Who is responsible for poor quality RVs manufactured today?

I’ve written several versions of this blog entry; trying to find the right expression of this idea. There are two competing themes out there. First, RV manufacturers, especially the big ones, will tell you just how great their products are. Second, there are forums, blog posts and youtube videos galore that say the opposite. I’m intimately familiar with three RV’s and my experiences is that quality is the last thing on manufacturers minds.

I’m going to pick on Forest River mostly because that is what I have experience with. But partly because they are one of the largest RV manufacturers and they are owned by one of the worlds richest men.

Finally there is how much the responsibility is on the dealer and how much, we as buyers need to accept. That may sound a bit odd – but it’s kind of like – with everything that is known today – how much responsibility for smoking is on the tobacco companies vs gas stations vs smokers?

A year ago, we bought a new Forest River trailer.   We did our walkthrough and literally didn’t find anything serious wrong. We brought our trailer home (2.5 hours away from the dealer) and parked it in storage. We had lots of plans for how we wanted to customize “Tumbleweed”.   The more we looked at it; the more we used it, the more things we wanted to change. EVERY time I looked behind a cover, or into the insides – I found horrendous quality and sometimes SAFETY issues. [ see tomorrowsjourney.com ]

If I had been happy to just use my RV as built, I wouldn’t have known about the problems, well, for six months, or so.   Of course if my trailer had broken away – the break-away switch wasn’t even connected – Tumbleweed would have crossed the median and killed a family on vacation.  But what the heck, trailers don’t break away, do they? My brake wire wasn’t hooked up right either. My daughter’s trailer, built a couple of months later in the same factory didn’t have the brake wires properly connected either – might have killed her family as well as some other family.

The 30 amp power plug screw terminals weren’t properly screwed down in the outside power receptacle. I wouldn’t have known this except for that fact that I installed an internal Electrical Management System – which complained bitterly until I disassembled and properly reassembled the plug socket. Of course, perhaps months later when I was camping in the desert, running my air conditioner off camp power or generator, some afternoon, nearly continuously – the power receptacle or the wires would have burned up and I would be screwed or homeless.

The point here is, for everything you know is wrong with your RV – there are likely a dozen things that you don’t know are still to be discovered wrong.

Cheap is designed in. In my trailer I found a long list of short cuts. Some taken by trailer builders, but many were clearly designed in – by people who were far more concerned with price and profit than usability, reparability or safety. Our new Class C, also a Forest River of course had a much higher price tag than our bumper pull. And in general, the build quality is higher. But by no means it is good enough.

Cheap comes from the designers. Cheap comes from the suppliers (via demands from the designers). Cheap comes from Warren Buffet and everyone in between Manufacturer/Owners and the poor installers. 3/16 plywood. Cabinets made out of pine, compressed sawdust and thinner than paper vinyl covering, uncomfortable, sloppily assembled furniture are NOT signs of a company concerned about quality.

One night on a trip with our trailer, I plugged two devices into the USB charger ports on my side of the bed. We laid down to watch a little TV. After a couple of minutes – I smelled smoke. Than nasty, plastic, caustic smoke from burning electronics or wiring. Since I had just plugged in a couple of devices – I quickly ripped out the two USB cables. Then grabbed a screwdriver and removed the DC power panel from the wall. Sure enough, the little circuit board in the USB side was smoking. But so were the wires. Heavy 14 gauge wiring had been run to the cigarette lighter side of the panel. But very light – maybe 22 gauge wiring had been extended from the heavy wires to the USB port. Is that a problem? USB ports are by specification and design, suppose to self-limit the power they provide to plugged in devices. This charger board failed, shorted out and was drawing far more power in its suicide attempt than the tiny wires could supply, causing the light gauge wires to turn into miniature electric heaters.

This was a design failure. You NEVER run a heavy gauge wire with a big fuse through part of a circuit, then extend the circuit with a small wire that isn’t capable of blowing the fuse. That creates a fire hazard.

This was a supplier failure. The USB port failed to self limit the power drawn – then failed, smoking. The cigarette and usb ports are part of the SAME device. It was designed to be installed this way, which violates the electrical standards Forest River and the RVIA claims their RVs are constructed to.

This was a Forest River failure. There are MANY inexpensive cigarette and USB charging ports available that are properly built and safe. I replaced mine with a unit that cost less than $10. What did FR save in this case? $2? They want to burn my trailer down for 2$?

