Our Story

Fixing RVs

When it comes to fixing RVs, no two days are ever the same. They all, however, start with Jon Luc Picard, aka Picard, our 14 pound Australian terrier waiting patiently while I shower. Riding shotgun on all but the hottest or coldest days, he knows the truck doesn't move, until the laptop and his food bowl are onboard. The laptop is filled with wiring diagrams and the dish of dog food serves as a mid-day snack, his not mine. Our ride, a 3/4 ton Silverado 4x4, gives a staccato bark and settles into an audible rumble. Today it's 50 miles to a new campground. Here in the hills of Tennessee, I can pray for divine direction or set the GPS on the dash. With directions usually consisting of something like "when you come to the fruit stand hang a left", I opt for the GPS.

Bristol, Tennessee, our home for the last 25 years, is split down the center by the Tennessee/Virginia state line. Beautiful country, mostly rural and not generally held in high academic regard. Fortunately, the hillbilly stereotype is a smokescreen that inhibits folks with more money than good sense from moving in and shearing off the tops of our mountains to improve their view. Most mornings, the fog or, as it's called in these parts, "smoke" hangs in the air with the sun just starting to claw its way through when we start on our first service call.

The RV industry is having a hard time in some parts of the country, and folks are staying closer to home. Maybe hanging on to their rigs longer than they would choose to do, if times were good. That means more service calls as things age. Today its two owners splitting the cost to get the truck to the campground. One needs the water heater fixed and one has electrical gremlins. Winding out of Hampton and along Watauga Lake towards the North Carolina line, traffic is light. The TVA drains almost all the lakes down in during the winter months and we have been in the midst of a drought, but things are looking up and the lakes are filling fast.

First stop is a travel trailer, neat and clean with a nice view overlooking the lake. No one home, but they left a key. Usually I do the work, leave a bill with an envelope, and head to the next job. Done work on some RVs for years and never met the owners. Today the water heater is working on electric, but refuses to fire on propane. Can be any one of a number of things, but my board tester tells me the computer board is terminal. Slap in a new board, cycle everything several times, and am ready to move on. The price of my boards has jumped almost 50% in the last few years. Upside is they have become much more dependable. Chalk one up to the manufacturers.

Next stop is a three-year-old fifth wheel. Switch on a light and the furnace blower motor speeds up. Refrigerator controls also are acting like they don't know whether to lead or follow. Check light stays on although everything is working. A quick check with my meter tells me the converter that charges the batteries has end-stage chargitis. It is also bleeding alternating current where direct current should be. It needs a transfusion of new parts and will require a return visit. Arrangements are made and it's time to head home.

On the way home, the owner of the travel trailer calls. He is winding down from Mountain City and is about ten minutes behind me and would like to pay me today. We meet at Arby's and talk a while. A remodeler by trade, we discussed trucks and the price of fuel. I tell him about the repair to his water heater and offer some general advice about maintenance. He keeps my number for future reference. Once home I order parts and call customers for the next day. Picard is already asleep on the couch.

Hope to see you on the road,

Steve

The Race

This is a picture of the "World's Fastest Half Mile", also known as the Bristol Motor Speedway. Twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall my home, Bristol, TN. swells in population from just under 50,000 to nearly 200,000 people. Right now it is the "calm before the storm". The fall race is just two weeks away and already fans are camped across the street from the track. They come early and line up in order to be the first ones through the gates to the campground next to the track.

For me, the race crowd brings a mixture of excitement and dread. Heavy traffic in the areas surrounding the race track, as the crowd peaks, means I spend almost as much time driving as I do working on RVs. Many of the RVers who come to the race arrive in borrowed or rented RVs and do not even know the make or model of RV in which they are sleeping. Over the years I have seen almost everything. Last year was a scorcher and I installed air conditioners non-stop from dawn until dusk. When I wasn't pushing coolers up a ladder onto the roof, my stops including reinstalling a rear cap on a diesel pusher, using crow bars to get a slide room unstuck, and trying to come up with "work arounds" for electrical problems which haunted a number of high-end motorhomes.

