425. Hershey RV Show Sales, Lippert-Patrick Merger Drama, Tree Poisonings, and More

RV Miles Podcast

The episode presents a 'potpourri' of recent RV industry news and environmental stories. The hosts discuss the performance of the Hershey RV

Key takeaways

• Hershey RV show attendance saw a 5% decrease compared to the previous year.
• The RV market is currently shifting preference toward towables over motorhomes.

Main topics

• Hershey RV Show Recap
• Lippert-Patrick Merger Drama

Notable quotes

This is our mileage may vary segment, right.

Conclusion

The episode highlights the tension between industry consolidation and

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) RV Miles is sponsored by Blue Ox. Chances are you've seen them on the road. That's because Blue Ox designs and manufactures the best towing products in the industry. Just look around. You'll find them on highways and campgrounds and anywhere you find people traveling through the great outdoors. From award-winning tow bars, base plates, and brakes to a full line of weight-distributing hitches, fifth-wheel hitches, receiver hitches, and adjustable ball mounts. With Blue Ox, towing doesn't have to be a drag. Visit BlueOx.com for more information. This week, a whole lot of wild information has surfaced about that big Lippert and Patrick Industries merger that we're excited to get into the details about. Plus a recap of the Hershey RV show and where the RV industry and dealers feel the industry is headed going forward. This is RV Miles. Welcome to episode number 425 of RV Miles. I'm Jason. And Speaker 2 (0:54) I'm Abby. And we are two RVers who, along with our three boys, have been crisscrossing North America on one epic road trip since 2016. Here at RV Miles, we talk all things RV and outdoors, from industry news to travel destinations, national parks, and a whole lot more. Speaker 1 (1:12) Welcome back, everybody. we took last week off because so we were Speaker 2 (1:17) protesting last week. So we were out in California Speaker 1 (1:21) having a wonderful journey up to Pinnacles National Park in Monterey. And it was a blast. And Speaker 2 (1:28) absolutely excited Speaker 1 (1:29) in the future. Share about that trip in in the bolus, which is awesome. RV spoiler alert. Speaker 2 (1:36) Spoiler alert. We didn't hate it. But Speaker 1 (1:39) today we're going to talk about a few different items. that are sort of current event related. Yes. And I think we should start here by talking about the Hershey RV show. Okay. Speaker 2 (1:51) But before we do that, can we talk just for a minute about the idea surrounding this episode to give everyone kind of our thought process to this. And I need to pull the people. So I'm Speaker 1 (2:05) going Speaker 2 (2:05) to need their help with something. This episode is an episode we have been wanting to do for a really long time, sort of a potpourri, if you will, of various different topics that come across our desk throughout the month or the couple of months that maybe Jason only slightly touches on in the news, or maybe it's a funny story that we saw somewhere, or whatever that may be. It's just something we've been wanting to do, but we've been having a really hard time figuring out. how do you bring this in and then do a travel destination or have an interview when this is really a collection of topics that could run all the way through the episode and really also filter into Fresh Tank, Black Tank. Speaker 1 (2:49) It's kind of like... And it wouldn't always be this, but this one in particular is going to be kind of like just taking some of the news stories and expanding on them a bit and sharing our thoughts and opinions about them. But Speaker 2 (3:02) maybe it's going back and we've found a collection of national park stories we want to talk about or, you know, things that have happened in and around the camping world or across social media or just things of that nature. They're all still going to be RV, camping, public lands, travel related. maybe they don't all fit into one particular box, right? So able to kind of jump around and grab from different places. It's a potpourri. Yeah, the hard thing is, I Speaker 1 (3:31) mean, there are a lot of podcasts that this is just what they do. But for us, one of the challenges we have is like YouTube really likes the title and the topic to be like a thing that's searchable. And that's something that is the unfortunate reality of podcasts moving. into the video realm and YouTube being an entirely different animal than you're sort of like, I just listened to this show weekly type thing. Speaker 2 (3:58) Yeah. Speaker 1 (3:59) So part of me just wants to say, who cares? Right. YouTube can just deal with it, right? This is kind of the answer to that. Like Speaker 2 (4:07) being able to talk about, you know, impacting of how RV impacts our own personal lives and having those kinds of conversations. So this is going to become... a more scheduled episode. Maybe it's every four, six, eight, we don't know yet. But what we would like to do so that you have an idea going forward, similar to how Jason does the Thursday Q &As every four weeks that y'all really