by 2 school-aged children, I’d be all ears. I like the idea of being able to have a home base (basically a fulltime paid spot at a local RV park) but take frequent trips alone or with my kids. I would figure I could do that for a time and build up savings and then the RV could be sold off or kept for getaways. It could be a travel trailer or motorhome. I’ve eyeballed everything from outdated, but clean, class A’s to travel trailers with slideouts. I’ve seen a couple Class B+ options that look like they could work, but my reading indicates these are treated as Class C for insurance and titling purposes and the B+ is just a marketing gimmick. I dunno – you’ve done a lot more homework here than most of us! Bonus points for something with a garage that could hide away mountain bikes (Bigfoot 29 is a good example).
Class Bs are more expensive than Class C because they are small enough to daily drive and fit in a lot more driveways. In a lot a places owning a Class C comes with a $200+ a month storage fee.
It is the same with sailboats. The 20 footers on a trailer are way more than a 30+ footer that either has a slip that costs hundreds a month or is in dry storage with a monthly fee and a big charge to put it in and out of the water.
I’m sorry for the workers being laid off, it’s not their fault.
But most of these companies manufacture very flimsy quality trailers that are very expensive.
They are basically glorified plywood chicken coops with some decorative laminate on it and a few tubes of lap sealant lazily applied. All this on a cheap ladder frame trailer.
I was looking at 5-8 year old used ones, all of them were on the brink of needing major repairs either due to delamination, mold, water intrusion, soft spots etc.
Unless you can store these indoors in a dry garage year-round (which I don’t have) they don’t stand a chance against harsh New England weather.
I went the cargo van conversion route instead and built a sleeping platform in an Express van. It’s not quite the same, sure, much smaller, and mainly for sleeping only. But in the end I will still have a functional cargo van that I can sell for not a lot less money when we are done with it.
Storing an RV or camper is getting more difficult too. Newer neighborhoods are much denser leaving little room to accommodate these things. Not to mention most HOAs won’t allow it. I think this contributes, but mainly I think the industry has gone over the tipping point of having sustainable numbers of buyers gullible enough to buy such a garbage product.
Is the country running out of old men with lots of money that are so overconfident as to drive something the size of a building without any experience or training and have never driven anything bigger than a Camry?
The RV industry may have been destined for trouble as the boomers, with their pensions and money left over from cheap houses, pass away. Young people just do not have the cash like the overconfident older generations to maintain the RV industry. It may not go away but it may be smaller.
I also wonder if there will be a market correction in the overpriced overlanding teardrop campers. How many people want a $30K teardrop?
Your point makes me think about our whole contemporary auto advertising zeitgeist and its fetishization of outdoor activity.
While that’s always been a thing, now that the majority of vehicles sold at least trade on the idea they’re connected to rugged outdoor stuff, I wonder at what point many people realize “hey, those activities all cost $ and we don’t have the money to do that”, then wonder if they really need the uplevel offroad Forester or trail rated version of whatever Jeep.
I think enough people will continue to both like the image it projects, and aspire to do those things even if they can’t right this minute. As countless people have pointed out, cars aren’t just rational purchases, so that kind of aspiration drives a lot of the market.
For decades I’ve heard stories in the press and from owners about the abysmal quality and value proposition of most RVs. Seems like an industry that hasn’t innovated much and has been churning out the same crummy product for a very long time, unless of course you are a wealthy person for whom a diesel-pusher Prevost chassis Class-A motorhome is just a toy. They still can’t get away from those horrid swooshy graphic schemes. Its rare to see any kind of RV that’s remotely tasteful (except old GMC’s!). I don’t want to be mean but it sounds like this business is ripe for some serious “disruption.”
They really haven’t evolved much, with a few notable exceptions, from the days when Top Gear was setting them on fire and leaving them strewn around the track in little pieces.
