Like millions of Americans, Texas author Pam LeBlanc decided to hit the road this summer, renting a Dodge Ram ProMaster 1500 that she and her husband nicknamed “Ivan the Terrible.” She wrote about her adventures – and her take on current state of the RV industry – in this article for Texas Monthly.
A copy of “Van Life: Your Home on the Road” lives on my bookshelf, its pages filled with photographs of stylish vehicles. Glossy photos show seventies-era Volkswagen Westfalias with pop-up sleeping hatches; formerly dilapidated old school buses customized with miniature kitchens and sofas; and other custom builds, often with a surfboard, kayak, or bicycle in tow.
I slid the book off its shelf a few months ago, not long after COVID-19 forced us all to rethink how we were going to travel, and started fantasizing about a socially distant campervan tour of Colorado – my own version of van life, minus the flowy hair and floral dresses. We would find wide-open spaces, and camp in forests and orchards instead of booking hotels. We’d go rafting and hiking and cook meals on the stove in our van instead of eating at restaurants. As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one with that idea.
“People want movement, they want to travel, and they need to go see family members, but candidly, people are nervous about mass market airlines and mass market hotels,” said Jeff Cavins, cofounder and CEO of the Austin-based Outdoorsy.com, a website for RV and camper rentals. Bookings through the company spiked a whopping 4,500 percent between late March, when people began canceling other travel plans, and mid-June, when half the state of Texas apparently loaded up for a road trip to someplace cooler.
This isn’t an entirely new trend. In 2017, Texas sold more RVs – $424 million worth of them – than every state but California. The pandemic appears to have only boosted those numbers. Mike Regan, who owns two RV dealerships in Austin, told Bloomberg that his sales have been “through the roof.”
To read LeBlanc’s entire piece click here.