Here's how our Newmar Dutch Star order went.....we contacted our dealer who orders between 100 and 120 Class A's a year. The ordering takes place at a dealer meeting every year in May. He may order 40 gassers and 60 diesels, some Spartan chassis and some Freightliner.
We met with the dealer and he looked at his upcoming deliveries and showed us when the next available (not spoken for) coach was coming up for build. We selected a Freightliner in July, that would be completed and at the dealership November 6th. Newmar has a very strict schedule that they keep to.
We had so many days, before a cutoff date, to make changes and add options. We submitted those, agreed upon a price and gave a deposit. We knew exactly what date our chassis would go into the build shop, so we flew back to Indiana. On the first day, we saw our chassis sitting at the back door of the build shop. It had already been to the welding shop, where they add all the structure to the frame rails, generator, tanks and flooring. Pretty much anything under the floor level is added at the welding shop. It took two weeks to do the welding.
We attended two tours a day, at the factory, for three days. We saw our chassis go in the door in the morning tour of the first day, by the second tour, mid afternoon, it had the bathroom framing and both walls with the two small slides installed. The second day it got the fiberglass wall installed, both caps and wiring routed. The third day, the bay doors, FWS and roof were added. Furniture was installed and woodwork completed inside. By the end of the third day, it was done and moving out the back door to the paint shop. At that time in 2019, Newmar was running 11 RV's a day through the factory. You could have a King Aire (1 million dollars) running through the factory, right next to a Bay Star gasser.
Painting took another two weeks. After that the coach was placed in a lot and scheduled for a transport company to drive it to the dealership. At that time, 2018, the coach arrived the day it was scheduled to be at the dealer, when we made the deal in July.
So long story, the entire coach was assembled in three days, but chassis prep took two weeks and paint took two weeks. The longest waiting period was the scheduling. It was schedule in May for an October build, so there was a lot of lead time.
This year, since Flexsteel dropped out of the RV furniture segment, along with Covid, Newmar ran into shortages of furniture and awnings (Girard). It slowed down delivery of many coaches by months.
