RV Sales Are Slumping... Here's Why That's Great News for Buyers

Mike Wendland (0:02): Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Monday news edition of the RV lifestyle podcast. I'm Mike Wendland, an 18 time Emmy award winning journalist. Those are my Emmys back there behind me. And for more than fifteen years, Jennifer and I have been traveling North America by RV, close to half a million miles across all 48 states bringing you honest source I know there's 50 states, but 48 contiguous states bringing you honest source reporting. Actually, I've been to 49 counting Alaska.

Mike Wendland (0:29): Source reporting got all the news that affects your travels and your wallet. Now before we get started, just a quick word about where the real conversations happen. If you're worn out by all the social media noise and particularly those Facebook groups and algorithms and the drama of those big Facebook social media platforms, come and see what we have built at rvcommunity.com. It's a private ad free community of RVers. A lot of us making the most of life's second half.

Mike Wendland (0:57): There's no politics. There's no sales pitches. No bots. Just real RVers helping one another swapping campground tips and meeting up at our member rallies. Ad free is the whole point.

Mike Wendland (1:08): Come find your people at rvcommunity.com. We've got five stories for you this week, and we're gonna get right into them. The first story, the quiet summer in Elkhart. It's been a slow news week out of Elkhart, the RV capital of the world, and that quiet tells its own story. They're doing a lot of soul searching down there right now, and you can feel it in the numbers.

Mike Wendland (1:31): Right about now, the plants up in Northern Indiana are powering down for their seasonal changeover shutdowns. Every major manufacturer does it usually a couple of weeks, usually in July, late June, while the lines get switched over to handle the new model year. That part's normal. It happens every summer, and what is worth paying attention to though is the backdrop that they're heading into in this downtime. In May, RV manufacturers shipped 22,900 units.

Mike Wendland (2:00): That's miserable. That's down 18.7% from the same month a year ago, which was a bad month then. It is not a one month stumble. As we've been reporting here, this is now the eighth straight month that shipments have come in below the year before. Through the first five months of 2026, the industry itself is down about 14.4%.

Mike Wendland (2:24): Towables took the brunt of it, down better than 21%. Motorhomes, interestingly, actually ticked up a little bit, about two percent. For decades, the rhythm in Northern Indiana was simple. Build through the spring, take some downtime in the summer, switch the lines over to the new model year, start again. Those summer slowdowns are normal.

Mike Wendland (2:46): It's what the automotive industry does as well. But what's not normal is heading into one of those new seasons with shipments already this soft and dealer lots already this full. Half of all The US RV inventory sat past ninety days last year, and once a unit crosses that ninety day mark, it stops being merchandised and starts being a bill because the dealer's then paying interest every day to keep it parked. Now layer in on the calendar. As the lines switch over this summer, the 2027 models start arriving, and the moment they do, every leftover 2026 unit becomes aging inventory even if nobody's ever slept in it.

Mike Wendland (3:29): So here is the buried lead in this story, and it's part of what matters if you're shopping. A soft factory summer is the best buyer's window of the year. Dealers are at their most motivated right now to clear older model year units, and if you're looking at a 2026 rig, you've got more leverage today than you had in the spring. Ask what's aging on the lot. Ask how many days it's been sitting.

Mike Wendland (3:55): A 2026 that's mechanically identical to the 2027 version parked at a hundred plus days is exactly the kind of unit a dealer would rather discount than keep paying to floor. Alright. Story number two, a record fourth of July on the road. If you're heading out this week, you're gonna have company. A lot of it, AAA projects a record 72,200,000 Americans will travel at least 50 miles from home over the Independence Day window, which is from Saturday, June 27 through Sunday, July 5.

Mike Wendland (4:29): That edges past last year's record of 71,800,000, and here's the number that matters most for us as RVers. 61,400,000 of those folks are going by car, about 85% of all travelers. This is also America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, so the roads, the tourist towns, the park entrances are all gonna be busier than usual. For RVers, that means crowded dump stations, maybe a little longer check-in lines, and fewer last minute sites over the holiday weekend. Triple a flags the worst days for congestion, June 27, July 2, July 3, and July 5, with the ugliest hours between noon and 7PM.

