B sales growth

Percentages can be deceptive. Simplified example: if two are sold in one year and the next year four are sold, that's 100% growth in sale but it's still only 4 sold.

It can't be a big market. Mercedes Benz said about 6,000 Sprinters were delivered last year for RV conversion. They didn't say if that was just vans or vans and cut-away chassis combined. Still, either way, that is a very small number especially in the true van B or small RVs market.

Roadtrek, Pleasureway and Winnebago all claim to be #1 - but that is probably in how they are parsing the numbers. Who knows for sure. Arguing about who is selling more of the 400 units a month is silly when total RV production is 36,000. All the volume is in trailers anyways.

But if you are talking to finance types or marketing types - it's all about the growth. The % growth is in B's. The money is in trailers. Growth moves stock prices and generates interest in your stock. I'm sure the Wall Streeter's are saying - "I see growth in B's is up 50% year over year. What are you doing in B's?", to which Winnebago will say "We're #1 in B's!"

I just thought it was interesting.

If you go to their history page there is more interesting numbers on total RV sales - 1978 was a year where 390,000 units sold and that was down 5.8% from the previous year. Sales have didn't beat this number until 2006. Sales tanked after that year - so you may expect good used deals on 2003-06 models since there are so many and maybe 2007-2010 models to hold their values a bit better since their numbers were way down.

"B"s may have a lot of growth, but with the factor that only a couple hundred units get sold a month, they are barely a blip on the radar screen of the larger RV makers. Forest River dropped their MB Cruiser back in the T1N days. However, Winnebago is in the market with both feet and the only game in town if you want a ProMaster upfit.

Oddly enough, "B"s seem to sell better than truck campers, which was surprising to me.

If you look at the sales numbers of individual manufacturers, Thor, (Interstate), is either second or first in all types of RV's.
At least in the case of class B's, they claim they are second in sales. I say balderdash on that claim. I think they are including their so called B+ models in their numbers for B's, when they should be in the class C category.
I have no proof of this other than the fact that in the 8 years we've owned a class B, and would notice, we've only seen 2 Interstates out on the road or in campgrounds. We've seen many Roadtreks, Winnebago ERA's, and a few Pleasureways, Leisure Travels and Great West vans....