RV INDUSTRY UPDATE August 2021

hey everybody josh the rv nerd here at hayward rv of coldwater michigan with your august rv industry update as seen for the perspective of our little midwestern dealership here um it's been a couple months since i did this but i think it's high time i kind of reset and reframe some expectations we're going to talk about some things like what is going on with rv pricing um expectations in terms of lead times like if you order something or if i order something when is it going to come in today as well as some long-term market projections in both the used and the new rv markets and and what i think might be happening not just the next couple months but potentially over the next couple years also a little bit of good news for international campers well the 2022s are finally in full swing which is interestingly it's funny the manufacturers all agreed around june would be the first time they'd start putting those out and then it sounded like a lot of manufacturers said well around july we'll finally start doing that and it wasn't really until mid-july when the manufacturers take their their little summer break that we saw the majority of the the changeover and at this point there's a couple things that have been held up for shortages that might still arrive as 21 at dealer inventories not just to haylet rv but across the nation um and uh but for the most part at this point manufacturers are in full 22 swing what has been a very nice breath of fresh air is during that manufacturer annual summer shutdown period where they let all their workers take a little you know family vacation with the kiddos um i don't know how else to say it it got rough it got lean out here and uh i i know that we're not the only ones that are a little low on inventory now i'm walking around and you see some stuff in the background right now we have seen since the uh summer vacation shutdown ended and the manufacturers all pretty much got back to work we've seen an increased clip of arrivals new rv arrivals which has just been awesome something that we could really need around here and i know a lot of places um that being said an increased clip of rv rivals isn't like the eight or ten a day that we really need to try to rebuild our inventory we're getting one or two or three a day so every weekday we're seeing about two arrivals currently now that could change it could go up it could go down that could be because during that shutdown period manufacturers took that time to continue receiving parts so they were able when they came back to to be able to burn through a bunch of old shortages get some things out and go back to work on the new stuff as it's coming out um thing is though uh like i said even at receiving a couple per day the current level of pent up demand is still at levels that i don't know that people necessarily realize actually hold on i've got the perfect example for you listen to this so this rv landed at 1 13 p.m by 1 16 p.m there was already a uh payment placed on it and already a credit app pending took three minutes real time from the moment it landed on our lot before somebody was already all over it and that is why and i'm going to move you around so if your motion's sick you might want to not look but that is why the lot looks like this we've had so many local people stopping in asking us are you guys going out of business no no quite the opposite we have overwhelming demand we're just receiving underwhelming supply so people have said yeah but i've driven through northern indiana i've driven past the manufacturers and their yards are full of trailers how do you explain that smart guy and the answer that is actually quite simple those rvs aren't done trailers don't sit in a manufacturer's yard when they're complete they are you know basically hooked and hauled to like a shipping yard because the factories don't actually deliver them here third-party shipping companies are the ones that actually uh bring them to the dealerships uh if it's sitting in the manufacturer's yard it's short something missing something it could be a window a microwave it could be an air conditioner it could be any number of things that effectively cripples the rv and makes it unable to be shipped or sold there have been some reports of some uh dealerships uh requesting incomplete trailers just to have something on the grounds uh so that uh they can have something to show their customers then basically they're finishing the work like almost some assembly required after it arrives that is something that can happen exclusively as a matter of dealership discretion the manufacturers are not shipping intentionally incomplete units out to facilities i've talked about that but it's been several months ago and i know that we have a lot of new viewers since then and i kind of thought that i needed to reiterate that one a little bit just in case it's something that you ran into so while if i'm really careful and picky with my camera angles i could probably keep a couple campers in the background of this footage at all times but unfortunately for the most part this is still what our facility looks like now we have 11 acres on the grounds here we have another four acres across the street where normally this is all flooded with campers and then all of the extra copies are basically closed up slides closed and packed together across the street i always say like we've got you know some of the clip and some in the chamber right here well right now everything's in the chamber and right now it's like we're scrounging for bullets basically well not literally we're not a bullet dealer never mind you know what i mean so all i'm saying here is that we are still uh a ways off from seeing our inventory healed so that means that still more and more people are opting to basically order out of the catalog or watch a video or see a trailer in person maybe that's sold or something at a campground and then go order one like it or something like that so if you do that when are you expecting to get your camper well it naturally varies greatly from brand to brand but uh depending on which of say at least uh the the the brands that we work with here at halo rv which we're we're varied enough that i think that this is a pretty good national indicator if you place an order today i'm hearing from some companies anywhere from around october which is you know couple three months or something like that which i don't think is a terrible time frame by any stretch of the imagination given everything else that's been going on that doesn't seem terrible up to october is about the best i've heard up to josh i don't know tell them give or take six months and it depends on the brand again some of the more incredibly popular highest volume brands are really just so backlogged right now it's not even funny to give you an idea i've heard from again all these same people their backlog if they stop taking orders today they could still be building stuff at their current rates of production anywhere from one to almost two years from