Mike Wendland (5:10): So some practical moves you can take, it's the same ones good RVers always make. Treat traffic timing as part of the trip plan, not an afterthought. Leave early in the morning, get to your campground before the check-in rush and before dark because backing a big rig into a tight side after sundown in a packed park is nobody's idea of a good time. Little planning this week turns a record crowd holiday into a smooth one. Story number three, those fuel prices still sting.

Mike Wendland (5:41): They're a little lower, but they still hurt. So let's talk about what it cost to fill that tank because that's still the question I get asked more than any other this summer. And here's the honest picture. Gas has actually eased a bit over the last few weeks. The national average for regular just slipped back under $4, sitting around $3.92 as of this past week, down from the spike we saw back in May when it hit about $4.55.

Mike Wendland (6:04): So technically, prices have come down off that peak, but do not be fooled into thinking that we're getting a break. Compared to last summer, we're still paying roughly 75¢ to a dollar more per gallon. A year ago, the national average was sitting in the low $3 range. Today, it's pushing 4. And remember why?

Mike Wendland (6:24): Back in late February, conflict overseas, the closure of the Straits Of Hormuz and prices climbing fast more than 50% from where they were at the beginning of the year. We have to come down from the worst of it, but we're nowhere near back to normal, especially now as this so called peace thing that they had. This agreement has been all in disarray over the last few days, violated here, more attacks here. And then the fuel prices, they're holding cautiously high till this is all figured out. Diesel, man, that's the highest.

Mike Wendland (6:54): It tells the same story. Very high. Still taking a bigger bite than it did a year ago, but still at most places over $5 at the pump. I've seen it as high as $5.59. Here's what that means in real dollars for us when you're running a sixty and eighty or a 100 gallon tank in a motor home or you're pulling a fifth wheel with a thirsty diesel truck.

Mike Wendland (7:13): That 75¢ to a dollar gap is not pocket change. On a single fill up, it's real money, and across the summer of travel, it adds up to hundreds of dollars more than you spent last year for the very same trips. So plan your fuel stops, use the apps that are out there to find the better prices along your route, and build that higher price cost into your travel budget. Honestly, the prices coming down off the peak are nice. Let's hope it continues, but it's still not the same as cheap.

Mike Wendland (7:43): Let me pause for just a second to make sure you're not missing something that's completely free. I don't know if you know this, but every morning by 07:30, Jennifer and I send out the RV lifestyle newsletter. Your daily dose of RV news, travel ideas, campground discoveries, tips, gear we actually use, and the industry stories that affect your trips is delivered right to your inbox before you even finish your first cup of coffee. It's free. It's honest, and there's never any spam.

Mike Wendland (8:10): So if you're not on that list yet, fix that this morning. Just go to rvlifestyle.com/newsletter and sign up. Absolutely free. Alright. Back to news.

Mike Wendland (8:20): Story four. Starlink changes the rules again. If you've been RVing more than a few years, you remember hunting for a usable connection to the Internet on the road. Starlink, remember that? When it came out, it ended that, and the little Starlink Mini of recent years has become close to standard equipment for many RVers out there.

Mike Wendland (8:41): Laptop size, very light, with a WiFi router built in. It zips far less power than the bigger dishes. Earlier this year, Starlink even cut the power draw in its dishes by about 25%, matters if you boondock on battery and solar. And the minis, their price came way down from $5.99 at launch to as little as 199 for new accounts. But here's what you need to know because Starlink giveth and Starlink taketh away.

Mike Wendland (9:07): In May, SpaceX raised prices across most of its lineup. The entry Rome plan, which most RVers use, went from 50 to $55 a month. Rome unlimited went from 165 to 175. There's a newer middle tier, Rome 300 GB, 300 gigabytes, which goes for $80, and that's held its price, and it lands right in the sweet spot for a lot of travelers who don't use a lot of bandwidth. They also doubled the standby pause fee, and that's one a lot of people use, particularly snowbirds in the off season from $5 to $10 a month to stay on the standby mode.

Mike Wendland (9:48): And the change that has the community talking the most for new residential customers in some areas, Starlink has stopped selling the dish outright, moved to a $10 a month rental. You no longer own the equipment. You have to send it back if you cancel. Now that's residential. That's not Rome, and the mini is still a straight purchase, but there is a catch here for us.