If you have any combination cigarette/USB panels on your RV, I strongly suggest you pull them out of the wall and look at the wiring. If you find heavy wire to spade lugs on the cigarette and thin to USB – cut off the wiring and add thick to both. Or add a small fuse on the USB side.   Or better still – replace the whole panel with one that costs more than $4.99.

RV manufacturers make all their decisions based on 2 Factors. 1. Glitz. What looks good enough in a walk through to convince a buyer to buy. 2. Profit. How can they make an RV for less money that works just long enough to keep warranty work down so they can maintain profit.

On my trailer – the dealer was 2 plus hours away. And since I was finding problems while I was upgrading various systems on my trailer – I did all the warranty work myself. I tried to get money from the FR warranty department for my labor but they refused. I tried to get money for the parts and they refused. I did manage to get some money for the horrendous chairs that came with my trailer along with a letter that said if I want to see any more warranty money from them it had to come through a FR dealer.

We’ve all had our warranty problems, or seen dozens of videos on Youtube from people sharing their horror stories about long waits for warranty work at dealers. The whole system is rigged to slow down, delay and minimize the cost of warranty to manufacturers. Dealers don’t get paid full price for warranty work and have the hassle of waiting for parts to arrive.

I did have some minor issues with my Class C – and I had that work done at a (different) dealer. At the same time, there are a number of smaller issues I have with the construction that I, like most owners have just accepted as going along with owning an RV. Why? Because I know the quality of construction essentially means no repair is really going to improve how it was constructed. Also – my current dealer is still 90 minutes away. That means two of us spend 3+ hours to drop it off, then 3+ hours to pick it up. That’s twelve plus hours to get some warranty work done. If I can pull out my tool box and come up with an acceptable fix that takes 30 minutes, guess which one I’m going to do.

Oh, and while replacing my radio and redirecting the backup camera in my new Class C – I found a rats nest and another violation of wiring standards behind my dash.

Buyers are either ignorant of the issues, or they (we) are aware, but know the system is rigged against us and just look for lowest price and hope for the best.

After we bought our trailer, we spent over $7000 on enhancements and upgrades. How dumb. Sort of… Some of that money was for things like generators and ProPride hitch that we can re-use or sell but we were under water on the value of the trailer the moment we rolled off the dealer lot, then spent a ton of money and time “perfecting” the trailer. Worse for us, after a year, we decided a Class C was a better fit, so we ended up trading in the trailer for a lot less than we had into it.

And we didn’t seem to learn a thing because we are well on our way to spending even more turning the Class C into the RV we really want. Could we have spent more money up front on a different Class C that had everything we want? Possibly, but it would cost way more than the $7k or so we are spending. Way more than we can afford – and those rigs have problems too.

Did Forest River just decide not to include the options we want? Well some of them, like better batteries, an inverter and solar. But some of the most frustrating things we are replacing are things like a terrible dash radio that was also the rear view monitor.   There were turn signal cameras that were useless (we simple disconnected because the mirrors worked better).

Worse yet – we looked at the same model at the dealer before we ordered. There were several options we liked. When we ordered – only a dozen or so items were listed as options on the order sheet so we foolishly presumed anything in the showroom model not specified as an option would be in ours too. Not so. Forest River dropped or changed a number of items on our unit. Nothing to be done about it says the dealer as not even they are informed when fit and finish change.

More DESIGN FAILURES

When we got the C, it handled like a pig. Reading in various forums, people said get it aligned as they are never properly aligned. We did – no help. Reading more, people then said to get new sway bars and steering stabilizer. We did. Fourteen hundred dollars later – the difference is night and day. Does Ford know, Forest River is building 15,000 pound vehicles on their chassis that aren’t really equipped for it? Sure they do. Does Forest River know they are building 15k pound vehicles that handle like crap? Sure they do. Could Forest River fix the problem for less than $1k at the factory? Sure they could. Would buyers avoid this model if it priced $1.5k more but had corrected suspension? Sure they would. Would buyers spend the extra money up front if they knew the difference? Would they ever even know their rig could handle much better than it does?

Maybe. Maybe not.

And therein lies the rub. Manufacturers don’t want educated buyers.

I believe that is why we never hear them talk about real quality. They never engage in conversations online about quality. They don’t want public discussions with knowledgeable or experienced RV owners or buyers. Did you every go to an RV show and see an RV with all the skins off? I don’t mean one cover, I mean everything? They are NOT proud of how they build RVs.