now so one of the other things i asked is i said okay your current rate of production how many days a week are you working because i know that there have been a lot of cases with a lot of shortages workers have shown up to the factories hoping for that truck to come in with that part that that that box full of widgets today if the box full widgets doesn't show up they haven't been able to get anything built or done because the manufacturers yards are full of units plugged with shortages right now so they can't just keep cranking stuff out that's something i've talked about in previous months that has not gone away that has continued um and it seems like every time they start to get caught up it just happens all over again but i'm hearing some encouraging things from several different manufacturers out there some efforts to help expand production like i know for a fact um cougar uh some of the wildwood division uh are are getting expanded production where they will be able to hopefully start in a more timely manner meeting more demand and uh being able to fulfill that more quickly because they know like i know when i put this stuff out there i know that somebody watching this is probably not going to buy an rv right now because some of what they're hearing is discouraging i know that that's a risk i suppose i take when i put this out there i also believe very wholeheartedly that when you're ready you'll appreciate the fact that we don't pull those punches we give you a little bit of a look behind the curtain and in an effort just to be fair i don't want to i don't want to be seen as only pumping the brands that we carry here do i obviously have a vested interest in doing that absolutely but to be fair one of the things i thought is really cool is that heartland has recently announced um a new production facility being added into st joe county and southern michigan that's the county right next to us so like an hour away and i really like hearing that for a lot of reasons one awesome for michigan economy uh industry really is the thing that drives everything like you see a lot of commercial and residential around here it's nice to see some production stuff come through but also it's going to tap into new labor pools because like middlebury elkhart goshen they are very tapped out you can build new plants but there's only so many people to work around there so it is nice to see manufacturers making efforts to to try to step up to meet that demand so why haven't they done it sooner and the short answer is they've been working on it that stuff takes time finding the property making the agreements getting the the facility built all of that stuff not too bad like think of all the copper wire that goes into building an rv production plant and they don't really have enough copper wire to build their their rvs right now it's one of those things where it it hurts going in but it feels better coming out um kind of like that third plate of food at the buffet and now the part of the video that nobody wants to hear i don't want to share it you don't want to hear it but this has happened there has been uh as of august 1st almost every major brand has had another price increase come through now that is not uncommon when a model year changes like going from the 21s to again the bulk of the 22s are out there now um it has been a larger increase than in previous years it has really been in line with the previous increases that we've seen several times earlier this year instead of a normal annual model change one to two percent nudge we've seen about a two to five percent in some cases price increase on various products it really varies by brand and by material and that's really been the challenge now i have seen some things that i'm no different than you i have the same level of paranoia as anyone else and a healthy dose of paranoia is not always a bad thing mind you but i have seen some things like i know that wood prices are still ridiculous i have seen them taper off and i've seen them drop a little bit but i haven't really seen material costs or uh uh manufacturing costs as a whole go down and i've seen this not just in the rv industry like take a look at this this is a a picture of a bunch of vehicles that are built and and waiting on container uh ships to come into the country just for chips so i mean it's it's not just wood and copper there's a lot of different things that are really causing a lot of different challenges through a lot of different industries it's uh it's home it's appliances it's furniture rvs marine autumn automotive obviously but um if if you're really not aware here's what's kind of been happening is for like health and safety regulations and it seems to vary a little bit by destination like container ships just they show up outside of our country and they're basically forced to just sit there in the water for like 30 days doing nothing just totally choke holding all sorts of uh import export sort of processes um it seems that things coming in through the east coast come in a little more quickly and easily on the west coast i've really noticed like uh talking to various suppliers not just rv manufacturers but all sorts of different suppliers from different things and from doing these videos i've actually had several various suppliers uh contact me and give me some more insights on stuff like this which is where i'm getting this information i i don't just you can google this stuff basically if you'd like to verify but the things that after they sit for a while especially on the west coast tend to go into a holding yard for a while and then they might get moved to a distribution warehouse like we'll just say in chicago or something like that where they're forced to sit there again and in the meantime what's happening is all of these different companies that are moving this stuff they are charging the buyer of these products pieces materials whatever it is storage fees even though that company didn't want that stuff stored because it's sitting there for various inspection or clearance reasons they're getting ding for storage so the stuff's coming in slower they're having to recoup their costs for storage um i have seen this is a whole nother thing i've seen where some companies have tried to reroute some things to be accepted through canada and then come down through our borders through essential shipping lanes um it sounds like though a lot of the workers up there aren't really happy with how things are panning out and there's rumor of like a canadian dock strike which is gonna throw another monkey into this chain those are the sorts of things that are happening behind the scenes to contribute to stuff like this now i know for a fact someone's gonna say this guy is full of it i've gone by dealership xyz and they're full of rvs i i know i know there's some places out there that have rvs i'm aware of this there's usually a few consistent reasons for it and i've drawn these conclusions based on feedback from viewers who have actually taken the time not just to look at a lot