Quality, pricing, and service of a product typically correlates with pricing. The RV Manufacture space by and large follows this idea.
When shopping for an RV, you have 2 primary options, purchase from one of the big 4 manufactures(Thor, Forest River, Winnebago, REV) or to purchase from an independent manufacture.
Either of these 2 options comes with pros and cons.
Let's compare the pros and cons for each...
| RV Attribute |
Independent |
The Big 4 |
| Quality |
PRO |
CON |
| Price |
CON |
PRO |
| Service/Warranty |
PRO |
CON |
| Product Availability |
CON |
PRO |
Given the above table, if you value quality and service, Independent may be right to you.
If your primary concern is pricing or availability, one of The Big 4 may be a better fit.
Quality: Quality and pricing usually go hand in hand. Materials, labor, and manufacture process are large contributors of unit pricing.
Due to the number of RVs The Big 4 have to produce, their quality control is often times lack luster whereas an independent manufacture can spend more time per individual unit to ensure the quality of each
unit is to a higher standard. Likewise, materials used in larger manufactures are produced in a much larger quantity helping to drive pricing down but at the same time quality suffers.
Pricing: Pricing comes down to a few factors...quality or labor, quality of materials, and manufacture process. Being that RVs are still hand assembled, quality of labor is a major factor in the finished product.
When doing a pre-purchase inspection, you will often see mistakes made in the assembly process to meet the high output demands of larger manufactures.
This is less of a problem for independent manufactures given they don’t have to meet such high demands. An example of material quality can be found in cabinets.
Solid wood cabinetry will last much longer than a pressed or engineered wood typically found in units with a higher price point. End the end, the customer pays more for a higher priced but higher quality RV.
Service/Warranty: Getting service on a newly purchased RV that is still under warranty is often times a nightmare for the customer.
One of the main factors of getting service or using a warranty is location to a service facility.
If you were to buy an Independent branded RV, you may want to consider how far away from a service facility you live and the possibility of that brand going out of business and then the availability of parts.
Smaller manufactures tend to have better customer service but may be limited to very few service facilities.
For a larger manufacture, location is less of a concern but scheduling and customer service may become an issue given the large number of units they have under warranty.
Product Availability: Given the smaller unit count produced by an independent manufacture, a specific unit may not be readily available, or may have a significant build time.
With a larger manufacture, they will often times produce a larger number of units to be sold, or when ordered, they have the ability to produce units at a much faster pace.
This also holds true for replacement parts; larger manufactures tend to hold larger stock of parts, whereas an independent manufacture part may have to be custom made, leading part availability concerns.
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