One of the subplots of the 2020 FX miniseries Devs is that one of the San Francisco software engineers it depicts lives in his RV. Nomadland, the Oscar-winning film also released that year, is about a woman traversing the country in her RV. These are regular livers of #VanLife, in addition to the older Americans who have long taken to the road to see the world during their golden years.
But during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new crop of people began buying Winnebagos and the like to hit the open road. That excitement is over. RV shipments hit their lowest point in 12 years in 2023, The Wall Street Journal reports.
“Some people are ready to get back out there and get out of the house and have some type of travel, and doing so in an RV makes the most sense,” Monika Geraci, a spokesperson for the RV Industry Association, told Quartz in 2020. “You see the kids riding around the campsite on bikes and are naturally six feet apart; you can still wave and talk to the person at the next campsite over, but you don’t come [too close] and you still have that community feel.”
Not so much anymore. Consumers remain gloomy about the state of the economy and their ability to make big-ticket purchases. Persistently high interest rates make those kinds of purchases more difficult.
During an recent earnings presentation earlier this month, Winnebago CEO Michael Happe was optimistic about his company’s future but acknowledged the sector’s current difficulties.
“I think everybody who’s on this call is well aware, the fluidity and dynamics and volatility of these outdoor recreation industry segments has been high,” he said. “And it’s been very difficult for all of us to forecast both short term and long term exactly what the market is going to give us, good or bad.”