but to actually stop in and inquire about things like pricing or are you actually selling these and what they found is that a lot of dealerships are either holding inventory for display models and ordering off those or they're saying well if you want to buy my display model you better make it worth my time so they're not selling as many units but they're making killer money on the ones they sell i'm not condemning those sorts of activities that's free market economy every place is free to do the business how they like we tried to adopt adopt a display model policy i've talked about it before we failed because when a person comes in they're standing there looking well obviously i'm pointing at nothing but you've got a thing sitting here that's a used rv i'm not doing good at my background footage right now because i'm wandering and not paying attention you get the idea i got a trailer sitting right here they want to go camping how do you tell them no you know so there's a lot of different challenges in a lot of different industries that are leading to a lot of shortages and we've seen that demand through the roof still and again it just doesn't show any signs of stopping soon which leads me to the next thing that potential flood of used rvs that people have thought about and i actually speculated about last month well i wouldn't bank on that happening anytime soon um i i mentioned when i talked about it last month i don't want to get ahead of myself here and i i had a feeling it would come back to bite me a little bit that's fine i could acknowledge that but um i might have been seeing a little bit of a false positive what i saw is like in two days we had 15 consignment listings down at our consignment sales store where we sell things for people and i was like are we seeing a change in the wind here and since then it has really cooled back off to pretty normal levels and i wondered if that ju like slug that i saw wasn't due to the fact that we quit taking listings for a little bit because we were opening a new building down there and i think that that may have kind of been what it was now something we have we've always done but something we've advertised more recently is that if you have an rv not only can we consign it if you just want to be done with it we can buy it outright which is most of what you're seeing behind us here we have had several takers come to us from the local area and say sure give me a out figure for mine i'll throw the hitch in and we'll just be done with it and we've seen a number of those there are definitely people who are for whatever reason haven't camped can't camp can't find a place to camp campground congestion continues to be a challenge solar development continues to be a thing to get people off grid more to let you camp your way when and how you please but with such a lack of available new rv inventory even though we are seeing a healthy clip of things come in and especially a consignment sale or an outright purchase that a dealership makes just buying you straight out of the camper you figure that's an influx of inventory into um uh you know the uh this stream or whatever phrase you want to use i don't know you get the idea it's it's plus inventory it's like if you buy a camper and trade one in that's that's an even uh trade if you're a first timer you're taking inventory out of the system uh just despite that because there's still such a pin-up demand if you get something like this like um you know if it's like a late model 20 21 19 something like that someone who is looking for a new rv goes well you know that ain't all bad as long as you can show me everything's in good working order i'll pick that off so a lot of the available used inventory is getting picked off by those folks who are hoping to find a new rv but just wanted to go camping in the meantime and are thinking well we'll use this uh we'll get the used rv price tag we'll go out for a couple years and we'll trade it in uh a few years from now to get the one that we were looking at initially or see what's out there at the time so is it possible uh that we could see this flood or glut or slug or influx or whatever you want to call it i've used rv's eventually sure again i don't i don't foresee that happening i i don't foresee it happening just from what i'm observing around here for like a year or more i could be wrong though this is just what i'm seeing this is just what i'm thinking i absolutely welcome all kinds of input if you have a different idea a different opinion if you're seeing different things in your region please leave a note let us know let's have a discussion most of the information i get from this video a lot of it's actually sourced from you folks so you're as much of a resource as various suppliers or manufacturer reps or anything like that as anything i really enjoy hearing from you guys let me know what you think what you're seeing what you expect and how about some good news after all that let's have some good news international campers rejoice it sounds like as of august 9th the u.s canadian border for general travel you know leisure non-essential transit may be reopening for vaccinated individuals now this does hinge upon a couple things you do need to have taken a canadian government approved a vaccine which i'm shooting from the hip here i believe pfizer astrazeneca johnson and johnson and moderna are are the four that they have approved um another interesting note here if you have a child 12 years old or younger who at this point like here in the states i don't believe they're eligible for vaccination um as long as their parents have uh been vaccinated and you do need to have your little vaccination card so you can prove it they're giving a an exemption to the to the younger people it's a small thing but it is a very encouraging thing to see again any little return to normalcy whatever we want to call it normality normal reality as it were is normality a word or and i think at this point i could probably go on more i always got something i could talk about but we'd probably get off topic pretty quickly if you found anything beneficial here if you have something to share discussion comparison whatever please leave us some comments if you appreciate the information that we bring you if you find it useful beneficial um even if you just appreciate the transparency and you're not really in the market right now hit the like button and if you haven't done so please subscribe and join us here at halodrv we're family owned and operated and i'll keep doing these videos as long as i can short of that take care stay safe have fun and happy halit camping everyone hey everybody josh harvey and dirty here hayley rv of coldwater michigan with your august individual nope take 37.

Channel: Haylett RV Reviews, News, & More

Views: 74,685

Rating: 4.9620099 out of 5

Keywords: Michigan, RV Dealer, camper, wholesale, josh the rv nerd, camping, travel, rving, rvs, rv, rv sales, rv for sale, rv nerd

Id: Adg47_fuqeg

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 31 2021