Why are Truck Campers so poorly made?
So I bought a new hard side truck camper recently. I'm not going to say which. Before that I had a pop-up, so this is my second camper. I looked at a half dozen more campers before my purchase, but...
Forum Discussion
It's great to hear people's success stories. It gives me hope.
It's just that for the money one pays, I expect to get something of top notch quality. Now I know there's a couple factors involved here that precludes the use of the strong, quality materials.
One is weight. Cheap plastic products also happen to be lighter than metal or a more robust plastic composite. Unless you go high end, like carbon fiber, the cheap plastic ones are going to save you weight and money, so manfuacturers seem to favour those. But you could use fiber glass wherever possible, like in the bathrooms.
Second, the volume of sales compared to other products like cars necessitates a higher profit margin. I understand the economy of scale. But, if every manufacturer is on the brink of bankruptcy, why are there so many of them? Also, I'm guessing there's at least $10,000 markup for every TC sold. In other words, It costs the manufacturer ~$6-7k to build one. (Were talking a water proof box, a cheap water pump and heater, fridge, and some plumbing and electrical). They then turn around and sell it to the dealer for $16-17 who marks it up another $10k. So any one manufacturer doesn't have to sell more than 100 TCs to make $1 mil in profit. This is after overhead costs. Of course, I'm speculating on these numbers, but I don't think I'm far off.
You'd think for that kind of money they could at least provide a complete manual, not just the individual ones provided by the various appliance and component manufacturers; or hire some decent finishing carpenters; or use aluminum and fiber glass construction throughout.
I know this sounds like buyers remorse. But when you pay $25 - $30k for a something, you don't expect it to start creeking in 2 weeks, or for the electrical jacks to work intermittently, or the water pump to start making loud, knocking sounds. This kind of stuff just smacks of poor design and components and attention to detail.
I'm sure there are a lot of good TCs out there. I just haven't seen any.
It's just that for the money one pays, I expect to get something of top notch quality. Now I know there's a couple factors involved here that precludes the use of the strong, quality materials.
One is weight. Cheap plastic products also happen to be lighter than metal or a more robust plastic composite. Unless you go high end, like carbon fiber, the cheap plastic ones are going to save you weight and money, so manfuacturers seem to favour those. But you could use fiber glass wherever possible, like in the bathrooms.
Second, the volume of sales compared to other products like cars necessitates a higher profit margin. I understand the economy of scale. But, if every manufacturer is on the brink of bankruptcy, why are there so many of them? Also, I'm guessing there's at least $10,000 markup for every TC sold. In other words, It costs the manufacturer ~$6-7k to build one. (Were talking a water proof box, a cheap water pump and heater, fridge, and some plumbing and electrical). They then turn around and sell it to the dealer for $16-17 who marks it up another $10k. So any one manufacturer doesn't have to sell more than 100 TCs to make $1 mil in profit. This is after overhead costs. Of course, I'm speculating on these numbers, but I don't think I'm far off.
You'd think for that kind of money they could at least provide a complete manual, not just the individual ones provided by the various appliance and component manufacturers; or hire some decent finishing carpenters; or use aluminum and fiber glass construction throughout.
I know this sounds like buyers remorse. But when you pay $25 - $30k for a something, you don't expect it to start creeking in 2 weeks, or for the electrical jacks to work intermittently, or the water pump to start making loud, knocking sounds. This kind of stuff just smacks of poor design and components and attention to detail.
I'm sure there are a lot of good TCs out there. I just haven't seen any.
