RV Pricing, Shortages, & More!! Industry Update October 2021

well i did it i just i had to say something didn't i i came out here last month i was like hey guys i think we turned the corner and i've got all kinds of good news and i was so pumped to do it but remember when last month i said we were paula abdulnit two steps forward one step back well it ain't fiction it's an actual fact unfortunately this seems to be the step back bump it's not all bad news i've got a mixture of things today we're gonna talk about some supply chain stuff because the shortages are back and they are back with a vengeance and nobody's liking it it's not just material shortages though we're going to dive into that a little bit a little bit of pricing update news for you build lead time availability and a couple other odds and ends and oh yeah by the way hi i'm josh arvinder this is your october industry update as seen from our little family-owned dealership in case you're wondering no it's not really that cold i'm just feeling kind of fat today and thought i'd cover up my pandemic poundage but i did get on the treadmill for the first time in about a month last night although it was uh actually only to find the the jacket that i wanted to wear today um more to the point anybody else relate to that um couple things what's going on here so supply chains material things it seems like uh especially recently it's like almost every day it's like there's another um uh foreign export port uh you know point of exit for materials and goods that has been shutting down largely due to covid and that has really put a crunch on various container systems like to give you guys an idea uh i i have some people who feed me some information on this and one of them specifically deals with import export and said you know last year this time of year it costs about four thousand dollars for a container now add up how many containers are on those ships and by the way there are currently a record number of container ships sitting off of our coasts right now with stuff that we need not just for the rv industry but for all sorts of walks of life that are just basically effectively held in quarantine um the uh that same container that used to cost four thousand dollars is currently costing about 30 000 now do the math on how many containers are on those ships and a record number of ships sitting off seas and you see how the cost of everything has gotten a little bit out of control um one of the other things that's really been a major shortage that we haven't discussed a great deal is labor shortages and that is something that has been plaguing us for a while but it seems like recently here it's really really come to a head and real i mean it's not it's like you try to go to a restaurant and they're short the manufacturers though whether it's supply side manufacturers rv manufacturers they have especially recently just been reporting just rampant troubles with labor and uh you know getting people to work and and are the same people going to show up next monday kind of thing that's led to a bunch of various challenges and it's it seems like it's pocketed it's hit and miss like um but it has really caused a number of issues so it's not just getting materials there's actually been cases where labor shortages have really plagued certain suppliers like one of our uh one of the brands that we carry here at halodrv they recently reported um a shortage of ladders not because the supplier didn't have the parts which is kind of the first thing that we've been thinking of this one is bright uh but the uh they don't have the people to assemble them they have all the stuff they just can't get people to put them together so it's it's just it's weird to me how none of these challenges that we're facing right now really are are necessarily new it's just they've all become so severe and they're all overlapping and all hitting at the exact same time that's the thing that is just so crazy and and how prolonged of an overlap uh period we've been seeing and you know that labor challenge is something we've really started to feel here at halodrv um and we had very limited inventory through the summer so uh you know a couple of our sales staff members got a little spooked by that and several of them moved on in an effort to try to take care of the families that we were still employing here we left several uh seats open in both sales and service and it's meant that everybody has taken on a bigger load and it's part of the reason if if i don't seem like my normal plucky go lucky self it's because i am super uh i'm super strung out and stretched thin myself right now um been doing everything that uh you know i can everyone here's been doing everything they can to try to make all the ends meet but there's only so many hours of the day and when there's fewer hands it means that you tend to put a few more hours into this like somebody a couple people have noticed i've been even logging into my computer remotely on sundays just to help try to keep some video content coming out because i can't keep up with it during the working hours where everyone's helping everybody else do everything else so as we've gotten more in stock more things are starting to come in we are starting to rebuild some inventory here still which is excellent but it has meant that we're going to need more staff to take care of more customers obviously and trying to get people has been uh just an astronomical challenge i totally feel the suppliers and the manufacturers what they're going through and i mean we we spend you know managers spend all this time you know putting out the ads and interviewing and then uh you know going through the paperwork and yeah that's great we'll see you monday and then they never show uh it's just like like every 10 people say yeah i'll take the job one shows up you know it's just it's so weird right now sorry got on a little bit of a soapbox there but that's that's what's happening you know um so on some material uh related things there's suddenly been a real nasty shortage of mdf uh which chipboard uh osb basically and that is something that could really affect the rv industry um i mean that stuff is used in those sealed edge countertops it's used in roofing it's used in some floors i mean it's used all over the place not to mention just housing and furniture and all these other industries one of our our guys that works here um he uh is like looking for an apartment right now and he finally found a place and he's like i try to go to furniture stores they don't have nothing you know i just i just wanted a recliner so he says i guess i'll just keep my grandpa's old orange flower print recliner which has got to be the recliner that uh when you were sick as a kid you stayed up from school you drink sprite eight crackers and watch bob barker on the prices right from that thing but i bet you that is probably the most comfortable recliner ever known to man um some other things uh glass fiber nylon um what else there was one other uh material thing i was i was trying to think to remember to oh plastics so there have been um a number of things like when the the the polar vortices or vortex or