Thor Forums

[gmtech16450yz]

Originally Posted by Travelin' Texans

#2 in my opinion is the ONLY option that MIGHT get you some attention from someone somewhere that could help with your issues. The other options might give you a small amount of satisfaction, but not very likely to help change the rv industry in any way. Those folks assembling them don't see or hear of any of yours or my complaints & I would guess even if they did it wouldn't make a single bit of difference, they have a quota to meet & once met, go home.

Exactly! The people building these RV's are paid on productivity. Exactly the same as flat rate in the auto repair world. It's a HORRIBLE way to get quality work done. It's actually almost impossible. (I purposely picked dealerships in my career that paid me hourly. I took as much time as I needed to properly fix vehicles.) 99% of auto repair businesses and dealerships are on flat rate pay systems. It literally COSTS the tech money to spend more time working on your vehicle.

The exact same is true for these guys building these RV's. The longer they take putting in things like dinette tables, the less money in their paychecks. That's a hard situation for any honest or considerate person to be in, much less workers that have an average stay at a company like Thor of a few months. Or better yet, work program people from the nearby jails or prison. Really? You're going to wave LOTS more cash in front of a person like that if they work really fast and literally throw the parts together? What kind of quality do they expect?

Which is why I believe it's a business model. They know exactly what they're doing. Any idiot businessman would know what results would come from waving lots of cash in front of someone to do something that's not quite right. Some of these assembly workers are making $100k a year throwing these things together. That's a fortune for a place like Indiana. Especially for basically unskilled labor.

The sad part is that these are human beings behind this crappy workmanship. How do these people sleep at night knowing what kind of garbage quality they're providing to us hard working buyers. If my boss had told me he'd pay me a pile of money to work faster and to not give a damn if the parts fall off immediately after the sale, I would have told him to *@#*&^%, and then rolled my toolbox out to my truck.

That's what's so sad to me about all of this. This is America. This is the kind of work we do now. I live near the Golden Gate Bridge. It was made in 4 years, ahead of schedule and under budget. And it's still working fine after like 80 years. Could we build anything like that again? It would take 20 years worth of litigation, surveys, impact studies, workforce battles, etc, etc. It would take 4 times as long to build as originally planned, and would cost 10 times as much as originally budgeted. Then in about 4 years it would fall into the Bay because they used the wrong rivets! Seriously.