Forest River Sabre 37RVMILES Highlights Tampa’s Opening Day – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
TAMPA, Fla. – With today being the opening day of the 40th Florida RV SuperShow, attendees will get their first opportunity to review the all-new Sabre 377RVMILES fifth-wheel, a collaboration between Forest River Inc. and Jason and Abby Epperson, stalwarts of RV social media and creators of the RVMiles and America’s National Parks podcast and related YouTube, Instagram and content.
The 377RVMILES is the result of a collaboration between Jason, Abby and Forest River’s Sabre production team.
The relationship with Sabre started several years ago, Jason explained.
“We were brand ambassadors for them in their 37 FLL floorplan, and that was back when we were full-time RVers. We’re not full-time RVers anymore. We’ve been off the road full-time for about a year-and-a-half now, and we call ourselves just normal RVers. We go out for week and weekend trips,” he said.
So, for the last couple of years, the Eppersons and their three sons – ages 11, 14 and 17 – have been camping in a 25-foot travel trailer.
“And that was great. Served its purpose; was a great off-road rig,” Abby said. “But when you have three teenage boys, a 25-foot travel trailer gets a little crowded and cozy awful quick, especially when one of your kids is 6-foot-5.”
“That 25-foot travel trailer was great, but way too small for our family of five,” Jason added. “It served its purpose. We took it from Baja to Alaska.”
The Eppersons knew they were looking for something else and kept in touch with the team at Sabre.
“They wanted to get us into one of their floorplans and there just wasn’t one that was perfect for us,” Abby said. “The thing that was perfect for us doesn’t exist, and we’ve learned that through the design process, but they said, ‘Well, we’ll build you what you want. Let us know what you want and we’ll build it. And let’s do a collaboration and let’s put something out together. It’s a win-win.’ We get the floorplan we want, and they get a floorplan that is something that RVers like us want.”
Next came the process of figuring out what the floorplan might look like. When they started out, Jason and Abby envisioned something much smaller.
“We were talking about doing a mid-size fifth-wheel and, over the course of the design process, we realized we really were happiest with our three kids in a really big fifth-wheel with lots of space,” Abby said. “And they were amazing partners to make that happen.”
Enter Forest River’s Shirley Cartwright, product manager for the Sabre line.
She outlined the win-win, where her brand ambassadors get the floorplan they want and Sabre gains valuable insights into what like-minded consumers are looking for in a new unit.
“Yes. This is something that’s going to appeal to a lot of big families or even the couple that maybe has the in-laws come with them or another couple comes with them,” Cartwright said. “You’ve also got a desk back there. So, it can be a remote office that’s basically not only a bunk room, but a flex room. So, yes, it’s going to be a floorplan that’s going to be a win-win for Sabre as well, because a lot of people are going to be drawn to this floorplan.”
Another plus for Forest River is the exposure of brand ambassadors who are at the top of the RV social media food chain.
The Eppersons started the RVMiles podcast in 2017. Just competing its 346th episode, the podcast – in audio and video versions – enjoys approximately 20,000 downloads each week. The couple’s American National Parks podcast, an audio-only production, also sees 20,000 weekly downloads and the RVMiles YouTube channel has 113,000-plus subscribers.
“So, a pretty healthy reach across social media, along with Instagram and Facebook and all the places you have to be these days,” Abby said.
From Cartwright’s perspective, “They’re going to get us a lot more outreach and get to a bigger community than what we get to on our own. And their experiences, their adventures, all their cool camping trips that they’ve got planned coming up so people can envision themselves actually going out and doing all these fun things. It gives them another perspective and shows just how much fun RVing can be. That’s what we achieve with them.”
Cartwright characterized the collaboration with the Eppersons as a positive experience.
“It really was a lot of fun. Like, they were saying they really wanted maybe a 30-foot unit. So we tried to put everything that they had on their wish lists into a 30-foot unit,” Cartwright said, grinning. “And then they said, ‘That’s not going to work.’ Okay, how about 34 feet? 36 feet? So, we’d go back to the drawing board and try again. The next thing you know, we bring them back something that they love. But as you can see, it’s not the footage that they were looking for, but it does give them all the things on their want list that they’d given us that makes the camping experience wonderful for not only them, but other campers as well.”
Michele Kay, interior designer on the project said, “It really started almost with a paper napkin, drawing some pictures, and it just kind of turned into this magnificent unit. From front to back and side to side, the Sabre Sundeck was a huge part of everything. Everybody loves it. The bunk room or flex room can be used so many different ways – an office, schoolwork, kids, grandparents, you name it.”
Abby recalled, “It was really this sundeck. It really changed a lot of our perspective about what we wanted when we saw this at Open House.”
“Shirley was saying we could keep the sundeck and expand out the RV and it would be 43 feet, or we could look at removing that and getting it smaller,” Abby added. “And I had fallen in love with this so much, I thought, ‘Well, honestly, what’s the difference at this point between 39 and 43?’”
Jason said the Sabre team “was very kind to give us the time and patience to let us dream and figure out all the things that could be problems. And I think we came up with lots of good compromises that are what we want in terms of being able to have our larger children, have a good road access and lots of different places to store stuff, a good chef’s kitchen. And it’s something that is not so niche that’s just for us, but other buyers will be interested in, too.”
Abby added, “It was really important to us to make sure that we weren’t just designing for Jason and Abby of RV Miles, but that we were also considering what another RV buyer might also like and that this would appeal to them. … That’s why it was so great working with them because we all had the same kind of goal in mind, like a real true partnership. And that same goal always carried us through as we continued to develop this and figure out what was going to work.”
Abby shared a story about the plant manger at Sabre. When the Epperson family came into the plant to look at the prototype, their 11-year-old son climbed up into the bunk. Afterward, he quietly asked his dad if he thought they could put a handle up on the wall to make it easier to get into the bunk.
“And so Jason went over to the plant manager and said, ‘Hey, Henry had this idea,’” Abby explained. “And the plant manager, rather than talking it through with Jason, went up to our son and said, ‘Hey, Henry, come show me what you’re talking about. Tell me what you need to be able to enjoy this RV.’”
Abby said she tells that story to “anyone who will listen to it because I think it is such a great example of what we need to do more of – listen to the really diverse voices that are all a part of RVing.”
The three-slide unit features a front bedroom with a camper king bed and bath with a full-sized shower, The kitchen houses a wraparound counter with a dinette across from its residential-sized appliances.
The Sabre 377RVMILES is 43 feet long with a UVW of 13,183 pounds, a carrying capacity of 3,052 pounds and a hitch weight of 2,235 pounds. MSRP is $114,749.
