Gene Cronin of Palomino RV |
| Gordon White | Sunday, 15 November, 2009 | ||||||||||||
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Gene Cronin, Palomino RV's National Sales Manager, talks to TCM about Palomino’s three truck camper lines, construction methods, and what's new at Palomino.  Being a National Sales Manager for an RV manufacturer is no easy job. Every year, they are required to attend dozens of back-to-back RV shows across the country to support their dealer networks. The upside to this challenging schedule is that the shows give the National Sales Managers the opportunity to meet you, the consumers, answer your questions, and hear your feedback about their products. All of this feedback returns to the factory with the National Sales Managers and becomes a critical part of new product development, quality control efforts, and other product and consumer related decisions. We have been in these meetings and can assure you that your feedback is taken very seriously. It was at one of these RV Shows that we met Gene Cronin, Palomino’s National Sales Manager. Gene was working the Hershey RV Show in Pennsylvania to support the local Palomino truck camper dealer, Caps & Campers RVs. As we talked to Gene, it was immediately clear that he was a fan of Truck Camper Magazine. It was also clear that Gene really knew his stuff and would be a fantastic interview for TCM.
TCM: Did your family go RVing when you were a kid? Gene: When I was young, my family had an RV dealership in Florida and then in Flint, Michigan. I remember heading “Up North” to Mackinac Island and to the Mackinac Bridge area when I was five or six years old. My mother would take my younger sister and I along with some neighbor friends and we would all pile into a Class C and head out around Michigan while my father would stay back to run the dealership. TCM: Did you work at your parent’s dealership? Gene: I worked a little bit at the dealership, but I was very young. You would probably call it more hanging out and getting in the way. I remember always going to the RV shows with my father. After high school, I went to college in Anchorage, Alaska. I actually started back into RV business the day after I graduated from college. I was in Alaska for graduation and I remember my talking to my father and he asked where I was going after graduation. I said, “I think I am going to head back to Maine for a couple weeks and then I didn’t really have any plans.” That’s when dad said, “No, I think it would be best if you came here and started working with me”. So I started working in the RV business a few days after graduation and have been enjoying it ever since. TCM: What brought you to Palomino RV? Gene: My father works for Flagstaff which is a division of Forest River Inc. In 2002, Peter Leigl, the owner of Forest River, purchased Palomino RV. I moved to Palomino RV in 2003 and originally had the southeast sales territory. TCM: Do you go RVing with your family? Gene: I am not able to get out camping as much as I would like. We do however, get to go occasionally each year and we like to take a truck camper for certain trips. We live in Michigan where we manufacture Palomino and we enjoy traveling around the state on quick weekend trips. My wife, Brandy, and I try to take one trip with our daughter and nephew up north every summer. We also are big Michigan State fans and enjoy tailgating with friends for home games. We will take six or seven friends and head to East Lansing on game days in the RV. It works out great with all the amenities the RV provides like the bathroom, refrigerator, and microwave. It really does add to the fun of tailgating with friends. TCM: Talk to us about Palomino RV’s three lines of truck campers. What separates the Bronco, Maverick, and Winter Creek camper lines? Gene: We have been building our Bronco pop-up truck camper series since 1968. We are trying to hit a weight and price point with the Bronco product that it is attainable to the vast majority of people. The Bronco fits a lot of trucks that are on the road today from small size domestic GMC Canyons to a half or three-quarter ton size trucks. We even have costumers putting them on one ton trucks because they like the maneuverability the Bronco provides. Mavericks are hard side truck campers for full-size domestic trucks from half to three-quarter to even one ton trucks. They even have slides, bathrooms, and generators. Mavericks have a hot water heater standard as well as hard wood cabinet doors and Serta Mattresses. Our Winter Creek campers are our top of the line units. They are designed for a one ton or bigger truck. Our current 11.5 foot Winter Creek has a full wall side out. The Winter Creeks have a heated basement, thermal pane windows, LCD televisions, and surround sound. It’s basically like a fifth wheel or travel trailer in a truck camper. TCM: Is there a dedicated production line at Palomino for truck campers? Gene: Currently there are two dedicated production lines for truck campers. All of our truck campers are made in Colon, Michigan. We have four production plants and two