Looks like Roadtrek may be a thing of the past

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I tried to access the Roadtrek website but couldn't. If Roadtrek is done I am not surprised since they are way overpriced. I saw a 2018 Popular 190 on sale for $109,000 and I wonder who in their right mind would buy one. They are not very practical unless you are planning a cross country trip and most people will only make a trip like that once or twice in a lifetime. Just not worth the money especially when someone could buy a used van and fix it up for so much cheaper.
 
Everyone complains about how cheaply made RVs are or complain about the high price of a well built one. It's one or the other and the two shall never meet. I love my Roadtrek if you can't tell. Great workmanship and everything is well thought/laid out. I have a ton of storage and all the amenities.
 
The RV industry is booming and younger people are buying improving the demographics of the industry. There must be something really wrong with the company if they are going into receivership in a hot market...
 
I am looking into a camper van for my travels, and wondered about Road Trek. I will be buying used. It's nice to hear you are so happy with yours! How is the gas mileage?
 
Expect someone will pickup/buy the brand and resources, hopefully all the workers. It should be a going business separate from the other mess
 
I thought Thor Industries was purchasing the brand. Fell through?
 
Idres said:
I am looking into a camper van for my travels, and wondered about Road Trek. I will be buying used. It's nice to hear you are so happy with yours! How is the gas mileage?

Abysmal :)  11.5 to 12 depending (I have done 14 with a slight tail wind but seems I am always pushing a headwind).  If I slowed down it would probably do better.  I generally run 65, spent a lot of years with the 55 mph speed limit.  I have the 200 which is the B+ (454 ci or 7.4 L and 4.56 gears in the rear) with basement storage and the full time bed across the back.  This older one has all the extra little stuff that they started deleting in future years to try and keep the price point down.  I bought it 4 years ago for 14K and immediately had to sink 2K into a new front end and then tires too boot.  I love it so much I will do whatever it takes (full drivetrain if I have to) to keep it running.  I added a LOT of little customizations to it that I don't want to ever do again.  I wanted the bigger engine for pulling in the mountains and when I pulled a Geo Tracker convertible.  Pulling the toad did not change the gas mileage.  If your gas budget is that small that you really worry about gas mileage, drive less and camp more.  The 350 ci or 5.4 L might get better gas mileage but I am old school and more power is always better.  Newer ones with the 6.0 L will do better but not sure of the engines reliability.  I studied the brochures for PleasureWay too.  I don't think they are built quite as well and I didn't care for the floor plans.  YMMV
 
wayne49 said:
I thought Thor Industries was purchasing the brand. Fell through?

It looks like management was cooking the books and reporting fraudulent sales reports. I don't know for sure, but if I were Thor that would be enough to break the deal.
 
Travelmonkey said:
The RV industry is booming and younger people are buying improving the demographics of the industry.  There must be something really wrong with the company if they are going into receivership in a hot market...

"Something really wrong"
I'll say. They've allowed their own behavior to price their product out of viability for almost all of the population.
 
Something really wrong was some in management were cooking the books. The product itself is viable and to almost a person here, even a new class C would be out of reach. Try for a diesel pusher and its' maintenance in comparison.
 
What went wrong - well, when Thor sent in their audit team in anticipation of the purchase, they found accounting irregularities of sufficient nature to make them refuse to include the Roadtrek Canadian operation from the bigger international purchase. According to news reports several senior executives have already been summarily dismissed. No one wants to publicly admit exactly what the nature of the irregularities are, probably because of pending lawsuits.

It should also be noted that Hymer has only owned the Roadtrek Cdn company for 3 years. 3 years ago Roadtrak employed 300 people total. As of yesterday when the company went in to receivership, the layoffs totaled somewhere around 900 personnel. That sounds suspiciously like the company was expanded way, way too fast. It's not like it's Ford adding another plant, that's a highly unusual expansion rate, even in a booming industry.

Receivership is not the end of the world for the Cdn corporation. Chances are it will come out of bankruptcy and, while it will be on a shoestring budget and a smaller production, it just might survive the whole thing. No one will know until the accountants get done finding all the irregularities.
 
Almost There said:
Receivership is not the end of the world for the Cdn corporation. Chances are it will come out of bankruptcy and, while it will be on a shoestring budget and a smaller production, it just might survive the whole thing. No one will know until the accountants get done finding all the irregularities.

A lot will depend on how quickly the accountants can get finished with their audits and who is still around to continue developing the product. It's really difficult for a company to survive this kind of a scandal.  They are simply too tarnished.

I worked for a software company in the 1990s which had a similar issue with upper management cooking the books. After the scandal broke, we started seeing an erosion of our revenue.  Oh we had repeat customers, but a even those customers began looking elsewhere.  We were eventually bought up by IBM - and IBM really wasn't interested in evolving the product so much as switching the customer base to their own product lines.
 
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