Since I am local and have been covering the track for a number of years, most campgrounds know me and let me enter without a problem. So far Bristol is not like some of the NASCAR circuits where large dealerships have purchased the campgrounds and restrict who can work in them. Sooner or later I am sure that will happen in Bristol, but for now things are still small and friendly.

Of course, by the end of the race, all of us who work the campgrounds are ready for things to be over. The stress of trying to remain pleasant and work, while surrounded by gawkers, is not the easiest way to make repairs and there are always plenty of folks willing to tell me how to fix something they have never before seen. One year it snowed for the spring race and I was still surrounded by "helpers".

With one week to go before race week, I build inventory and check my stock of standard parts I know will sell. Then I load my truck. Sometimes I stock too much of one thing and not enough of another, but I have never lost money at the race. Most nights I get the truck home by 10:00 and am back up by 6:00 the next morning reloading. By 7:00, I am usually at the track. I have had calls as early as 6:00 in the morning and campground owners might call as late as midnight, if there is something with which they need my help. Since this is my home, calls from locals are always welcome. They are just trying to make a living too.

My wife usually rides with me on the last two days before race day. We use her cell phone, as well as mine, and it is not unusual for her to have calls for service on both phones at once. She is much better than I at scheduling and keeping customers up to date regarding our progress. If the weather is cool, Picard, our Australian Terrier, will be in the truck with us. This week we are getting the rental units ready for the early arrivals. They will be here Sunday and it is our job to make sure everything in the rental units is working and we have documented a safety inspection in each rig.

One week and counting!

Hope to see you on the road,

Steve

Race Week Start To Finish

Well, time to go to work. The crowd is here. They began arriving Sunday, a full week before the race. Our work begins with the first calls on Sunday afternoon. Many of the campgrounds are not open yet and campers are set up in what are called "holding areas", until the gates to their respective campgrounds open. The mix of RVs ranges from high-end conversion buses to pop-ups, all sharing the same gravel parking lots. In between calls, we take the truck slowly between the campers, seldom moving more than a truck length or two before someone flags us down.

I think many folks would be surprised to ride with us and see how many stops we make because someone does not know how to operate a piece of equipment. Then there are the service calls requesting services that can not be realistically undertaken in the field. No one I know carries the equipment necessary to run diagnostics on diesel engines and full wall slides are a massive undertaking, if they are stuck while extended. More than once we stop and explain that appliances such as refrigerators or water heaters may not work without adequate battery power. No charge, call us, if you need us, welcome to Bristol! By 9:00 the first night, we have had it - and this is the shortest day we will have all week. By mid-week we are routinely fielding calls until mid-night and as early as 5:00 a.m.

This year, unlike last, temperatures are mild. With low to mid-60s at night and mid-80s during the day, demands for air conditioning are minimal and we install a single new roof top unit, as opposed to a dozen the preceding summer. On the other hand, with parts being made increasingly outside the United States, hard start capacitors are markedly short lived and we empty our entire inventory and purchased more at a local dealer's.

Traffic, once the day crowd comes in for the race, can be crushing. It is amazing how far people will walk to save the ten to fifty dollar fee. By my estimation, the ones who prefer not to get stuck in post-race traffic park more than a mile from the track. The number of campers looks to be smaller this ye ar. While the sites with hook-ups are full, as they always are, more distant, less popular sites have plenty of space. Anyone hoping to land a site with full hook-ups for next year's race should be making reservations now. Some campgrounds we service are already reporting they are full for next fall's race.

Since we're local and have serviced the campgrounds for many years, many of the folks we have serviced in the past wave when we go by and we stop to chat with several. That's one of the nice things about the race. Some, having purchased a new RV since we last saw them, stop us and ask for service on their present ride. Forget the radio or TV ads. Word of mouth is everything for small businesses.

