RV Makers Enjoyed Pandemic Boom, But Would Settle For Pre-2020 Sales

Recreational-vehicle makers enjoyed a record decade of sales after the Great Recession, with the industry’s unprecedented boom times coinciding with an expansion of Americans in upscale demographics, a period of relatively inexpensive gasoline, and one that saw massive retirements by the leading edge of the baby boom, as well as other favorable factors.

Then, when the pandemic hit in 2020, RV sales revved to an even higher level, fueled by consumers’ interest in “social distancing,” the freedom many gained to be physically untethered from their workplaces, and the extra cash that found its way into Americans’ bank accounts due to federal-government largess.

Now RV makers face an uncertain future, one where sales have come down markedly from Covid-era peaks but a landscape that also allows for a certain amount of optimism despite macroeconomic trends that seem foreboding.

“In the 19 RV shows we’ve already participated in since the beginning of the year, attendance was very strong,” Jon Ferrando, head of the Blue Compass RV retail chain, the nation’s second-largest, told me. “We also had strong sales at the Tampa show, our second-highest of all time” at the industry’s iconic Florida RV SuperShow in January. “Overall show traffic has been very strong, which is a good early indictor of a positive trend.”

Huw Bower, president of the Winnebago RV brand, agreed that “retail demand at some early shows has been on par with early last year, and others have been slightly below that.”

Bower told me that “the covid spike really was a huge boon for the industry, and now we’re returning to more normalized volumes.” But among the factors he believes will help the industry enjoy a new rise in demand is that “people who bought anything available during Covd will start now to shop for the right vehicle for them, and price-point innovations will help buoy us too.”

RV sales in the U.S. rose robustly during 2020 and to record levels during 2021, notching more than 600,000 wholesale shipments two years ago, up by 19% over the previous record of 505,000 sales in 2017. The first half of 2022 was promising as well. Then macroeconomic factors began to hit hard, including spiking interest rates that affected purchase financing, record consumer-price inflation, and higher gasoline prices.

“Consumer confidence correlates closely with RV sales, and [that measure] reached a 40-year low in June,” Ferrando noted. “The drop in sales last year was significant in the second half. We had good retail momentum until the macro factors caught up.”

All told, RV wholesale shipments last year ended up at about 495,300 units, or down about 17% from the 2021 record. For this year, the RV Industry Association has projected U.S. wholesale sales of 379,000 to 404,000 units, with a most likely year-end total of 392,500. That would represent a 21% decline from 2022 and would come close to matching the 2019 total of 406,000 units. The association predicted a continued retreat in RV shipments through the first half of this year because of the economic headwinds but the beginning of a recovery in the second half of 2023.

Bower said that one of the enduring strengths of the RV industry from the post-recession boom was that “we have innovated around price points. We’ve been fast to innovate on prices and we have been very closely tied into consumer expectations on prices. We will see the industry continue to innovate with new price points and attracting new consumers to the lifestyle.”

RV Industry Association President and CEO Craig Kirby said in a recent press release, “The long-term health of the industry remains strong thanks to the droves of younger and more diverse buyers who have entered the RV lifestyle over the past few years.”

Ferrando agreed that, while “underlying demographics are strong for RVs, the consumer is taking more time and working through affordability factors, especially with high interest rates still. They’re working through what they want to do.”