whatever they're hit and took out like chemical plants and stuff like that um they're uh you know be a lot of manufacturers a lot of suppliers uh they have these contracts with say like rv manufacturers to say okay we can commit to sending you this many things so that the the manufacturers can make their plans well a lot of them have really had to claim force major this year and my french viewers if i'm uh murdering that phrase apologies remember i am just but a simple midwestern boy a lot of folks around here just call it force major and if you're not aware of that basically it's where supplier kind of claims an act of god has forced us into a situation where we cannot honor our contracts it's really one of the most common closing clauses in a lot of uh various contracts you know mother nature dealt me a crap hand so i i'm sorry i can't do the thing that i promised you i would do um but like i said glass fiber which is the kind of stuff that is used in like fiberglass nose caps um which is why you've seen like a lot of luxury fifth wheels or even a lot of travel trailers that normally had front and or rear nose caps missing them lately um the uh there there's um nylon material that's used in a lot of electronics plastics that are used on things like air conditioner covers and propane tank covers those things have been in shortage a lot of those things though um especially like hurricane ida was a real x factor because some of the chemical plants that were up and running had to close down the chemical the plants that made some of those things they are back up and running um a lot of these factories though they take a while to get back up to full production and because of the backlog of time that has been incurred from the downtime they're getting through it a lot of the supply chain sources that i have have been saying roughly by the end of october we'll see ourselves back up to full production but because of our backlog we don't think we'll be normalized until roughly the flip of the calendar year so a lot of things are getting better and i think through the uh in the midwest anyway what we call the snowflake months i think that we'll see a lot of things resolve and my hope is that really moving into the 2022 calendar year we'll really be able to see the first true level of normalcy in this industry at least that we've seen in about two years man that sounds good and a lot of the focus goes on these big things but frankly it's it there's all kinds of annoyances and frustrations on a daily basis um just the simplest things like uh roof vent covers like toilets like propane and plumbing fitting stuff like that those they're not worth their weight in gold gold is weight worth its weight in rhino flex sewer hoses right now but here's actually the very interesting thing despite all of this rough stuff that i've shared here it's not all bad news frankly the industry and a lot of industries right now are in a world of better shape than where they were say last year and i don't know how good of a view you're getting from behind me here but as you're seeing things are beginning to recover from like a stocking standpoint uh uh some dealerships had themselves pretty thick in inventory for one reason or another most of the year a lot of dealerships did not nationally uh the total amount of available inventory was way way way down but dealerships like us that have been basically running on fumes we are finally beginning to see some recovery this is the first time i've really looked up and we have like three or four full rows of trailers out here in one of our three sections so i mean not to mention the fact that we have a huge overflow uh trailer storage place across the street that's four acres large that's been city we our overflow place that's usually just covered in campers our biggest problem with that is that we we can't keep the weeds from growing because it's just all empty lot but we are step by step ooh baby starting to get back into that and i bet you didn't expect to get a new kids on the block reference today frankly um i don't know that i expected to be giving one either so what do we think inventories are going to look like uh we'll continue to see through those quieter snowflake months a lot of uh already ordered personal build stuff rolling in but i think we're going to see more stock stuff finally starting to roll in as well talking to other dealers that i know though doing these videos um sometimes they have agents and and uh like principles of other dealerships which would be like owners manager stuff like that contact me privately candidly you know uh not wanting to put themselves in a compromising position say what they're seeing in their area and what i'm hearing a lot of and it kind of lines up with a little bit of what we were internally predicting at halodrv is we will see almost what i predicted a year ago potentially kind of coming true which i guess i wasn't wrong i just i was ahead of my time uh sure we'll go with that my wife would just say i was wrong though and she would be correct but we will expect reduced below normal levels of inventory stocking through the 22 calendar year approaching a more normal level of stocking uh roughly say by the end of the 22 calendar year so dealer inventories i'm thinking are going to see a little bit of a recovery period over this next year and frankly even if we were just at 50 capacity versus like literally a 1.1 or 2 percent capacity um that would just be an absolute godsend right there and i think more people would be more comfortable getting the chance to get to see things in person not just buying from a catalog not just buying sight unseen some other interesting signs of recovery i've sort of noticed though we have actually seen the lead times for orders on rvs begin to level off taper off uh it seems like for the last couple of months this i've had the same update it's going to be about six months guys and then all of a sudden here i've noticed the last handful of uh custom ordered montanas like that even a full body paint super solar crazy package thing like this with all of the options tricked out um they've been coming in sub 120 days which is significantly less than what we were originally predicting pleasantly so now there's still certain things that uh have put a little uh you know gum in the works depending like generators onan generators are have become very scarce this year that is one of those things normally on a lot of the really big high-end fifth wheels and especially toy haulers the big toy haulers we like to put those generators in there just to give you that freedom that luxury you know and this year we've had to do a lot of generator prep and uh rely on a lot of say like external portable little inverter generators which have also been very hard to come by it's just been one of those hiccup challenges that we've been working through this year but i have seen where some manufacturers lead times have finally begun to taper off and and still 120 days four months that's still a pretty chunk i mean that's a pretty pretty chunky amount of time right there but um it's it's better than saying six to nine months to i don't know