Despite Soft Market, Indiana’s RV Dealers ‘Not Crying the Blues’
Matt Rose
For the most part, RV dealers in Indiana have done a good job navigating the market as the industry shifts into post-pandemic mode.
That’s the sense that Matt Rose, director of recreation vehicles for the Indiana Manufactured Housing Association-Recreation Vehicle Indiana Council (IMHA-RVIC), gets when talking with dealers from across the state.
“Most of the guys – our dealers – are telling us that sales have cooled off a bit, but it’s more of a leveling off based on what they’ve seen the last couple of years,” Rose said. “Traffic on their lots and sales have really just leveled off. Traffic is still good, but it’s not what it was after the pandemic, of course.”
Most dealers across the state are happy with their inventory levels and “There are still plenty of sales left this summer,” Rose said. “Nobody’s crying the blues.”
He said you can’t compare the current climate with what happened in the second half of 2020 and 2021.
“2019 was the last ‘normal year,’ if you can call it a normal year,” he said. “It’s just not fair to compare 2020 and 2021 numbers to the current situation. If you want to get a real sense of how things are going you need to compare today to 2019. And business was good in 2019. Business was great. That’s a fair comparison.”
Business activity he’s seeing today, Rose believes, is similar to what the climate was like in 2019, which normally would be perceived as, “really, really good. We’ve just become accustomed to things going like gangbusters during the pandemic for reasons that we all know. That’s really what we’re seeing.”
Rose’s assessment mirrors the latest wholesale shipment numbers from the RV Industry Association (RVIA).
Results of RVIA’s July 2022 survey of manufacturers showed shipments for the month of 29,647 units, 33.4% fewer than the 44,537 units shipped in July 2021. But July 2021 was the best July on record for shipment numbers. For comparison, in July 2019 – a more “normal” month – 28,044 units were shipped.
And even with the 33% YoY drop in July, year-to-date shipments are up 2.5% compared to the same point in 2021. So far this year there have been 353,478 wholesale shipments. Through July in 2021, 344,804 units were shipped. Notably, total shipments in 2021 eclipsed 600,000 for the first time in the history of the industry.
The latest RV shipment forecast for all of 2022 – from the summer issue of RV RoadSigns, the quarterly forecast prepared by ITR Economics for the RVIA – was 549,00 units. If that holds, it would be the second-best year in history.
For comparison, in 2019, RV shipments reached 406,070 units.
Source: https://rvbusiness.com/despite-soft-market-indianas-rv-dealers-not-crying-the-blues/
