We take you on a video tour of the Tiffin Motorhome Factory in Red Bay, Alabama. 2013 marks Tiffin’s 40th year, so what a great time to visit.
We’ve taken an awful lot of factory tours at various RV manufacturers: Monaco, Entegra, Winnebago, Newmar (of course… twice!), Travel Supreme, Rexhall, Country Coach and even high-end Prevost bus converter Marathon Coach (twice again). But we don’t get down South all that often, so we hadn’t made it to Tiffin before, even though they are high on our radar should we ever be in the market for a new RV.
We love our Newmar and have no plans to trade it in, but we know that unexpected life-changing experiences can sometimes lead down new paths. Winning the lottery for instance… or (on the darker side) losing the RV to fire, theft or other malady. Besides having a keen interest in RVs in general, we like to know as much as we can about different manufacturers and their construction techniques in case should we ever be in the market. There’s no better way to see way down under the hood of a particular brand than seeing them created from the ground up.
Although it seems every RV manufacturer offers factory tours, we have to say that we were surprised by the level of access we were given at Tiffin. We were allowed right up alongside most of the workers as they built these beautiful motorhomes. And at the paint facility, about 5 miles away from the main factory, the only tours are self-guided. We were literally given ear plugs, safety glasses and a map and given the run of the place!
During the final check and assembly phase of the construction, we were actually encouraged to hop on any coach on the line while it was being finished, and asked workers questions about the RVs!
We were impressed with an awful lot about Tiffin, and will definitely keep it on our short list should the time come to replace our Mountain Aire.
The extreme access all tour guests are given, along with the OK to photograph all we wanted, allowed us to make a pretty good video record of the manufacturing process to share here. Enjoy!