$7.27 Diesel, Forest River Shuts Out RV Influencers | RV News

RV Podcast - Stories From The Road

Mike Wendland reports from the Great Smoky Mountains, discussing how high diesel prices are forcing RVers to adjust their travel patterns. T

Key takeaways

• Diesel prices reached $7.27 a gallon in Ohio, leading travelers to adopt shorter driving days and longer stays.
• Forest River has implemented new restrictions at their Elkhart open house, prohibiting photography and filming by content creators.

Main topics

• Diesel fuel price impacts
• RV manufacturing quality and service

Notable quotes

In this industry, it has become the exception people celebrate.

Conclusion

Despite economic headwinds and industry friction, the fundamental appe

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hello, everybody. I'm Mike Wendland, and this is the Monday RV Podcast News Edition for September 28th, 2026. We're coming to you this morning from the Great Smoky Mountains. We're at the Margaritaville Campground, and we're holding the Fall Rally for the RV Lifestyle community here. This is one of two RV Podcast episodes that we do every single week. This one publishes at 6 a.m. every Monday with the biggest news stories affecting the RV lifestyle. Wednesday Jennifer joins me for our stories from the road edition where we have interviews and share RV lifestyle tips and travel ideas and answer your questions but before we get to the news I got a date I need you to put on your calendar Thursday, October 8th, I'm teaching our end-of-the-season RV shutdown workshop. It's live, and it will walk you through the complete shutdown process for your rig when you take it out of service for the winter months. And we'll give you some special attention to the plumbing system. That is where the expensive winter mistakes happen. And if you've ever opened up in the spring and found maybe a split water line or a cracked fitting, This is the workshop that helps keep that from happening again. You can sign up at rvlifestyle.com slash workshop. Again, that's rvlifestyle.com slash workshop. We'll put that in the description below as well. Now, I'm a journalist by training. More than 40 years working for big city newspapers, television stations, network. That's where I learn to source every story I do, and that's what we do here. We came up in the news business, and old habits die hard, so we source our stories. We check the numbers, and we try to separate what actually happened from what the press releases want you to believe happened. And you'll find links to every story we report at the very end of the transcript for this episode. You find the transcript at rvpodcast.com. Go to the show notes page, click the transcript tab, and scroll all the way to the bottom. And let me invite you to sign up for our free RV Lifestyle newsletter. Do you get that? We publish it every morning, filled with RV news, travel inspiration, campground information. It's absolutely free. You can sign up at rvlifestyle.com slash newsletter. All right, let's get to the RV stories of the week. Story one, RVers are watching the pumps and they are still here. Now, I have to tell you, I am amazed at the RV community, how resilient it is. More than 80 RVers have joined us here in the Smoky Mountains for this rally this week, and every one of them has had to get here. From Texas, from New Mexico to the west, to Maine on the east, the UP of Michigan in the north, down to Florida in the south. And they've been watching fuel prices like a hawk. And here's what they paid for diesel on the way in. $7.27 a gallon in Ohio. About $7 in Michigan and Indiana. A little under $6 in Kentucky and $5.39, the best price anybody found right here in Tennessee. A year ago, it was under $4. Diesel hit an all-time record high this month. The experts trace it to, of course, the war with Iran and the disruption of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, along with the Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil facilities. Gasoline is up, too, about $1.03 a gallon from a year ago, according to AAA. Well, still, they came. And this is what strikes me. These folks are committed to this lifestyle. They adjusted. Shorter driving days, longer stays once they got here. Jennifer and I arrived two days before the rally started. A dozen others were already here, even earlier than us. And they're also clear-eyed about this industry. When you get a group of RVers around a campfire, the conversation turns to quality. Almost every time. leaks, slides that stick, things that don't work right, warranty work that takes months. I heard it from owners of just about every major brand. And I heard the other side too. On the rare times, somebody ran into good service, and they are rare times. A manufacturer maybe that picked up the phone, fixed the problem, stood behind the product. They talk about it like they won the lottery. Think about that a minute. Good service should be the expectation. In this industry, it has become the exception people celebrate. There was one more thing almost everybody noticed. The campgrounds are less crowded. The industry's own numbers help explain why. Camp Spot, which is a reservation software company that tracks thousands of parks, told RV Business that September occupancy across the parks is about 39%. Let that sink in a minute. So on a typical September night, Roughly six out of ten sites are empty, and people are booking closer to their arrival date. Back in June, as fuel prices started to climb, Camp Spot said stays were getting about one night shorter. KOA called it a more cautious consumer rather than a decline in camping interest, and I think they have that right, because the interest is sitting around the campfires that we've been having. But what people do not have is unlimited money for fuel or unlimited patience for rigs that break. The biggest