Boomers and cheap gas are driving an RV revival

As the gleaming gray Gulf Stream rumbles to a stop, Jerry Moore can’t help but show off the new ride he’s about to buy.

“Put the bump-outs out,” the Linn Valley, Kan., man calls to the driver at Olathe Ford RV.

With a whir, four side sections of the 41-foot behemoth slide out to enlarge the already roomy interior.

The door opens to a visitor.

“Be my guest,” the white-haired man in the plaid shirt, Stetson cowboy hat and custom-made ostrich vest says.

Across the way, Bobbie Newby, a day care worker from Knob Noster, Mo., checks out her new 16-foot Coachmen camper that she and her husband, Philip, can tow on vacation with their two Weimaraners.

Moore and Newby couldn’t be more different. He’s 74 and flush with cash. She’s 22 and on a budget. But they’re both helping to drive the largest rebound in RV sales since the Reagan administration.

Nationally the $14.5 billion industry has enjoyed double-digit growth over the last three years. Sales are up 64 percent since 2009, when the recession pushed the industry to its worst year in two decades. Today, more than 9 million households own an RV, the highest level on record.

The desire to own RVs never waned, even during the heart of the recession, said Kevin Broom, spokesman for the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association in Reston, Va.

“RV shows saw record attendance,” he says. “That pent-up demand is now expressing itself.”

At Olathe Ford RV, one of the largest dealers in the Midwest, business is booming.

“We’ve had five record years in a row,” says general manager Daryn Anderson. “We’re up 11 percent from last year, and we’re on track for six record years.”

Business has been so good, the dealership just built a 6,500-square foot addition and is looking to hire as many as 10 people.

“The economy is getting stronger, and we’ve had to be smarter in how we sell,” Anderson says. “For years we just kind of shotgunned it without focusing on how to do it. With the recession we started (analyzing) customer buying trends and tried to forecast what the right product mix is.”

His new RVs range from $10,000 for a small, pull-behind camper to $400,000 for a luxury diesel pusher. He also sells used RVs.

Some credit the surge in sales to falling gas prices. Others point to the roughly 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day for the next 15 years, and an active class of adventure seekers in their 50s with disposable income looking forward to early retirement.

“Part of the uptick has been the economy,” says Chad Hall, sales manager of Trailside RV Sales in Grain Valley, where sales are up 12 percent this year. “And it may sound stupid, but bedbugs have helped us tremendously. (Travelers) want to sleep in their own beds.”

Then there’s the smartphone effect.

“In our electronic age everybody has their nose in a device,” he says. “And we hear from parents that when they are out camping (everyone) puts the electronics down, and they start real family bonding.”

Then again, today’s RVs also embrace today’s technology. Manufacturers have gone green, offering solar panels and LED lighting. Many are wired for Bluetooth, and a tablet or phone can control lights, heating and cooling and an entertainment center.

Another factor: the abundance of smaller, lighter trailers.

“Roughly 85 to 90 percent of new RVs (are) trailers,” Hall says. “The lighter weight not only improves fuel economy, it also opens the market to people who have smaller tow vehicles.”

Jerry Moore, on the other hand, doesn’t care about gas mileage or tow weight. The owner of Noble Construction uses his rig for work and is now upgrading to a deluxe model.

“I drive my RV to wherever I am working, which right now is Onaga, Kansas (50 miles northwest of Topeka), and Carrollton, Missouri (70 miles east of Kansas City). … Staying in motels five nights a week is very expensive. But staying in my RV gives me my own house there. Then I come home on weekends.”

He’s not exactly roughing it. He smiles as he ticks off some of the luxury features on the Gulf Stream he’s buying used for $80,000: two satellite TVs, entertainment center with DVD and surround-sound stereo, cherry wood throughout, not to mention a sink, stove, side-by-side refrigerator/freezer, microwave/convection oven, washer and dryer, shower, toilet, bedroom, dressing table, carpeting, linoleum and soft leather chairs.

He strokes his white goatee and nods his head, saying: “How can you not be impressed?”

Philip Newby, an airman at Whiteman Air Force Base, decided on a more modest trailer that sleeps four in two small bunks. It sports a small refrigerator, sink, microwave, toilet and shower.

“Since we’re military we move around a lot,” wife Bobbie says. “We can visit home and have a place to stay. We’re not looking for luxury. We just need a place to sleep and shower.”

Dave and Barb Sullivan of South Kansas City are new RVers, too.

“We finally bit the bullet this summer,” Dave Sullivan says of his new 28-foot Forest River 5th Wheel trailer that he pulls with a pickup. “We’re having a blast.”

Between now and November the couple plan to take it to Colorado, Tennessee and the Ozarks.

“By the time we put it in winter storage we will have put (more than) 4,000 miles on that RV,” Sullivan says. “Then we might take it out of storage and go south.”

And why not? He has run the numbers. It’s cheaper, he says, to travel in an RV. And thanks to the Internet, it’s easier than ever to read reviews of RV parks, look at them with satellite street views, then book them online.

But for Joyce Hon, vice president of the local Santa Fe Trail Ramblers RV club, lower gas prices are the biggest factor in the resurgence.

“It makes RVing a lot cheaper,” the Kearney woman says. “In 2008, the first year my husband and I retired, we made a fishing trip to Louisiana. And the diesel fuel for our truck was $5 per gallon. Recently we returned from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and the most we paid for diesel was $2.69. It’s really a big deal.”

And it has people looking at RVs who never thought they would.

Jim Grant of Lee’s Summit never saw himself as an “RV person.” But after he and his wife retired from teaching jobs, they’ve been talking about pulling a travel trailer behind their pickup to spend the winters in Florida.

“Renting or buying property down there is very expensive,” the 66-year-old says. “But if we had an RV, we could be snowbirds for a lot less. There are places you can go that are right on the beach. No airfare. No hotel. No rental car. And we can cook meals right in the RV.

“I may have lived most of my life in the Midwest. But there’s a beach-and-margarita person inside me just screaming to get out. And I think an RV might be just the ticket.”

This story was originally published September 21, 2015 at 3:38 PM with the headline "Boomers and cheap gas are driving an RV revival."