Once the race is over, things fall eerily silent. Save for the few RVs with stuck jacks or slides, the campgrounds are a ghost town. The day after the race our phone starts to ring about 5:00 a.m. when those that planned to leave early and can't call for help. Several have managed to discharge both their chassis and house batteries and can't start their engines. We stop for a diesel that refuses to crank with batteries showing less than 2 volts on my meter. So dead I can't jump it without putting a charger on for nearly an hour. Then its on its way out the gate until next year.

Its over for another year. We are already planning for next spring and likely will run a second truck at the fall race. For now, the Pennsylvania Camping And RV Show is only a couple of weeks away. Just enough time to rest and get caught up on the paper work, before we are on the road.

Hope to see you on the road,

Steve

The Pennsylvania RV And Camping Show

(Click On The Pictures To Enlarge)

As far as we are concerned, the Pennsylvania RV And Camping Show is the RV show to see for anyone located east of the Mississippi. Bringing together 1,300 RVs of every make and model means serious walking shoes, so with trusty camera in hand, here is what we feel are the most significant trends in RVs for the coming year.

Holiday Rambler's Campmaster trailer is their new entry in the hotly contested ultra light market place. Omnipresent signage hawked the fact that towables of every description appear to have been on a forced diet. Many towables reminded RVers there was a time when having five LCD TVs onboard was not the norm.

Speaking of extremes, how's this for niche marketing? Carriage, long known for its fifth-wheels is testing the market in what has traditionally been a non-existent niche, high-end travel trailers. With their new Domani line of fifth wheels already in dealerships, how about expanding the line with travel trailers in the mid-fifties range? Gutsy move, but we like em!!

Okay, so its not exactly your traditional RV. Who can resist something so cool? The company making this trailer/tent, tent/trailer has long been making similar models for the military and what's good enough our Uncle Sam is good enough for us.

There is a generator in the front of the trailer and the tent is large enough to swallow a family of six and still have room left over for the dance after dinner. When you're ready to move out, it all goes back inside the trailer.

Rounding out the towable showcase are two toy haulers. The Cedar Creek is dressed for the prom with upscale interior and atrium in the rear. The Work And Play from Forest River extends a queen bed out the front. Neat idea in a versatile cargo trailer.

When the numbers are in, it will be interesting to see if sales matched early show enthusiasm. Despite far fewer RV sales than a year ago, spaces in camp grounds were in remarkably short supply during the summer months, which would lead me to conclude camping remains popular. If the pundits are correct in their belief that even falling fuel prices would not bring a return to large vehicle ownership, I expect to see smaller lighter RVs than in the past. But then did anyone ever really need five flat screens in one RV?

Hope to see you on the road,

Steve

What About Motor Homes?

Even though motor home sales are almost extinct, the genre was well represented at the Pennsylvania Camping And RV Show. Big ones, small ones, new models and old all stabled right along with the towables. Every show has a star, let's go there first. If you have been following the motor home news, you know we mean Damon's new Avanti, which sits on Workhorse's new front engine diesel chassis, the W16. The Avanti has been titillating the RV press ever since it was first announced several months ago, but other than factory insiders, no one had seen the actual coach until Damon's annual dealers' meeting. Even then it was a dealers-only showing. Those who have followed previous industry attempts to introduce small class A motor homes will recall they have been sales failures and have been quickly dropped from production. Will the Avanti be different? We think so, here's why.

The Avanti was designed from a fresh sheet of paper incorporating good looks (this coach looks better in person), diesel power, and improved fuel mileage at a time when mileage may be foremost on the minds of most RVers.

Weighing in at only 16,000 pounds and holding the line at 30 feet in length, the Avanti is shorter, lighter, lower to the ground, and sports a more streamlined look.

