16-18DEC07 - Red Bay, AL

As we stated last time, the day after Rebecca and Raymond’s wedding we headed to Red Bay, AL, and the Tiffin factory (builder of our current RV). Why the RV factory you ask? Because unlike autos, most RV manufacturers have facilities on site for working on their RVs. In most cases they can fix anything on the RV (except transmissions, engines and chassis), including major accident repair. Imagine if you could take your car to the factory that built your vehicle with all their in house expertise, and ask them to look into a leaking window, strange noise from the suspension, non working CD player, etc, etc. And while you waited for service you could talk to the engineers and designers of your vehicle. In addition, you get to talk directly to the mechanic/technician who will work on your vehicle. In fact you can actually watch the entire repair as long as you don’t interfere. Well you can do that at Tiffin, and even tour the factory if you have time.

http://www.tiffinmotorhomes.com/

So on Sunday, 16DEC, we drove for seven hours to the little town of Red Bay. Tiffin prefers that you make an appointment, but getting an appointment is very hard because many Tiffin owners make a yearly appointment even if nothing needs fixing on their RV! But we were hoping that we could get one of the three hour service slots that don’t require appointment. Sometimes there is even a line of RVs waiting for one of the three hour slots. When you check into the Tiffin RV park you fill out work list of what you want fixed/looked at, which we did Sunday night. Monday morning Norris was knocking on our door to go over the list. Turns out Norris reviews all work lists with the owners to make sure it is clear what exactly is needed. Interestingly Norris will often tell you how to do the repair cheaper than they will, or to “live with it” because the repair cost will be very high for benefit gained.

Another nice thing about factory work, is that the hourly rates are less than at RV dealerships and they bill in 15 minute increments. Lastly, when one of the young mechanics (ie 30/40 years old) gets stumped, they will call over one of the older mechanics for help (or even consult one of the in house engineers), and you don’t get doubled billed for time. We were fortunate that after lunch on Monday they got us into a service bay (there are over fifty bays), and had 90% of the work done.

The next day we participated in the morning factory tour. Dan felt that the organization on the assembly line left a little to be desired. Although self drive RVs are very expensive items, all RV owners live with the fact that there will several problems (hopefully minor ones) in a brand new RV no matter the brand. Probably a good thing the Japanese haven’t gotten into the RV market. Turns out that the company was providing a free BBQ lunch to the employees. Our tour guide got us a free lunch. Upon our return to the Tiffin RV park, we discovered that everything was done on our work list. In fact, while the mechanic was working on our last item, the electric motor on our hydraulic levelers burned out and they replaced it. Even with the cost of the motor, our bill was probably half of what it would have been at a RV dealership.

All-in-all we are very happy with our trip to the Tiffin RV factory and will try for an appointment next year.