Mike Wendland (10:10): The pause for the season feature lives on the plans where you own your dish. So the smart play for RVers is the same as always. Buy your mini outright, run a roam plan, and you keep the freedom to pause it when you park the rig, and know your real data use, by the way. Check it in the app and match the plan to it instead of paying for unlimited out of habit if you don't need it. Story number five, the travel center gets an upgrade.

Mike Wendland (10:38): Loves and now Dolly. Couple of good news items to close out, both about the same trend. The roadside travel center is getting a whole lot better for folks like us. Of course, there's Buc ee's, which has become an institution now with its massive stores across the country. Not very RV friendly, but still, everybody loves Buc ee's, especially that brisket.

Mike Wendland (10:59): But then Loves, Loves Travel Centers, the big truck stops. We've talked about them before, but they keep expanding in our direction as RVers, so it's worth an update. Loves now operates more than a 130 RV stops nationwide. These are locations built with us in mind, dump stations, propane, and on the service side, they have partnered with Spartan RV chassis to handle warranty work and inspections and lube service, wheel alignments for Spartan motorhome owners. Even if you're not a Spartan chassis, you can pay attention to that signal.

Mike Wendland (11:31): One of the biggest travel center chains in the country has decided that RV service is worth investing in at scale along the interstates where we actually drive. For a lifestyle where it's always been easy to buy a rig and hard sometimes to get one serviced far from home, that's exactly the kind of infrastructure that we've been needing. And here's a fun one. If you've driven through Tennessee, you know the Buc ee's phenomenon, you know the giant travel centers, a destination in themselves. Now there's some competition.

Mike Wendland (12:01): Last week, none other than Dolly Parton opened her own version. Dolly's Tennessean Travel Stop, right off I 65, Exit 22 in Cornersville, Tennessee about an hour south of Nashville. And true to form, Dolly herself showed up to cut the ribbon. She could not resist a jab at the Buc ee's competition. She said, I couldn't leave it to the beavers, she said, the wink that only Dolly can pull off.

Mike Wendland (12:28): This is no ordinary fuel stop. Dolly's Truck Stop is a rebrand of the longtime Tennessean travel stop, reimagined into a full destination fuel, EV charging, yes, but also a full service southern restaurant, barbecue spot called d l y b b q, Dolly barbecue, her own cup of ambition coffee, a general store, a live music space, and a 40 foot mural celebrating the Tennessee landscape, even a dog park called the Doggy Park dog park for your traveling pup. And the folks behind it say this Cornersville location is just the first of many planned. Whether you're hauling loads or hauling the family or just passing through, they said, we built this place for you. That's what Dolly told the crowd.

Mike Wendland (13:11): Good food, real rest, a little music, and people who are generally glad you stopped in. So here's the takeaway from both of these stories, Loves and Dolly. The humble truck stop is evolving into something genuinely worth planning a route around, real RV service at Loves, and a true destination stop at Dolly's. As you map out your summer travels, these are the kinds of places worth knowing about. And if you find yourself rolling down I 65 through Middle Tennessee, well, you just might wanna stop in and say howdy to Dolly's Place.

Mike Wendland (13:43): And that's gonna do it for this Monday news edition. As always, everything we report here is sourced and checked because after a career in journalism, I don't know how to do it any other way. Before you go, let me come back to where we started. The road is better with people who understand it, and if this summer you're looking for more than just a place to park, you want real friendships and straight answers from experienced RVers, not social media minions, and a community that has your back on the road and off, take a look at rvcommunity.com. It's private, ad free, built for RVers.

Unknown Speaker (14:16): Jen and I hang out there all the time. Come check it out, particularly those of you who wanna make the most out of life's second half. This is the kind of folks who listen to this show. No algorithms or drama or politics. This real RVers helping one another.

Unknown Speaker (14:29): So come join us. Rvcommunity.com. Alright. For Jennifer, I'm Mike Weather, and she'll be with me on Wednesday as we resume our podcast episodes. Two a week we do.

Unknown Speaker (14:39): Wednesday, Stories from the Road, Mondays, News Edition. Thanks as always for listening and watching. Drive safely out there. Happy fourth of July, and as always, happy trails.