Trash RVs are ruining RVing for everyone!

This isn't the video I wanted to make, but we had to do it anyway. Now you've heard us talk a lot about the RV industry in the past and there are some things that we've held back that we feel like. I really have to say that I was very optimistic during the Hershey RV Show because we saw RVs from different manufacturers that looked like have better quality, but as we went to more and more shows and looked at different models, we were really disappointed. Many of the newer models aren't really where we expected them to be now and even my favorite brands have been disappointing.

John and I often take RV tours at different RV shows. We want to show you some things that We found while doing RV tours, but we really wanted to dig in and look at the quality of some of these RVs, and boy, were we disappointed and it wasn't just with the really cheap brands that we looked at, in RVs that They range from $90,000. at over $300,000 and we saw the same problems and the same issues in all of those RVs, to be honest I heard the excuse that you are driving your RV and an earthquake but at some point the quality is still unacceptable because it is bad Even before delivery, we've seen people have problems with their RVs from the time of purchase, they get their new RV, they're told the dealership had a PDI, they take it home and can't use it, it ends up happening. months and months and months in the store and we have viewers, several viewers come up to us and ask us if there is anything we can do because we have a presence on YouTube to help and unfortunately our channel right now is so small that not one is really going for us to listen and we have tried moving them to bigger channels to see if maybe they can help but this situation is a lot worse than I thought it would be at the moment, in fact if you look back at some of our older videos, John and I talked about how 2024 would be the year to buy an RV and that's why back in 20120, during covid, there was a parts shortage, a lab shortage of experienced labor and there was increased demand, so Los Manufacturers were releasing RV after RV at a record pace and no one was paying attention to the quality of these RVs and the line was not as experienced as it used to be before 2019.

Now I'm not saying they were. perfect in 2019 either, but it was better, it was better, and it's gotten a lot worse, folks, we're not RV inspectors now, no, we're not experts, but we know the difference between something that's built well and something that sucks. , TRUE? say that word, oh my god, I never say that word, something that's garbage, there you go, it's better, yeah, okay, that's how infuriating this is, right here in this clip that we're going to show you now that we're looking at a house rolling. that we saw recently on a show, the wood is rough and the bottom of that drawer is quite flimsy.

I could never put pots in there if you had put pots in this drawer guaranteed after your first or second trip, those pots and pans or whatever you put in that drawer you will just break it and when you see poor quality fit and finish, that should be a red flag to anyone looking to buy an RV, whether new or used, let's look at our next A thin John panel they use over the bedroom bed is bending and coming down from the ceiling, it's not flush now , that's such an easy fix John, I mean that's something that should never happen, why are you hanging off a new RV?

It just came from the factory and it probably had a PDI that they are trying to sell to someone who won't even notice it and it's a display model that shouldn't happen, no we should take a look at the next one here, we have some. the buckling roof edge is just coming out, this was one of my favorites that we saw, yeah, while we were at this RV Show. I mean, I really loved this RV, but then when we came back and started looking at the quality of the fit and I was done, I was like holy cow, come on, you think we're that stupid?

Consumers are so stupid. Why do we keep buying things like this? How do we overlook these things well as I mentioned before? People say that's VRN, that's what you know. We're going to have to fix it and you know, that's something that I think we as consumers have to change, we really have to change the narrative that this is what you expect from an RV, that when you buy an RV, it's a earthquake descending. highway at 60 MPH or however you want to say that, because that doesn't mean you shouldn't expect good quality when you buy it, it doesn't mean that when I buy a new RV my slides shouldn't work I have a leak, my trim is falling off before I've even driven 100 miles that um um um the walls are buckling and weak that just shouldn't happen and I think we as consumers are enabling the RV industry by continuing to buy last year.

We bought a diesel pusher after our first RV. We really wanted to have that nice, comfortable ride of a diesel pusher. We bought one at an RV show. We did it. We got a fantastic price for it. The manufacturer even contributed some money. And then we were delivered a motor home that looked like this, we found when we looked outside, we opened the cargo bay doors and around the top of the rubber seals there were clear signs of rust and we didn't know where it had occurred . it came but it had dripped on the rubber seals and it had dried out and it was a powdery rust substance on the seals it was everywhere it was and it wasn't limited to a cargo compartment no and how does a new RV get rust? that has accumulated so much that it is even in the rubber, rubber is not supposed to rust, yes, I knew it came from somewhere else.

