Will high gas prices kill the RV business

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

I see Crystal Peirce Marine is closing 6 of 12 stores. Boat sales are down about 35%.

I'm thinking the gas issue has got to be having the same affect on RV sales.

[echotrail]

No doubt it is. I saw a newspaper add last week for truck toppers that indicated the big drop in US truck sales is having a noticeable affect on that industry to.

[Roofer]

Yep, gas prices and people that were not smart in the past will kill all of this stuff. My point is that not every average person should try to afford a new truck, new trailer, new boat, new RV, new cabin, new house, new car, new atv, new snowmobile, a new harley, a second car for mileage, a scooter, a swimming pool for the 3 good days in MN a year, a new fish house, a new portable fish house, an underwater camera, a vexilar, a 1000 dollar GPS, I could go on and on.

People are just killing themselves.

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

Yeah, my wife I were saying that even to pull a pop-up camper you need something that will pull it.

[upnorth]

Roofer...you got it. You can't get everything everything at once. We just picked up a new 5th wheel and where we went shopping there used to be twice as many RV dealers a couple years back. But with gas at $4 per gallon and the stock and housing markets are in a slump, it is no wonder the RV business is in a slump.

Things will probably do better for the RV business if gas prices stablize and the other market do better.

[bbqhead]

i think you will see a few dealers go under this year.. i do

onsite RV repair and we have been slow.....

dont think people are heading to their parked RVs as much this

year. have seen a lot of them for sale also.

last year i worked at a dealership and we didnt have a good

year either.

randy

[Queenswake]

It's more than fuel prices that will slow the RV business down. It's all of the lost home equity. Like so many other toys, home equity was one of the major sources of income for these types of purchases. And everything is just more expensive these days. Where's the free cash?

Europeans have had high gas prices for much longer than we have and they are avid campers. They just have smaller units. I think we'll start to see more people towing popups and other towables that can be towed by a V6 car. More van-style campers.

But yeah, already there have been a lot of layoffs are RV companies and you know they are bracing for more heartache. People are just tapped out right now. And it's sad to think that the dream of cruising around the country in an RV that a lot of people have might be a thing of the past.

I've looked a bit for used campers and the market is pretty good for them right now. It's tempting to jump.

[bbqhead]

i agree that there are a lot of factors involved in

this OP discussion.. i only see it getting worse before

better. we do warranty work for a few of the bigger dealers

around the metro, and they are pretty slow.

randy