Heartland Building (*FEMA) Travel Trailers

jbeletti

Well-known member
Hi all,

Just wanted to update you on Heartland's involvement in hurricane relief.

As you know, most trailer manufacturers are building travel trailers to supply housing for those displaced from their homes by the recent hurricanes. Heartland too is involved.

Some manufacturers have contracts with *FEMA directly. My details are a bit sketchy, but as I understand it, some Heartland dealers have asked Heartland to build a travel trailer to help satisfy some demand.

The travel trailers Heartland is in the midst of building are not what we'd consider a typical FEMA spec trailer however. I believe that these trailers will be sold to end users by dealers.

When I was in the Elkhart area on business early last week, I snapped a few pictures of these trailers. I also spoke to Scott Tuttle by phone about the trailers and spoke to the factory line folks as they worked on the units.

As I understand it, these Heartland travel trailers:
* will be in the 30 foot long range:
* will have one (off-door side) slide
* will have standard RV appliances
* will have a full compliment of windows
* will not be stark white - they are decaled and branded
* will not be tin-sided - the ones I saw appeared to be gel-coat sided
* are in being run right now in both Heartland plants
* will carry the Bighorn name

Take a look at the attached imaged of these trailers in various stages of assembly. Whe Scott gets back into the office, perhaps he can clarify my post and put a finer point on it.

Jim
 

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cdbMidland

Past Michigan Chapter Leader
Is this the Bighorn plant, or another facility? Will Landmark and Bighorn 5er production be affected?
 

jbeletti

Well-known member
Chuck,

As I understand it, they are being built at both plants. As for how it affects 5er production, the factory would have to weigh in on that. I understand the travel trailers to be a limited run.

Jim
 

Scott

Well-known member
FEMA Coaches

Yes, we are building them out of both plants. We will be doing so for about three weeks. In the big scheme of things, three extra weeks for someone to wait on their new coach - so that others will have a roof over their head and a place to call their own - should not be that much of a inconvenience.
Because all travel trailers are in such high demand from FEMA, and because it is fairly easy for us to build a 30' travel trailer vs. our typical 36'+ fifth wheels; and because we have some really great production workers who have a lot of experience; and because we have an engineering staff that now numbers five who produced the drawings for these coaches in less than a week.... we have been able to quickly respond to the request that we build them.
Here's an interesting note - while most "FEMA" coaches are "striped down" and utilize inferior materials, Heartland's travel trailers are being built just like most company's "production" trailers - which means we have all of the windows instead of just two; we have aluminum framed fiberglass laminated sidewalls instead of stick and tin; we have plumpex water lines instead of the cheap ones; we have holding tanks, unlike most which do not; we have nice countertops and raised panel cabinet doors insead of the cheap flat panel stuff. Basically our coaches offer considerably more value than the tens of thousands that are being pumped out of this county each day and after this is all over - will hold a nice resale value. This is good for Heartland because our name is on these coaches and if we were going to build travel trailers, we were going to build good ones.
I don't know exactly how it works - in terms of who gets what trailers, but I do know that ours are built to much higher than the minimum "FEMA" specifications - which fits our factories a little bit better AND keeps our aluminum weld shop working through these three weeks or so as well.

ST
Heartland
 

Cheryl

Well-known member
Hearing what you are doing to help the hurricane victims, makes me proud to be a member of the Heartland family.
 

Firebug

Member
Scott,
Since some of us are not quite ready for the move up to a 5er, do you think with this new experience that Heartland might make a travel trailers as a new line?
 

Scott

Well-known member
Travel Trailers

Well, since you are asking.. Yes Heartland will be producing travel trailers in the future. We have had tremendous response to the trailers we are currently building and with the government buying up ALL of the travel trailers East of the Mississippi for use by FEMA - there is going to be a vacuum for quite a while of travel trailers - so there really isn't a better time to get into it than right now.
For now, you will see travel trailers in the SUNDANCE line and a new line of entry level travel trailers - both available sometime this Fall.

ST
 
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