We also noticed that the cargo compartment doors have these pistons, well many of the pistons are supposed to be secured by two screws in the body of the motorhome, many of those screws had been completely sheared, the screw heads had missing, some were hanging on a screw, a couple of them, both screws had come out and the pistons were just hanging on the cargo bed, how do you leave it? the factory like that with the pistons hanging in the car, wow Bay, how does it leave the factory? How does no one say hey there's a problem here?

How does no one say you know what? It is solved, how do you say h? We're sending it anyway and you know what I really feel bad and I know this is going to be surprising but I actually know I'm getting nervous but I actually feel. It's bad for dealers because dealers get this crap and it costs them money to fix it. I mean, I know the manufacturer reimburses them some, but if it works like the auto industry, they probably don't get paid that much. to fix things from the manufacturer that are broken like they do with a customer who comes in with a problem, you know, let's say an old RV or wants something done to their RV, so there's really no incentive for them to have I have to continue fixing all this.

Not things, I mean, how many things can I say? How big of a service department do these places have? Okay, sorry, go ahead, finish, finish what you were saying. Well continuing as we walked through the door we saw two more issues immediately around the door. door frame somehow, I don't know how they did this, but the door frame was dented so that it was almost seamless and then there was a gap on the side and you could clearly see that something had hit it right on the edge. of the door frame and right next to the door there was also another piece, uh, I don't know what it was, it was a pretty big piece, but it wasn't secured at all, it was just there and if we had hit bumps or anything it would have come off. fallen down and we were like what is this, we don't know what this is or where it goes because it wasn't even screwed or clamped or I don't know how it was.

It was supposed to be secure but it was just there, yeah the bedroom door was a sliding door of two pieces. It had one piece that slid into another piece that slid all the way on top. We noticed that the thing was hanging crooked and at the top, where it was hanging from the rail, they hadn't driven all the screws in all the way and one of the pieces was coming loose, it was coming off, so that was a problem and in the bathroom, under the vanity, wires were clearly hanging Yes, because you know that water and electricity mix very well.

Now I want to say a word of warning: the transmission was amazing, okay, the charging part was just golden, it was really good, the thing worked very well, it ran very well, that was all great. and it's the same with our RV. If you watch our channel, you know that we have had many different problems with our RV and the first time we went back to the manufacturer we had almost the 20 or 30 items needed. to be repaired and it's the same with our chassis, the Ford chassis has been fantastic, now we had a problem with the spark plug wires and that was a known problem, they took care of us, they took care of paying Even though we were on the road, But we haven't had any problems with the chassis, you take care of the chassis and it will take care of you.

Every single problem we have had has been with what was added. that RV manufacturer chassis, and I and you know the most disturbing thing is that all of these things would be rectified with simple quality control gates from the manufacturer at each phase of manufacturing, as you say, I'm laying the plumbing. Well, someone comes by, takes a look, checks that it's okay, just an experienced person or a chief engineer, who takes a look and says this is okay, someone puts it in the cabinets. Someone else comes over, takes a look, checks to see if everything looks good.

We're good, right, and I don't see how this would cost them that much more money, maybe I don't know, but it can't, it can't cost any more than what it's costing these manufacturers to get all these RVs. It's fixed once they get out the door, no, it's always better to get it right the first time, then you don't have to come back at all, that's exactly it John, another thing I should mention is that those quality control doors only work . So far you also have to use Quality Parts and we don't see Quality Parts being used correctly on these RVs.

For example, let me show you some more RV videos I watched while I was in the RV. Here is the wall between the bedroom and the bathroom in this RV, if you want to call it a wall, this is a flimsy piece of material that won't hold up to anything. This stuff should not be in an RV. Now, below, we are looking. in the bathroom of a motor home, this was a classy motor home and the sticker price of this motor home was almost $200,000. The pictures don't actually show it as well as we'd hoped, but it was bulging, we noticed that.