While Freightliner's front engine diesel a.k.a. FRED plowed new ground, it still pulls relatively large motor homes. Pull more weight, burn more fuel. With fuel prices having moved to the foreground for nearly every RVer, fuel mileage may turn out to be the trump card, and there is little doubt Damon's new coach will move to the head of the pack. How much in front is hard to say. Damon says mileage will exceed 14 miles per gallon. That is more than we would expect, but will be surprised if mileage comes in under 12, certainly much more than the 7-8 miles per gallon in most front engine gas pullers, the Avanti's primary competitors. In the unlikely event the price of fuel suddenly falls so far it is no longer a concern, the Avanti still have plenty going for it.

Exterior looks aside, Damon has, in our opinion, done a superb job detailing the interior and with extra effort going into lowering the profile, it is nice not feeling like we were on a Stair Master after climbing inside. An option we have not seen since the mid-70s, a bed which folds down from the ceiling, is a novel way in which to gain extra sleeping space and in no way interferes with interior headroom, at least for six footers.

In order to keep the Avanti treading lightly, Damon opted for a single slide, a wise move given the goal of upping the mileage. We think the bedroom does just fine without a slide-out of its own. Will this model be a stepping stone towards motor homes modeled after those in Europe. It may well be, but just one step at a time.

We have not driven this coach yet. Although we were invited to drive it at the factory before the Hershey show, we could not fit it into our schedule. We discussed its handling with several folks who have been behind the wheel, and we also spoke with Matt Thompson, Damon's project director, who went into detail about the extensive engineering that went into the chassis to lower it as much as possible.

Information Workhorse supplied us on the engine and suspension shows a typical diesel power curve, flat and peaking at about 1800 rpm. Parabolic springs usually have a positive effect on ride quality and we expect they will in this case. The numbers break down like this. The Maxx Force Navistar engine delivers 200 horsepower and 440 pounds-feet of torque. The rear end turns 4.63 gears. This number is a higher than we expected and should eliminate some of the acceleration lag common in diesels. To improve on mileage, the transmission is an Allison 1000 6-speed, which means fifth and sixth gear are overdrives. The gross vehicle weight rating is 16,000 pounds; the combined is 20,000 pounds.

The wheel cut is 50 degrees and the steering is variable ratio. With 40-gallons of fuel, range should be 500 plus miles depending on which estimate you use. Naturally the smaller fuel tank means more stops, but maximizes mileage. The chassis has a 3 year or 36,000 mile warranty, the engine has a 3 year or 150,000 mile warranty.

The Avanti is in production and, according to Matt, should be at dealer showrooms in October. We'll take it for a ride as time permits, but in the meantime, if you drive it, drop us a line at RV Steve and tell us what you think.

Hope to see you on the road,

Steve

New Motorhomes Part II

Several manufacturers displayed new models at the Hershey. Of note is the fact that manufacturers who traditionally have avoided segments of the market have now entered those segments. For example, Monaco now offers a class C in the Monaco, Holiday Rambler, and Safari lines. Safari offered a class C several years ago as did Holiday Rambler. Now Monaco seeks to broaden its market. For motor home manufacturers, that boils down to class Cs. Of the three lines, we think the Monaco Montclair has the most attractive paint scheme. Available in models with no slides, all the way up to a 30-foot triple slide Monaco is casting a large net in hopes of snagging more families and first time buyers. Shoppers can also choose between Ford and Workhorse chassis depending on the model.

Even Born Free has rounded out their line-up with three models built on Chevrolet's 5500 chassis. Still no slides in one of the last hold-outs for "slick sides" in the industry. You can, however, choose between king, queen, or toy hauler configurations in the rear. Traditionally Born Free's appeal has been quality construction and they can rely on a loyal customer base for support.

The influence of the old west is never far from toy haulers and that even includes their names. Here are Gulfstream's Bounty Hunter and Damon's Outlaw. It is difficult to gauge the appeal of motor homes in this niche in a falling market. So far they seem less common than towable haulers.