you'll get it when you get it and as terrible as that sounds that was truly the best expectation that we could set for people for most of this year when can i get just a common gray wolf i don't know you get it when you get it that was literally the only answer that we could truly rely on and that sucks so i'm really glad to see that turn around just a little bit it's going to vary a little bit by brand like i see a rockwood behind me right here they are rockwood has always been known for having longer lead times but it's because it's the single most popular ultra light out there they have despite having five build facilities they just there's no way they can keep up with everything and again all credit to them despite all of that and there's always going to be an exception here and there pound for pound dollar for dollar they have done about the best job of anyone i've seen of putting a good product on our lot here and just tip of the hat you know to uh rockwood out there keep up that good work you've been doing and the reason i think this is important to hit on is we are kind of approaching that time of year where a lot of people said we didn't have the opportunity to find the one that we wanted this year or were uh we're just starting to think about it you know but we're approaching uh potentially some people say the end of the season that will really vary depending on where you're at in the country because there's absolutely those areas in the country where people are camping all year round and we're up here freezing our toes off going i don't i don't like your pictures on facebook why don't you why do you gotta tease me like that [Laughter] my uh every time we have a wicked snowstorm up here my parents will be down in florida and shoot me uh a picture of their uh the weather report and i just um i just block them i just mute them for like eight hours because i don't i don't need that negativity in my life [Laughter] but um if you're thinking getting into this like next year uh with what i'm seeing on some lead times say like middle of april's usually kind of especially around here consider roughly the start of the camping season it means that you've got it maybe an additional month or two of consideration time if you were considering uh putting in a like a personal build request but again i do see where inventory volumes seem to be uh slowly recovering and uh you know if you push that back a little bit you may have more opportunities to see more things in person and potentially get yourself something picked out uh before the uh the camping season begins next year that you actually get to review in person so that works better for for customers that works better for dealerships that works better for everybody i'm really excited to get back to a more normalized look at things and i'm really hoping the 22 calendar year brings that into us and as predicted it seems the race uh for solar supremacy is on the solar arms race has begun keystone fired out their uh announcement of their solar flex platform this year which is some really really good stuff if you're not familiar with that just search solar flex on our channel we have a totally different video dedicated giving you an idea of what that is and also what each of the four different tier packages can do for you but not to be outdone jayco said we can do that and they've announced an expansion of their overlander solar package they're calling overlander ext it's something that could be very uh jayco's already had a couple different solar packages this is a new uh like max top high level thing that uh in theory on paper looks to potentially be a little bit uh comparable to say like the more advanced keystone store solar flex packages and inevitably every manufacturer believes that they've found a way to do it a little bit better than the next guy um so when i get to see a little bit more of that in person i'll have some more information out for you but i think this is really good news because with something like 600 000 new rvers joining the rv community over this past year and only about 60 000 new campsites being created in that same time period obviously finding a way to be able to get away from things and get away from people and camp off grid a little bit that is going to continue to be i think a bigger and bigger item and i just ate a bug oh [Music] i should probably edit this out um not gonna i also have it on good authority although i don't have any official details on this yet rockwood is also uh creating a more advanced solar package i i i if it's following the trend of things they've done in previous years it will probably start in something like the geopros which are a little bit smaller a little more off-grid and then become more available through the rest of their lineup that's just a prediction we'll see if that comes to pass and i realized i i said we'd talk about pricing updates and then my squirrel brain went off in all these other little tangents and directions and i didn't really get to any of that um previous month uh we actually saw little to no price increase from manufacturers we have seen a pretty consistent about two and a half to three percent price increase for manufacturers coming into this month that is a trend i i fear will potentially continue although as things from the supply side normalize coming into the 22 calendar year i'm hopeful i have no reason to suspect this will happen but i'm hopeful we'll see just a leveling off of uh costs for a while and uh that that i think is potentially the best that we could hope for right now and that might be a pipe dream itself uh so that's that's it for me this month guys that's your word from the nerd if you appreciate uh giving you the look behind the scenes like this whether it's good news or the tough stuff hit that subscribe button if you haven't at the very least if you don't have anything to to share hit the little like button on the video it doesn't cost you anything it does help get the word out there though feel free please to share this among your various social media groups people who are maybe looking for an rv down the line might find some benefit here and as always big thank you to the the folks that uh give me some kind of insights and information on this and most of which you have asked to remain anonymous um because they don't want to put themselves in a compromising position we don't mind putting ourselves out there a little bit uh all we ask uh in return is just when you're ready we'd love the chance to work with you but short of that we're gonna keep all the the stuff coming whether like i said whether it's more uh insight based like this whether it's the recall reports that we've been doing trying to keep people safe all the things that we do for you here at haywood rv if if you feel like you've been overloaded with information i feel like we've done our job well so take care stay safe have fun and happy haylet camping everyone [Music]

Channel: Haylett RV Reviews, News, & More

Views: 2,722

Rating: 4.9718308 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: XN90jVc0Ow4

Length: 22min 21sec (1341 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021