The Hershey Crowds Were Real. So Is the RV Slump.

RV Podcast - Stories From The Road

The episode explores the disconnect between high attendance at the Hershey RV show and a significant decline in wholesale RV shipments, whic

Key takeaways

• Wholesale RV shipments through July were down almost 14% compared to the previous year.
• Motorhome shipments saw a significant drop of more than 25% in July alone.

Main topics

• RV Industry Market Trends
• Alliance RV Open House

Notable quotes

A big crowd at an RV show is not the same thing as a healthy RV industry.

Conclusion

This episode provides critical updates for RV owners regarding market

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hello, everybody. I'm Mike Wendland, and this is the Monday RV Podcast News Edition for September 21st, 2026. This is one of two RV podcast episodes that we do every week here. This one publishes 6 a.m. every Monday with the biggest news stories affecting the RV lifestyle. And then on Wednesdays, 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. Before we get to the news, one date to put on your calendar. Thursday, October 8th, I'm teaching our end-of-season RV shutdown workshop. It will be live, and it will walk you through the complete shutdown process for your rig with particular attention to the plumbing system, which is where an expensive water mistake usually happens. If you've ever opened up in the spring and found a split water line, a cracked fitting, or a pump that won't prime, This is the workshop that keeps that from happening again. You can sign up at rvlifestyle.com slash workshop. We'll have that link in the show notes that you'll find it to rvpodcast.com. But again, the direct link, get your spot, rvlifestyle.com slash workshop. Seats go fast. Get yours right now, 10 bucks, rvlifestyle.com slash workshop. I'm a journalist by training and more than 40 years working for big city newspapers and television stations and the network. And that is where I learned to source every story I do. And that's what we do here on the RV podcast. We came up with the news business and old habits die hard. So we source our stories. We check the numbers. We try and 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, and you find that at rvpodcast.com. Go to the show notes page, click the transcript tab, scroll all the way down to the bottom, every source linked right there. Now, let's get to the RV news of the week. Story one, Hershey drew a crowd. The industry is still shrinking. America's largest RV show wrapped up yesterday in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Five days, nearly 1,500 RVs, 40 manufacturers, about 200 vendor booths spread across the giant center and the parking lots around it. And a lot of people walked through the gates. Opening day drew 7,322 people, according to the Pennsylvania RV and Camping Association, which puts on the show. That's the biggest first day since 2021, and it's up about 800 people from last year. Heather Leach, the longtime Association Executive Director, said that they were really pleased with the turnout and that pre-sale tickets were running even ahead of last year. And now here's where I want to put on the reporter hat. A big crowd at an RV show is not the same thing as a healthy RV industry. Those two things are being blended together this week in a lot of press releases, and they should not be. Because at the same time, all those people were walking the lots at Hershey, the RV Industry Association's own numbers were telling a very different story. The association's summer forecast projects about 314,000 wholesale shipments for all of 2026. That's roughly down to 8%. Now, that's wholesale shipments. The actual shipments have been running way worse than the forecast. Through July, the most recent month reported, Wholesale shipments were down almost 14 % from the same period a year ago. And July was the weakest July for RV shipments since at least 2015. Motorhomes took the worst of it. Motorhome shipments down more than 25 % in July alone. So what do you make of a well-attended show in a down market? Well, we think the answer is pretty simple. It's not the answer the industry wants. Interest in the RV lifestyle is not the problem. People very much still want to travel this way. The problem is the price of a new RV, the cost of financing one, and the fact that dealers are still sitting on units from two model years. That last part is the opportunity for you. Because a show like Hershey is where dealers move leftover inventory. And this year they had a lot of it to move if you were there or if you're headed to a fall show near you. We put the fall schedule out every day in the RV Lifestyle newsletter, rvlifestyle.com slash newsletter. The fall show schedule is always listed there. Anyway, the discounts in the fall are real. So are the traps. We tell you about this all the time, but I can't emphasize it enough. Get the complete out-the-door price in writing before you talk about a monthly payment. Don't shop on a monthly payment. They can make anything work. Get the real price. Freight, prep, documentation fees if they charge you those ridiculous things. Dealer add-ons. That's where a good deal quietly stops being a good deal. Second, arrange your financing before