Finally we have Kibbi's entry into the world of motor homes. Kibbi has long been present on the race circuit as both a toterhome and motor home capable of hauling up to 80,000 pounds on medium duty (and beyond) truck chassis. Also shown in Winnebago's Sun Cruiser continuing what we think is an attractive exterior package. And, just as with other manufacturers, this time Jayco's purchase of Travel Supreme makes possible the display of their class A Insignia and a new upscale class C, the Embark. Jayco had a banner year in 2007, perhaps making the purchase of failing Travel Supreme possible.

As Coachmen says in their owners' newletter, "The Shasta is back!". Wings and all, this 12-footer is Coachmen's special retro model intended to bring back the look of the 50's and 60's. You won't be able to take along many friends in this mini-towable, but with smaller size comes lighter weight. Read that, towable behind almost anything. The styling may no be European, but the size is in keeping with more miles between fuel stops

Hope to see you on the road,

Steve

Hello Boss,

I haven't heard from you in a while and since I was sitting here thinking about Life on Wheels, I thought I would drop you a line. Do you remember how we met? You were planning a presentation at the annual dealers' convention and I was gathering statistics on RV owner satisfaction. That was almost ten years ago. Man how time flies. After that we just stayed in touch. You emailed me; I emailed you. Not sure I would have, if I knew what you had in mind.

Of course, I knew about the Life on Wheels conferences you put together to teach owners how to use their RVs from your column in Motor Home magazine. As I recall you started writing that column before typewriters were invented and RVs were pulled by horses. It wasn't long before you were short a technical instructor and before I knew it, I was part of the show. I remember the first time I was in the Idaho conference. It was so hot in the agricultural building I had perspiration dripping off my hands onto the floor. Then there was the time one of our students ran their motor home right into the side of a brand new coach. We had some times alright.

It was the darnedest thing. I never knew anyone who could get so enthused about RVs, after they had owned so many. I think I lost count of yours after number thirteen. My wife Andra always said going to Life on Wheels was just like coming home to family; all the instructors with stories about where they had been. Amazing really, nothing in writing, just show up on time and ready to teach. Taught a lot of folks about the RV lifestyle and convinced a lot more who didn't own an RV yet how much fun it could be. I think we all took a lot of pride in what we did and some of the folks we taught still stay in touch.

I know this year has been a tough one. Quite a few instructors had to drop out with the price of fuel and all. Sometimes it seems like the industry is becoming more about money then it is about having fun. Well, one thing for sure, no one could ever say Life on Wheels was about money, but it's been one of the best things I ever fell into. As you always said, life is no good without a purpose and Life on Wheels was all of that. I'm glad we agreed to take it a little easier in 2009. Maybe just do three conferences instead of four or five and let the industry get back on its feet. Yeah, I know. The RV industry is always boom or bust, but I'll be happy when it's standing upright again.

Nice to see you and Margie in Harrisburg after the conference. Hey, how do you manage to stay married to the same person for 59 years? Margie is a sweetheart alright, but I haven't made up my mind yet about you. Sounds like you had a good conference. Numbers were up and almost a third of the students didn't even own an RV yet. They're already ahead of the game. Haven't heard how sales went at the Hershey show yet, but the weather was great and I have my fingers crossed. I was little worried about your health, but you always seem to bounce back and Louisville is not far off. Time to get with those sponsors again.

One more thing and then I'll let you go. I always said that you were an icon in an age when there aren't many folks who do the right thing just because it's right. There are a lot of RVers who are better off because of what you did and I feel fortunate to have had the chance to work with you over the years. It doesn't seem right you leaving us now. I guess it was time and I know where you are everything in the RVs works and diesel is probably free, but good friends are hard to come by. I wish you could have hung around a while longer. I sure do miss our talks and walking our dogs together. It was a genuine pleasure and an honor to have known you.

Steve

Steve Savage, Technical Editor
TrailBlazer magazine

Gaylord Maxwell passed away on September 20, 2008, after a brief illness. Among his many accomplishments, he was a long time columnist for Motor Home magazine, a retired RV dealer, a member of the RV Hall of Fame, and the founder and president of Life on Wheels, a program dedicated to the education of RVers.