Excel, a manufacturer of high-end fifth wheels announced it has closed it doors and is no longer in business leaving only, I believe, DRV as a bigh-end manufacturer. Where there formerly were 15, there now is only one, according to the Excel press announcement. The high-end manufacturers never recovered from the 08 recession.

Steve

 

And DRV is now under the Thor umbrella, so who knows what they'll be making in the future.

New Horizons, Forks, Spacecraft are all out there, but are essentially custom manufacturers of very expensive, heavy trailers. With Carriage, Hitchhiker and now Excel out of the picture there is a real void in the market above the typical consumer grade trailers and the crazy high end stuff.

 

What I hate about this is whenever you take away quality leaders, it isn't long before folks forget what quality was. The bar just keeps getting lower and lower.

 

Isn't Carriage made by Redwood now?

 

In my opinion, any time there has been a buy-out or consolidation, quality has gone down.

 

Steve quality wise how would you rate the KZ Durango?

 

Doug,

The Durango is fine. I think any fifth wheel once you get to a mid-price model can give service if maintained. My experience is simply that entry level models from anyone need more care. It was never my intention to suggest you or anyone else has to purchase something that was super expensive or classic to have a good RV experience. Remember your initial question was if you were comparing apples to apples and I said you were not, but I never said what you were considering was junk or that you should not buy it.

There is simply no way I can rate the product from every manufacturer. Even J.D. Powers failed when they attempted to establish a system to rate RVs several years ago.

If you want to know about a specific model or component, I would encourage you to go the websites maintained by the owners of the models from the manufacturer your are considering. In any given price range, I think the differences between manufacturers are very small and more often result from marketing rather than reality.

In my opinion, almost everything the RV industry is doing at present, changing the design of basic systems such as slides, adding complexity such as tankless water heaters and remotes on everyting, and reducing weight by any means necessary is aimed at increasing profits for manufacturers and reducing reliability to the consumers but that is probably just me getting old and cranky.

Steve

 

I have a KZ Stoneridge.


Second one. First was a demo and had a lot of flaws. They (KZ) were top notch to try and fix it all. In the end they bought it back full price and gave me a new one. Even paid the taxes and tags on it.


I have looked at the Redwoods and I like some of the touches to them.

 

I wonder if they would do a buy-back since they were "acquired by Thor in 2014. In my experience the small companies were much easier to deal with. Now the only small companies are those they are started with the hopes of being taken over by one of the big guys.

 

I have owned a '05' Carriage and just replaced it with a '10' Carriage for full-timing in. When Carriage went down they sold/ auctioned off everything including the name, what is being produced today with the Carriage name on it is not a Carriage by any means other than the name on the side of the rig. Lifestyle which is built in the same image of the Carriage as far as front/ middle/ back basements but even they have cut corners on somethings, that's why I went with a used 5th wheel than a newer one.


Finding a quality 5th wheel is getting harder to find without stepping up to the custom makers and then you pay for it big time and plan on up grading your truck because our grocery getters aren't going to handle the weights of those rolling homes.

 

'Nuther one bites the dust...

Pretty soon Thor will own the RV business lock-stock-and-barrel....

I was happy to see that Damon went out of business and were purchased by Thor. Hopefully Thor got rid of all the in-bred scalliwags that ran Damon and are now producing a product of higher quality... Thor certainly could do no harm to the brand....

 

Agreed, although normally when there is an acquisition the existing management team remains in place if they want. I have never seen the quality of any manufacturer that has been acquired improve after the acquisition. Anyone know of any?

 

Yes it's not a good thing to loose the last privately own non custom 5th wheel builder. Excel partnered with HitchHicker to build trailers with the HH name but they were high end so they weren't flying off the showroom floor, but they were very nice and well built but it wasn't enough to keep them afloat.

We are on are 4th and unless something happens our last HH and we plan on keeping it until it's no longer serviceable but we are lucky because HH never totally closed it's doors they just renamed it to Kansas RV and started selling other brands. They also run their service center that uses all of the Snowbird plant, they service all brands and buy used HH trailers and refurbish them for resale. They also have their parts department that still stocks parts for HH trailers, we were able to get all but one body part to repair tire damage on our 12 year old trailer.

We have a very strong owners group and most like us plan on keeping our trailers for a long time, many are even having their trailers full body painted to freshen them up. The only reason we are able to do this because they are a well built unit with a strong frame something you aren't going to find anymore.

Denny

 

Sometimes it is really disheartening. We went to a couple shows earlier this year and listened to shoppers comments. Everyone was so caught up in floorplans and colors they didn't even seem to notice the bounce in the floors of the ultra-lights. We also are towing older as now shorter means ultra-light, which we would not have. If someone were to make a high-end short fiver, we would jump on it, but try to find one.

Yesterday I had to rehang a sliding door on a fiver between the upper and lower levels. Not a big job you would think. Problem was the door was solid particle board hanging on the standard rollers and there was no way they were up to the task. The track was also too short and did not have a back stop on it so when you rolled in the door, the back rollers dropped off the track and the door fell into the pocket.

It was a task just to get the door out of the pocket, add another set of rollers, fabricate a stop so it couldn't be pushed in too far. It is getting like that with everything now. It takes forever to make even simple repairs because the manufacturers don't give a flip if something can be fixed. Just throw the parts in and make it pretty, then owners complain of the cost of service on something the manufacturers basically designed to be unserviceable.

As I said, I am just getting old and cranky!

 

I have a different opinion of Redwood/Crossroads/Thor !
And now that it's more than just 'fanboys' out on the redwood forums,
their lingering poor design/support is being posted now...