Greg Gerber posted on October 09, 2008 09:07
OKLAHOMA CITY – Even as the rest of the nation’s RV industry faces slumping sales, Oklahoma recreational vehicle dealers said they are seeing a compensating increase from the local oil industry.
“We’re seeing a lot of oilfield workers moving from site to site, and rather than waste their company’s per diem living expense payments on hotel rooms, they’re buying their own RVs,” said Chad Eaton, service manager with Leisure Time RV. Recreational vehicle dealers this week have moved hundreds of examples of their product lines into exhibition buildings at the Oklahoma State Fair Park for the Central Oklahoma RV Dealer Association’s annual fall RV Show & Closeout Sale. The event is free to the public and ends Sunday.
Eaton and others in the industry said consumers were upbeat and sales were good at least year’s event. This year, however, local businesses have seen sales declining slightly over the last three months.
Oklahoma dealers blamed this year's drop in RV sales on soaring gasoline prices and recent national economic worries keyed to recent drops in the stock market and failing financial firms. Dealers also are already feeling a pinch from tighter lending standards driven by those other factors, Eaton said.
“It’s getting more and more difficult to get even good customers financed as far as lenders are concerned, especially the nationwide lenders,” he said. “Some of our local lenders really haven’t changed much yet, but at the national level, a couple have even dropped out of the market altogether.”
Clifton Lewis with Lewis RV Center expects Oklahoma to be insulated slightly from whatever recession-like effects that might be experienced first by other parts of the country, thanks to increased demand in the energy industry.
“A good majority of what we’ve been selling in the last several months have been to people in oil and natural gas,” Lewis said. “Even work in our wind energy fields is picking up. … So where we’re losing in one area, we’re gaining in another. We’re a little luckier in that aspect than some other markets are.”
Lewis has also seen increased consumer demand in “toy hauler” models, the lighter RVs used mostly for hauling off-road, three- and four-wheel vehicles for short, family leisure trips.
This year’s product lines haven’t started reflecting market demand yet, dealers said. The size and amenities of the top-of-the-line models are still just as luxurious as ever – Lewis said he could hook up a buyer with an RV with a hot tub.
SOURCE: The Journal Record