love when he... dives into comments and maybe that's something we do here. We get to take this kind of episode and dive into some of the comments you're leaving us and have conversations built around that. But I do feel like it needs some kind of a name. You Speaker 1 (4:52) just love things to have a name. Speaker 2 (4:55) I Speaker 1 (4:55) love Speaker 2 (4:55) naming things, right? We have fresh tank, black tank. Like I just want to, you know, so if we go this route, I'm going to throw out five. Speaker 2 (5:07) potential names for this segment, for these kinds of episodes. And then y'all need to tell me in the comments, or you can email us if you're listening, however you want to do it as a listener. If you're watching, you can drop it down in the YouTube video, but tell me kind of what you think about these. Okay. Cause I, I brainstormed a whole bunch playing off of the RV miles name. So road notes. Speaker 2 (5:36) Between stops, okay, mileage may vary. This is our mileage may vary segment, right? So Speaker 1 (5:46) I'm looking at your list over there and you're skipping one that I think is pretty good. Speaker 2 (5:52) Okay. Speaker 1 (5:52) Loose gravel. I like loose gravel. Speaker 2 (5:55) Okay. Okay. So then we'll incorporate loose gravel into this one. So here are the five and you can tell us if any of these make sense to you for. this segment that we're going to be doing here on the podcast. So we've got road notes, between stops, mileage may vary, loose gravel, and now I lost where I wrote my other one Speaker 1 (6:28) down. I think it was the first one. Speaker 2 (6:32) I already said road notes. I wrote it somewhere else. Okay, you know what? we've got four and four is plenty it'll it'll be in the audio so they can hear it too Speaker 1 (6:45) but obviously it was it was so good but if Speaker 2 (6:48) i said a fifth one and it was so good that i didn't write it down on the show notes because you've got Speaker 1 (6:53) a list of several you just picked five that you that Speaker 2 (6:56) i liked but i thought i wrote the five that i liked in order so it's been a minute um I'm recovering from walking pneumonia, which I just learned about. And apparently I have had since Jason and I post getting strep back at the end of July. So I found out while I was in California that I was diagnosed with walking pneumonia after finally going in and having some blood work done because I was not getting better. So I did the entire show come from away with walking pneumonia. And several weeks leading into it. So my brain is Speaker 1 (7:39) still... Speaker 2 (7:39) And a trip to California. And a trip, two trips to California. Yeah. So my brain is not operating as it should right now because I am healing from a very long bout of walking pneumonia, which is one of the reasons why once we got back from California last week on a very late Friday night, we thought... There's no way anything we have to say on Sunday will make any sense to anybody. We should come back fresh. And Jason is back fresh. Abby is back. Still Speaker 1 (8:15) coming to Speaker 2 (8:15) Abby is back. All Speaker 1 (8:17) right. Well, let's start. Let's start. Like I said, this episode is going to be kind of insider baseball stuff about the RV industry, which I find fun from from time to time. So Speaker 2 (8:27) inside the Speaker 1 (8:28) RV, we want to start with talking about the Hershey RV show. I did a news video, the regular news video last Monday, rounding up some. some great new stuff happening that was on display at the Hershey RV show and getting some feedback from different RV manufacturers about how the show went for them. First of all, you're going to be seeing some video of the show over this. If you're watching on YouTube, I want to again, thank Joshua Sheehan over at RV gear and far. for taking all of this b-roll video for us because we weren't at the show Speaker 2 (9:05) and Speaker 1 (9:05) uh if one of the comments on the video uh was like it looks like you were there i thought you were no we were not there joshua does great work over at the rv gear and far channel go check him out over there so Speaker 2 (9:18) one of the reasons why i wanted to put this on today's episode is actually because of the comments that you got off of that news video. A lot of disbelief that dealers and manufacturers could have come out of Hershey with the kind of language that has come out of Hershey. Now, I'm looking at an article here from rvbusiness.com. The CEO over at Blue Compass says that they had a great week despite attendance being down. And attendance was down this year. I think it was 41,800. It was down 5 % Speaker 1 (9:51) over last year. And that's... with the state of the industry as it is. Last year was a tough year. So let's, I mean, let's not sugarcoat that, but like a little bit down from last year is to be expected. I think they had some poor weather over the weekend as well. So yeah, Blue Compass said essentially that they had a great show in terms of number of units and it really skewed. And we saw this from a couple different dealership chains. that it really skewed towards towables and away from motorhomes motorhomes