On the move

"There are a lot of RV companies out there that are going to have a good year," said Joseph P. Tomczak, executive vice president at Elkhart-based Coachmen Industries Inc., a maker of RVs and modular homes.

Coachmen, which employs nearly 4,500 workers, forecast last month that its 2004 sales would rise as much as 12 percent from last year, with earnings expected to nearly double.

In northern Indiana, sales of RVs and travel trailers have helped offset severe job losses in other segments of heavy manufacturing. Industry figures show about 58 percent of all the nation's RVs are produced in Indiana. More than 100 different brands of RVs are produced within 25 miles of Elkhart, which bills itself as "RV Capital of the World."

Amid overall manufacturing job declines, Indiana RV makers like Coachmen, Gulf Stream Coach and Monaco Coach have been hiring workers, with Coachmen adding a new 300-employee plant last year in Middlebury.

Statewide, employment at plants manufacturing RVs, travel trailers and campers grew 26 percent from 17,200 in January 2002 to 21,700 in December of last year, according to state data.

Since the first RV models appeared in the 1930s, RV sales have typically surged months ahead of recoveries in the national economy, and RV sales declines have preceded recessions, industry officials say.

The industry's record as an economic bellwether has held up this decade. RV shipments rose 21 percent in 2002 while the economy as a whole began a slow rebound. Last year, shipments rose another 3.2 percent.

"I don't see references to this kind of future opportunity until you go back to coming out of the astronomical interest rates and fuel shortages of the 1970s," said Al Hesselbart, a historian at an RV museum in Elkhart who writes for industry trade journals. "I think the growth the industry is projecting the next year or so is every bit as good as what it was in the early 1980s."