Episode Details

The RV industry is chasing the wrong generation. While manufacturers court 30-somethings with outdoor TVs and influencer campaigns, the buyers who are actually writing checks right now look nothing like the people in the ads.

Last week I sat around a campfire in Hocking Hills, Ohio with 88 members of our RVCommunity. I asked how many had bought a new RV in the past year. Eleven hands went up. A 12th would have, but he was out on a six-mile hike. He was turning 70.

That tells you everything the sales charts do not.

In this episode we dig into who is really driving the RV market right now, what experienced RVers actually want that manufacturers keep missing, the quiet but alarming shift happening in our national parks, and a dramatic rescue on the Appalachian Trail that is a reminder of exactly why preparation matters out there.

Read the companion blog post on RVing in the second half of life at RVLifestyle.com - link below.

Here is the complete episode, start to finish.

THE RV PODCAST - MONDAY NEWS EDITION Episode Air Date: Monday, June 23, 2026 - 6:00 AM Approx. Running Time: 25 Minutes Host: Mike Wendland

THE LAST GENERATION THAT KNOWS HOW TO TRAVEL ...and why the RV industry keeps ignoring them

OPEN

Last week I was sitting around a campfire in Hocking Hills, Ohio, with about 50 members of our RVCommunity.com.

I asked a simple question: how many of you have bought a brand new RV in the last year?

Eleven hands went up. A 12th would have, but he was out on a six-mile sunset hike - and he was turning 70 that summer.

This was happening while the RV industry is posting some of the worst wholesale shipment numbers in over a decade.

Which raises a question the people running this industry ought to be asking themselves: who exactly are they building RVs for?

Because I can tell you who is actually buying them. And they look nothing like the people in the ads.

OPENING

Good morning and welcome to the RV Podcast Monday News Edition. I'm Mike Wendland.

Eighteen Emmy Awards. Thirty-plus years covering everything from wars to the White House to consumer affairs. And for the past 15 years, living the RV lifestyle myself with my wife Jennifer in every type of rig you can imagine, coast to coast, all 48 contiguous states.

Today's show is a little different. Instead of leading with a breaking story, I want to start with something I witnessed firsthand that I believe tells you more about the real state of the RV market than any press release you will read this year.

And if you want to go deeper after you listen, I have been writing about this topic at RVLifestyle.com for the past several weeks. We have been exploring what it means to RV in the second half of life - the freedom, the community, the mindset, and yes, the ways the industry keeps getting it wrong. There is a link in the show notes. I think you will recognize yourself in it.

Here is what is happening on the road. And here is what the industry is getting wrong. Let's get into it.

LEAD STORY: THE LAST GENERATION THAT KNOWS HOW TO TRAVEL

The RV industry is having a rough year. A really rough year. And the numbers tell the story fast, so let me give them to you and move on, because the real story is not the numbers. The real story is who is still out there buying and camping while those numbers grind downward.

Wholesale shipments are down more than 13 percent through the first four months of 2026. Retail sales off 14 to 15 percent from last year. The industry's own forecast, just revised downward again this month, now projects this as one of the worst years for new RV sales in over a decade.

So who is still buying?

Here is what I can tell you from 15 years in this world and from what I saw last week in Hocking Hills. The people who are still writing checks for new RVs, right now, in the worst mark