Look at that lump. look at that bump, oh yeah, yeah, you can see it, come on, you're wondering what's going on there and it looks like the edge in the corner isn't quite right either, no, it wasn't placed there properly if it looks good. If the fit and finish looks good, everything else is done the right way, yeah, look at the caulking behind this sink, uh, I'm not even sure if it's supposed to be part of the backsplash or what, but they used a lot of caulking there and it's a very shoddy job, you know what that tells me John, which makes me think that something probably wasn't aligned correctly, like maybe there was a gap somewhere and they used it as filler, they used the roof as filler, so that that back tie that's a stack, that splash guard, whatever you want to call it, would hold up well and not have a big gap between them, well, it's got a huge gap, it's just there. filled with whatever that goo is, now it almost seems like nothing compared to everything else.

We saw it, but this is like wallpaper, just yeah, just a little bit of excess wallpaper down there and it's not glued or cut. I don't know, you could glue it, you could cut it, you could cut it, you could glue it, you could do it. It went well the first time and then we even noticed with RV furniture that the quality is not what it used to be. We've seen furniture where the upholstery wasn't as well placed as it should be so there were wrinkles in strange places and look, I understand that many RV manufacturers don't make their own furniture.

That's true, I get it, but gosh, at least have some quality expectations from your suppliers, don't take anything, pressure them to do it. say, hey, we're not going to take this because we'll be responsible for it later. I mean, if I have a business and I'm building something for my clients, I'll try to put in the right materials and If my suppliers are giving me crap, I won't get it or I'll send it back to them. Do you know who? You remind me of whatGuy at the RV dealership we went to said he wouldn't take anything, yeah.

I have to tell you, we met an RV dealer that I would trust because he said we looked at his RVs and his RVs looked fantastic, they all look great and even, even for manufacturers that we like, we don't really expect good quality and he said it's because he's done it in the past and the manufacturers know that he's returned RVs or he hasn't actually taken delivery of RVs if they didn't meet his expectations, right, I expected them to be clean, yeah, I hoped they would. would have passed some type of approval. from a proper inspection and he hoped they wouldn't have like all these visual defects that we see in other RVs visual defect which is very true, John, yeah, it was great BL RV.

I'll call him, you call him. I'm sure it'll be fine, here it is aloneAnother example, there is a big hole in the wall that had something to do with where the door was and it kept banging there but no one cared because you know who cares about a hole in the wall , it's a small hole, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, look my finger could almost fit in it and look, look, look, it's peeling too. What do you mean it's a small hole? A little glue. Yes, but they should have glued it before delivering it. I mean the dealership.

I know you're right, we don't like to think about problems without having a solution. I don't know what the solution is, other than people stop buying these RVs or we get together and lobby and you know. I'm not a fan of a lot of regulations, but maybe we need something similar to what the auto industry has. I mean, even when you buy big trucks like semi-trucks, you don't see these problems with them either, I don't know. I never bought a semi, right? Well, I'm thinking they're built like cars. I don't know about the buses that we know about the buses that we do know about and the buses that we bought when so John and I when we were in college we drove buses for our college and John was a mechanic on the buses when those buses were delivered to the college they were in good condition they were in very good shape they were going exactly on the road and I understand you know it's not automated like the automobile industry that everything is done by hand.

I think they could automate it more. They need to know, but so much is done by hand that there is a lot of room for error and it's not just that it's done by hand, but the factory workers know who's going to check what's being done who cares no one cares no one cares if I ship this with a big hole no one cares if this ladder is dented or this door is dented or if the electrical wiring is wrong no one cares If I'm not using the correct fittings on the pipes, the dealers they'll fix it and no one cares that campers can't go camping when they buy these new RVs because they're sitting at the dealership waiting for them to fix them because they're already sold at that point yeah so I mean we have a couple of things we can tell you: one is, please never and I don't care if you are buying used or new, never buy one.

RV without receiving an inspection from a nrvia certified inspector and in fact this is what I would personally do and this is what we did yeah so the dealership cleans the RV a little bit before you get it and then you ask your inspector to come. and take a look at it right now, if we had done that, we would have never known that there was a potential problem with water leaks or whatever on the RV buyback because they could have cleaned that rust off, that's right, so we and they True way they understood it, what I would really recommend is that if you order an RV, you go there and look at it first because then you'll probably see a lot of the things that are probably wrong and then you can decide.

Whether you buy it or not, if it exceeds your expectations and things look good, then I would call your inspector because you don't want to have a lot of known problems before you pay an inspector, then call your inspector to come. and take a look at it once you know the things that are wrong with the RV, then you can make a decision on whether or not you want to buy that RV because there are some things that you know are very easy to fix, like. you know, wallpaper, you know, maybe a dent or something. I don't know, give a list of things, John, there are a lot of minor things that can be easily fixed.

