Those were the days

[Ralph L. Fullenwider]

Good morning everyone, from frozen Oklahoma:

The 60's were the years of wondrous developments in so many fields. In the
RV industry, leaps and bounds came on line veering away from the tear drop
trailers, one wheel tag along and Airstreams (the Cadillac of bumper tow
campers.)

Several innovative and new style RV's were in the making, mainly a new
class called the Class A or Coach. Until this era, the only Coach's were
conversion busses done in the back yard, so to speak. Then Blue Bird came
out with the Wanderlodge, Newell, Barth and even Cortez were in the mix of
the time. There were several others but the main stream Coaches or high
line Coaches jumped out in front with innovations that were seemingly new
technology. Wanderlodge, Newell and Barth were the leaders and all good
Coaches that captured the ooh's and ahh's at the RV trade shows. Then
Wanderlodge broke ground with more than the latest and greatest with
technology that were heretofore unheard of in the industry, and so remained
that way with all the others scrambling to catch up.

What Wanderlodge did, was to bring in designers from the air craft
industry, who demanded and got technology from their suppliers that were
truely innovative. PMMI went to work and brought in electronic technology
to the Wanderlodge that were years ahead of everyone else, and it was awe
inspiring. But only the upper elite could afford such luxury and Winnabago,
built on Dodge chassis got into the mix for the middle class affordability.
Cortez did not have the finances to keep up, and that was a shame because
it was a good coach, Newell found the financing to keep up and even Barth
managed to stay in the market but was dropping behind.

Yes interesting years to say the least. Then the market called for more and
more, people would mention, "wouldn't it be nice if we had?" and
Wanderlodge designed it, demanded from the suppliers to furnish it and got
it! Things like a back up camera system so you could see behind you and
then turn into a color tv when the coach was shut down. What a wonderful
thing that was.

Now were into "new technology" sort of, multiplexing for instance, is new
to RV technology, but innovative? not hardly. Multiplexing has been in
other industries for years as they got away from the old relay logic, so
the RV industry is now relegated to what the suppliers have on the shelf
instead of designing new systems. And in this world of "one up-man-ship"
are calling this new stuff innovative. As I see it, the only really new
things has been the satellite systems for RV's and other things like Data
Storm for TV and up link and down link systems, which were coupled with
plasma tv's via an off the shelf mother board and with multiplexing brought
pic in a pic technology so one could search on the web while watching a
program on tv.

Un fortunately, the chassis has had a hard time keeping up with all this
new weighty stuff and other industries such as tire manufacturers are
trying to keep up.

This of course is only my "opinion" and nothing more. I just thought it
interesting and a topic for discusion.

Safe travels,

Ralph and Charolette Fullenwider
84FC35
Ralph's RV Solutions, Duncan, Oklahoma