Camping Porn

Did I hear that right; RV dealers want financial aid from my tax dollars? Give me a break, that request makes as much sense to me as a bailout for the porn industry. I can just about get my head around an auto bailout if I restrict my thinking to the ideas that personal vehicles are an everyday necessity for nearly everyone in today’s society and that the number of jobs affected in the Big Three’s plants and downstream distribution and service networks is quite significant. If I mantra to myself “Many Essential Auto Jobs” over and over again I can just get past the over inflated wage and benefit packages brokered and now demanded by union powers, but RV dealers…come on.

A ballpark figure, taken from GO RVing Canada, is that there are about 350 RV dealers nationwide. If you consider that each one may have an average of 8 employees, 3 of which are mechanics plus 2 parts guys whose jobs won’t be threatened by lack of new sales (and might even be bolstered due to increased used RV service requirements) and that the vast majority of RV dealers also sell many other leisure products (snowmobiles, quads, motorcycles etc) and provide an array of other services (storage, service, etc.) we are considering a total of maybe 800 jobs lost across Canada if not one single new RV gets sold past today.

Let’s face it, most of today’s RV’s are “camping porn”. Double slide out, hardwood and tile floored, plasma satellite TV equipped, “camping porn”. In a time when “cutting back” and “eco-friendly” are the lexicons of the day, I can’t seem to work up a tear or a tax dollar for an industry built largely on excess and its “fluffer” salesmakers whose clientele can afford (at any time in history) a “tent to camp in” worth well over $75,000.

Maybe one less Rolex in the family might save the RV industry.