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The RV Capital – Fun Facts

As “The World’s RV Capital,” Elkhart County manufactures one of every two recreational vehicles on the road today.

Elkhart County’s multi-billion-dollar RV industry includes nearly 1,000 manufacturers of RVs, RV supplies and parts. RV-related companies employ more than half of Elkhart County’s workforce, with wages totaling more than $1 billion annually.

Elkhart County not only stocks and sells more RVs and RV parts than anywhere else in the world, it offers more RV services.

More than 20 RV and RV parts production plants in Elkhart County give free factory tours.

Wilbur Schult In 1936, Wilbur Schult purchased the Elkhart-based Sportsman Trailer Company from Milo Miller and renamed it Schult Trailer Coach. That same year, the fledgling company produced about one trailer a day. Each retailed for about $168. The vaudeville and carnival industries were the company’s biggest customers at that time. But within three years, Schult was producing and selling 125 trailers a week, as America’s largest trailer manufacturer.

Milo Miller has been nicknamed the “school teacher” of the trailer-coach industry for his entrepreneurial success, numerous innovations and the many top-notch industry executives who trained under him.

Most private trailer production stopped During WWII due to materials rationing. Under a government contract, Schult Trailer Coach shifted to production of America’s first modular homes.

After World War II, trailer production grew rapidly as 35 manufacturers were located in the Elkhart area. By the early 1950s, Elkhart County was known as the “Trailer Capital of the World.”

Richard Klinger, founder of Wakarusa’s Holiday Rambler (now a division of Monaco Coach Corporation) started building trailer parts in a chicken coop and assembling the trailers outdoors in the 1950s. Always an industry pioneer, Holiday Rambler originated the 48-inch-wide dinette/bed concept.

Brothers Tom, Keith and Claude Corson chose the name Coachmen for their company (originally called Coach Company) after Tom spotted a motel called Coachman along the Ohio Turnpike. The brothers settled on Coachmen Industries, Inc., as the name for their Middlebury company because it implied more than one person, and they reasoned many people would be needed to make their company a success.

Jayco Founded by Lloyd Jay Bontrager in 1968, Jayco of Middlebury always has been family owned. Today, the company is the nation’s largest privately owned manufacturer of RVs.

The term RV wasn’t coined until the 1960s. Until then, all units were either campers or travel trailers.