I think a lot of it is the market – it’s just not large enough to harness competitive pressures for better stuff. Most everyone needs a conveyance to get around, and everyone needs a place to live, but very few people need it to be in the same thing. So things, cosmetics aside, sit largely where they were at the beginning.
RV manufacturers aim for 3 things: Light, Cheap, Built well… and they pick two of those.
Sometimes you just get one. Sometimes none.
Unfortunately, I suspect ‘disruption’ in this industry will likely mean ‘consolidation’ and not improved product.
Why? RVs and trailers are high-cost leisure products aimed at folks who can get in deep with financing without acumen, hence why they all look like a modern trendy house inside. Making a more weather resistant or more durable product adds lots of cost to an already high-cost product without any visible appeal to justify it.
Second, the disposable nature of them means more profits for the industry when people are forced to buy another new trailer/RV in a few years because the existing one has rotted out.
Maybe, just maybe, tons of RV that were purchased during the travel restrictions are no longer desired by their original buyers. I’m not interested in doing the research, but I have a gut feeling that there are a great number of slightly-used RV available for sale at 50% off MSRP or less.
And RV are *extremely* discretionary purchases. Almost no one *needs* an RV, so yeah, sales are gonna drop off precipitously in uncertain times with high interest rates. That’s kind of a no-brainer.
The used market is flush with options, with people finding out over the past 5 years how gross RV parks are.
There were two kinds of people, those who looked for cheap air BNBs and those who bought a second home on wheels.
both are realizing the benefits of just booking a hotel near the state park you want to see.
I am one of those who totally abandoned Air BNBs. I’m not taking out the trash.
They’re kinda nice if you’re on a group vacation and want to have a living room to hang out in, but you also get a fun little binder full of rules, the cheapest mismatched beds, and neighbors who will call the police if you’re in the backyard past 9 pm.
I’ve done this. It’s just called a vacation house rental.
Most of those houses are also now listed on Vrbo and Air BNB and Expedia
air BNB seems to be the worst to book through, VRBO is often much more upfront about final price.
Its still a pain to try and find the perfect home with 5 bedrooms with at least a queen bed in each.
so many say they host 8 with one king bed and a room in the basement full of home made bunk beds
Hotels are great if you have 2 people, but anything more than that, AirBNB can be worth its weight in gold.
If I wanted to cram everyone into the same sleeping area and share one dingy bathroom, I’d just buy an RV! 🙂
Honestly, it depends on the trip. Going somewhere for a week with 4+ people? Airbnb all the way. Being able to cook some of your meals at home is worth a lot in terms of both cost and convenience.
But I’ve also seen the dark side, which is a host leaving us a negative review by mistake (because they host too many people) and then refusing to revise it, even when presented with objective proof. I don’t like having to feel paranoid about my lodgings.
you know, if you have more than two people, hotels often have several rooms with many different configurations. some even with separate rooms and full kitchens that wont expect you to wash and dry the dishes before you leave.
The cheapest hotel will still be an improvement over the cheapest RV.
Well said. I have been saying that for years that RVs are so expensive that some are like 1000 nights in a hotel. Some people just are afraid of using hotel sheets and bathrooms.
my aunt gave us a tour of their RV and she was trying really hard to make it sound nice when in reality it looked worse than the shitty Homewood Suites in Little Rock which at least had a pool and basketball court
RVs still cost as much as 1000 nights in a hotel or airbnb without the maintenance costs.
not to mention gas and spots at parking grounds with hookups so you can drain your piss and shit in a gravel lot
Basically my thought — coming at the tail end of a 5-year sales juggernaut, I think people are back to rational. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s more like “going back to normal.”
Almost every statistical trend I read includes a major asterisk for the Covid era since stimulus and WFH combined to boost incomes more than it hurt, on average.
we are also seeing the same thing in the gamer chair industry
people are realizing they don’t need g force bolsters and harness points on their chair to sit and answer emails
Yeah, I’m looking to replace my cheap-o Amazon office chair with a gamer chair. They can be had for as little as $20 on FB Marketplace (or even free!).