We did get to tour the trailer factory. It truly was like watching sausage being made. Trailers go from bare frame to out the door in somewhere between 4-6 hours. They let us tour the Class C factory – but it was only a quick walkthrough and we weren’t allowed to get within 10 feet of models under construction.

Knowledgeable buyers? They consider that to be an ANATHEMA.

They want “those people” to go buy 10 year old RVs, gut them and fix them up the way they want. And if we were ten years younger with two (four) good shoulders, we’d have considered doing exactly that. Youtube is full of stories of people buying older rigs and stripping some or all of the guts and fixing them up proper. They end up with rigs costing much less than new and for the most part, much better than could be bought new. But most buyers can’t do that. There are also plenty of new rigs getting “fixed up proper” as well.  Look around Youtube and you can find the guy who spent months getting warranty items (he knew about) fixed and is now adding about $10k of upgrades.  He’s a full timer so maybe it’ll work out.

There are also a lot of us “bitching” on blogs and videos about the poor quality of RVs and all the problems with the industry. We aren’t just bitching, we are also trying to educate. And maybe still failing.

As long as there is an unlimited supply of buyers who don’t seem to care what they buy, there is no incentive for manufacturers to change.

So, why no traction with the media? Crazy Washington politics? Shot up schools? Climate change? In contrast, RV problems seem to be pretty much a first world problem. People who can afford RVs are complaining about them? Is that news?   If people were complaining about their homes or Mercedes or BMWs would media take notice? Tesla’s? What is the difference? I don’t claim to know the answer. But I suspect it has something to do with misconceptions about what RVs mean to hundreds of thousands of us; how many people are affected and how the entire problem is driven by profits for billionaires.

As long as people buy, manufacturers will get by, very well, claiming quality but building junk.

If you search “Forest River RV”, there isn’t any negative information in the first several pages of results. If you search “Forest River Quality”, there are links to forums in the first page – but there is also a link to Quality Assurance: a serious misnomer from FR. http://www.forestriverinc.com/quality-assurance.aspx

They say: With production capacity of a wide range and huge volume of products, Forest River, Inc. is able to fulfill its customers’ orders promptly without cutting corners or rushing through production procedures. Whether it is RV, buses, pontoons park models or cargo trailers, each product undergoes an iterative design process with standard specifications being met and adhered to rigorously. This ensures that each Forest River, Inc., product is conscientiously built so that every product safely and consistently meets the customers’ needs.

If that didn’t make you throw up it goes on:

PRE-DELIVERY INSPECTION FOR RVS

Our recreational vehicles go through a detailed inspection before they are shipped to the customer. This systematic Quality Test takes place in a Pre-Delivery Inspection (PDI), a state-of-the-art facility that gives immediate daily feedback to production for quality assurance of every unit manufactured. Housed in an aesthetically pleasing 20,000 square foot complex, the test facility blends many of the old tried-and-true methods of testing diverse types of our RV’s with new innovative ways of solving quality issues. All incoming units are appraised for quality of electrical systems, fresh water, holding tanks and numerous other mechanical or visual criteria as they journey down the PDI aisles.

This of course is marketing baloney but is part of what buyers are presented with in their search process. It’s a small leap for a would-be buyer to see a complaint and rationalize that “that guy” just was unlucky. Clearly, construction is rushed.

When we toured a FR travel trailer factory – the only inspection every trailer received was the rushed one at the end of the assembly line. ONE trailer per day was inspected at a separate building. The assembly line knew in advance WHICH TRAILER WOULD BE INSPECTED THAT DAY and we were told by the tour guide “Last year they had one perfect trailer” as if that was an accomplishment.

Note, in the included picture – there is one of every type RV in the facility – because they only test a few of the units they build. And we were told the trailer was inspected at another building on the same lot – other types of RV’s are built in different factories miles apart. So this image seems to me to be of a fictitious inspection facility.

Of course every trailer is inspected by the dealer – but as we know, those inspections are subject to a thousand variables and pressures. .   A true thorough inspection would require removing all panels and covers and testing every single function, every single wire crimp. Not likely to happen. Even then – that is only a go, nogo test. It says nothing about the “not fully crimped wire connection” that will fall apart 1274 miles down the road.

So, if you own, write about, are a part of the RV industry, Publish and Educate!

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If you want to read more, get my book Your RV is Broken! on Amazon.