I mean, you might see a paint problem or a trim problem. so it could be easily fixed now, right, other things like water problems, that's a big problem, yeah, so a water problem, a slide problem, depending on what the problem is, it's electrical, it's really a big problem, things like that that I would stay away from, I would just eat up the money. from the inspector, yeah, and there are certain things that I would just stay away from because even if you've had an inspector and they fix it, your inspector will come back and inspect it again, of course, if you want to pay them more money, right? but besides that, don't you know that even after an inspector comes and you're driving down the road, things can go wrong after it's been repaired, the other thing we can do is not buy these RVs, you know? really bad overall for the RV industry because I think things are going to go very bad, yeah, I think Thor could come in and buy more or another company like Thor could buy more companies, which we're seeing a lot.

There are fewer and fewer options because Wago owns Grand Design, they own Numar, they own other things, right, Thor, they own so many different brands, it's incredible, it's incredible, Forest River, right, they own so many different brands, Forest River, and I think we'll see. As you know, we will see more and more of these manufacturers, the smaller ones or even the good quality ones, being gobbled up by the bigger ones and I don't want that to happen and the other thing that we're seeing right now is that the manufacturing industry RVing is in a lot of trouble and I think right now they are at a crossroads with the state of the economy and people having less discretionary income and the interest rate is so high that there are fewer people who want an RV than actually can buy an RV right now and we are seeing the effects if you look at any of the stats unless RV does a really good job of doing the stats just like Josh the RV Nerd does. he's really good, yeah, yeah, if you watch any of the videos of him, you'll see how the number of sales and shipments are going down in the RV industry and at some point that means layoffs for the people that are working.

I don't blame the workers on the floor. Because the workers on the floor are instructed by their leadership teams, I blame the people in charge of the RV manufacturers because they should take charge, they should say, "Okay, guys, now we're going to start delivering quality." . people because that's what they want and they're not, and you'll see RVs like Brinkley, I don't want anyone to think that if you buy Brinkley it's going to be 100% perfect because they have problems, no machine is. 100% perfect no, and we have talked to people who have bought Brinkley brinkleys and had problems with them too, but not as many as I have seen with some of these other manufacturers, yes they are beautiful machines, they really are.

Well actually John even broke something online but we ran across and found the same thing broken on multiple RVs on multiple Brinkly's while we were doing our RV tour so I think it's because it's a new item yeah it's a new thing and you. I know I've also seen another trend that you haven't mentioned now that you mentioned interest rates and prices. I noticed that manufacturers, instead of trying to manage their prices, are offering lower end options, yes John that's his name. DEC content, yeah, so here's the other thing: the cost of an RV has gone up so much that it's no longer sustainable, and I think you know the auto industry is having the same problem as 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, um, when there were supply issues and you know prices were going up for so many different things that the auto industry is now considering lowering the MSRP and I think the RV industry has to think about it as well because that MSRP doesn't It's a realistic number for the value you're understanding it, it's not and it's artificially inflated based on the greed of those hard times, yeah I'm just going to say it like I'm John, it was pure greed, we were able to take advantage of people, people will pay more people than we have.

RV waiting list, we're just going to charge what we can get and not think about what the impact will be down the line and that's exactly what happened and now you can buy an RV very easily, you can go to any dealership and buy it. at 50% off, what does that tell you about that MSRP? It's garbage, it's an imaginary number, it's garbage, folks, I love RVs, yeah, I hate making videos like this because I love the lifestyle. I don't want to discourage anyone from the lifestyle that I just want to warn you I want to warn you and I want you to be able to enjoy this, buy something before 2019.

Yes, definitely, if you are looking to buy an RV, okay, even John and I are considering use it now after what happened. We've seen it in some of the newer RVs, but get out there, enjoy it, have fun, camp, build bonds, it's a great way to see the country. I will tell you that it is a wonderful way to see the country and it is a wonderful way to Adventure, if you are enjoying our content, go ahead, subscribe to our channel, go ahead and hit the like button. It really helps YouTube get our videos to more people when you see engagement with the videos we have.

Get out and enjoy your adventure.