Long View RV’s Long Game as a Successful RV Dealership

“Give the boy a shot!”

That’s all it took when Fran Roberts tried to get a bank loan to open an RV dealership selling tent campers at just 19 years old. As Roberts faced a possible denial, someone called out from the back and told the loan agent to reconsider, changing the course of Roberts’ life — and that of his family members for generations.

Since the doors of Long View RV Superstores opened in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, in 1959, the company has been passed on to Frank Roberts, who now runs it alongside his daughter, Lexi.

After moving locations a couple of times, Long View RV is now headquartered in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, on a five-acre site near the Bradley International Airport. The site consists of a display lot, a parts and accessories store and a service department.

The Robertses also operate a store in Canaan, New York, during the summer months. This location is “buried in snow” for the winter months, Frank says, but summer traffic through the Berkshire Mountains there is plentiful.

“We have some local people who [operate] that store in the summer,” Frank says.

It’s a New Day

Frank is looking to Lexi as the future of Long View. After finishing her master’s in business administration, she’s now poised to dive in — though she’s been working at the dealership since 2018, when she was just 16 years old.

“She’s learned everything from the bottom up, same as me,” Frank says, “with more of a stress on her background in parts and service than mine. Mine was sales-focused.”

The Robertses say the only con they experience working as a family is turning off work mode — but they like it that way.

“Lexi brings in a whole different aspect — something I have never looked at in the business,” Frank says. “The new ideas she’s spitting out are coming fast and furious.”

“Then we get to go home and talk about it, and we’re always going — it never stops,” Lexi says. “I think that’s what makes it good as a family business because we’re always working on something.”

One thing that’s changed since Lexi started working full time at the dealership is Long View’s social media presence.

“I thought ours was kind of lacking before I took over,” she says. “So now we have a TikTok page; I’m trying to get a lot of engagement on that end to get the new buyers coming in. I realize my generation and the next generation, that’s how people shop — it’s online. They want to be able to see their options before they even ever go to a dealership to walk in an RV.

“That’s a big project I’ve been working on, trying to get that going, get more content. We’re going to be doing some giveaways because we’re on Facebook but not really on Instagram. So, I’m trying to do giveaways to get followers.”

Long View RV works with InteractRV for its website and Motility for its CRM. With eight technicians and 18 service bays, there’s a lot to juggle. The business is actually on two sides of Lawnacre Road — parts and service on one side, sales on the other. The retail store has about 12,000 square feet.

Known for Service

“We have a lot of indoor space, but you need it in this country,” Frank says, referencing the cold winters in New England.

Long View, which has 38 employees, focuses on selling motorized RVs but also sells tent campers and pop-ups. While RV sales make up the majority of the business, service plays a large part as well.

“Sales is certainly the driving force, but service is the most important aspect of any dealership,” Frank says. “Without good service, you will never have good repeat business. We have proved over 66 years that our service is fantastic, but we take a different approach than a lot of dealers in that every single mechanic has two to three weeks a year of training.

“The other thing with us that most dealerships don’t have is longevity of employees. The service manager, it’s his 32nd year; the sales manager, it’s his 25th year. We have more employees over 10 years than under 10 years.”

Frank says it’s the family atmosphere that keeps employees around for a long time. Lexi references monthly birthday lunches and ongoing professional development as just two of the benefits of Long View’s culture. She notes they have four Level 4 technicians right now.

One thing that sets Long View apart is they will service anyone — you don’t have to have an RV purchased from them.

“It helps exponentially because if you bought it from a competitor and you saw how they treated you in service and then you come to us, we’ll definitely get your next sale,” Frank says.

Playing It Smart

In the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, Frank says they were careful to stay on top of their inventory, which helped their business when sales slowed down. The dealership did well at the beginning of this year, with sales up year over year during January and February. He says he feels customers were moving quicker at the beginning of the year to make purchases just in case prices went up as a result of the tariffs.

As a business, Frank says they want to be known for their great customer service. Lexi adds they also want to be known for fun.

“We’re selling vacations,” she says, “so we want a good overall experience throughout the whole process.”

Frank is most excited about the new innovations coming out from the RV industry. He notes there are better components in RVs now, and technology that allows people to run much of their RV from their phone is leaps and bounds from where the industry came from.

Lexi notes additions like rear decks, huge windows and other new features are appealing to a new generation of campers.

“Now there is so much cool stuff coming down the line,” Frank says.