In 1980, a financier and an heir to the Busch beer empire joined forces and bought a recreational trailer company called Hi-Lo. The price was right, as the oil crisis had cooled Americans’ passion for hitting the open road in oversized vehicles.
This story by Laura Putre originally appeared in IndustryWeek.
Soon after, Wade Thompson and Peter (Busch) Orthwein sealed their partnership with the purchase of Airstream, maker of the Space Age aluminum trailers that were popular with Grand-Canyon-goers in the 1950s and ’60s. They combined the first two letters of their last names and called their burgeoning company Thor Industries.
In the decades that followed, Thor steadily acquired other RV companies, including Dutchmen and Komfort, as well as bus and ambulance manufacturers. Its strong performance on six metrics in 2017 earned it the No. 2 spot on the IndustryWeek 50 Best this year.
Thor has announced more than a dozen plant expansions or newly constructed plants since the start of 2017. And the company is looking for “ways to bring their stylish trailers to Asia, particularly China,” noted Dan Debelius, industry analyst for the Freedonia Group market research firm.