yeah Speaker 2 (10:28) that was a big that was kind of a big takeaway and even colonial airstream was talking about and i thought this was i thought this was a really interesting comment was that he said that You know, they found this experience that they had at Hershey to be a better one. They were kind of tucked back a little bit behind a different manufacturer rather than being located on the main thoroughfare. And he said that what they found was that in the past when they were center stage, anybody would just come and look at an Airstream. And a lot of it was just traffic, but no one was really interested. So that the people that they had this year, it was incredibly deliberate, like they were being like sought out. And he thought that this was a much better experience for their guests, which he attributed to leading to more sales. Speaker 1 (11:14) Layout at these shows really matters a lot to the different manufacturers. And I think one of the things that people don't realize often is that when times are a little bit tough, it doesn't mean that everybody is struggling, right? So there are some parts of the industry that do particularly well. in those times. And so we, we, we talked to both, I talked to both Alliance and Ember for my report last Monday. And both of them felt like it was a pretty good show. Both were pretty, pretty honest. Ember was like, it was a little bit less than last year, a few units less than last year. But they, they still felt like it. It was extremely successful. Alliance has been kind of on a tear this year. They put out a press release a couple months ago saying that, hey, we're having record sales right now. And that sort of continued here through Hershey. Speaker 2 (12:25) Well, I think part of it has to do with this comment that, again, the Colonial Airstream. Speaker 2 (12:32) again, that the Colonial Airstream brand manager said, and that was that, you know, people are showing more knowledge about like what they're doing and that it's clear that they're researching more. But I think some of it too, is that in that case, and probably in Alliance's case too, when you are not on the main thoroughfare or you don't just have traffic running through and your reputation for quality is a little bit higher than maybe some of your competitors, And your dealers can take more time to talk to you because they have to in order to make the sale. Speaker 1 (13:11) They Speaker 2 (13:11) have to make you feel incredibly wanted and special and like you matter. Whereas we had seen probably in 21 and 22 at these shows, there were so many people and they were selling so fast that. dealers out on the floor were just like, whatever, if you're not going to give me, you know, tell me within five minutes, I'm moving on to someone else who's going to. And now they have to work for that dollar. And I think when you have to work harder for that dollar, that you probably turn the sale, especially in these higher end. fifth wheels and travel trailers a little bit more. Yeah. Speaker 1 (13:49) And that's just my Speaker 2 (13:51) theory on it a little bit. I Speaker 1 (13:53) think that's part of it. I also think that, so the buyers are right now, the people who are buying are much more deliberate. Obviously people are still, but you know, sales are down. Probably at the end of this year, it's going to look like a sales down somewhere around 25%. The weird thing is we always get numbers of units. What we don't get is a monetary number, right? We don't know Speaker 2 (14:22) the Speaker 1 (14:24) swing of like how expensive the units that sold was and what they sold for. But what we know in general is that the high end of the market, not necessarily luxury, but the... the brands that are have a better reputation even if that reputation is not deserved whatever the brands that have a better reputation um and the more expensive stuff to a limit um is doing better right now especially when it comes to trailers The low end of the market is doing better right now. People that don't have a lot of money are buying the entry-level trailers and the manufacturers are trying to be deliberate in providing options for those people. The middle range has been what has been struggling for the last year and a half, for two years. Speaker 2 (15:17) Yeah, because Brian Wilkinson, who runs Wilkins RV, or Brian... Say your thing again because I said his name wrong. Just finish up your last sentence because Speaker 1 (15:26) I cut you off. Speaker 2 (15:28) Seems that you were talking about the low end. Yeah. Speaker 1 (15:32) And that's something that's really been going on for about the last two years. Well, Speaker 2 (15:36) Brian Wilkins, who's the president of Wilkins RV, which is out of New York, I think this is the other side of the coin because it sounds like they are high end. And they said from a high level, I would say results are tracking the way the year's tracking. It sounds like it was a tough week. So this seems like he's getting reports back. And there was certainly business there, but it had to be worked for. Margins were tough. He went on to say, I don't know that there's a segment that I would say