production lines for truck campers. The Broncos go down one line and the Mavericks and Winter Creeks go down another line. The Bronco is a wood framed unit and the Maverick and Winter Creeks are aluminum full-laminated products. TCM: Tell us about Palomino camper construction and why some Palomino campers are wood framed and others are aluminum. Gene: We use wood for our pop-ups because it is lighter. There is a misnomer that aluminum is lighter, but that’s only if you just use aluminum. We have found that you have to stuff aluminum framing with wood. Our aluminum is a square tube that is stuffed with pine. Any place that you attach, you need wood to screw in to so that the screw does not back out from road vibration. Our Bronco series is framed in wood for a number of reasons with the first being the weight properties. Like I said before, we aim to keep our Bronco line very light so that costumers do not need to upgrade their current truck to get into the truck camping lifestyle. TCM: Tell us about Palomino’s use of lamination. Gene: All three lines, the Bronco, Maverick, and Winter Creek, are all laminated in different ways. The Maverick and Winter Creek campers have everything from the walls to the floors and the roof laminated. For the Bronco series, everything is laminated except the floor. The floor is a one piece structure wood. The wing walls are a structure wood with aluminum laminated to it. The core of the sidewall is framed in wood and stuffed with foam block insulation and laminated just like the roof and end walls. Our camper exteriors are all fiberglass. The Maverick and Winter Creek are all framed with aluminum and stuffed with wood. After that, they are laminated and vacuum bonded. The Maverick and Winter Creek series lamination and build process is carried over from our knowledge of building travel trailers. We run ducted air conditioning through the roof of our Winter Creek campers. It is a laminated roof with a ducted air conditioning system. Forest River is one of the first to come out with a laminated, full walk on ducted roof and it is now carried over to the Winter Creek series. Ducted heat is also standard in Maverick and the Winter Creek campers. TCM: How many people specialize in the truck camper side of the business at Palomino? Gene: We probably have thirty-five or forty people who just specialize in the production of truck campers. We have more staff in the office, but the office staff covers our full product line. TCM: Have you made any changes to your truck campers in terms of construction methods, materials, or amenities in the past year or two? Gene: Changes we’ve made to the Maverick are the new Dometic windows and appliances from Germany and other European options. We also have new upgrades in the bigger models, such as new electronics. TCM: How do new Palomino truck campers get designed? Gene: Our sales people are directly speaking with people who are buying and using truck campers. Here at the factory, we meet a couple times a week on product. We have three full time engineers and we go to them with our ideas. Then we start the prototypes. Along the way we tweak and make things better. When we have a marketable product that is good value, we introduce it to the dealers. TCM: What’s Palomino RV’s best selling truck camper model and why? Gene: The Bronco 1251. The reason it is our best seller is because it provides everything the customer is looking for in pop-up truck camper. It has a bathroom with a shower and toilet combination. The Bronco 1251 fits on a half or three-quarter ton short bed truck. Driving down the highway, that’s the truck you see most often. Another popular model is the Maverick 8801 because it is so versatile. It can fit on a long or short bed truck so when the costumer decides to by a new truck, their Maverick 8801 will still fit no matter what size truck bed they choose. The Bronco 1251 and Maverick 8801 are our bread and butter units because they are so versatile and fit on the most popular trucks. TCM: What do you think separates Palomino truck campers from the competition? Gene: It’s the value that you get with purchasing a Palomino. We are a division of Forest River, which is the largest towable, RV, and cargo trailer manufacturer in the country. At Palomino, we use the Forest River buying power and lean manufacturing techniques. When others are buying a couple refrigerators or air conditioners a day, we are buying thousands and therefore buy at a lower price that we can then pass along to our dealers and costumers. TCM: Tell us about Palomino’s truck camper warranty. Gene: We have a one year warranty on everything, plus all of the components have a separate warranty. The Palomino warranty includes the roof, siding, and structure. There is an optional extended warranty available through our dealerships which gives you an additional year. It’s a small charge at the time of purchase. That will upgrade you to two year warranty. Every new camper also comes with a free one year roadside assistance program from Coach-net that covers the camper and tow vehicle. TCM: Should we be looking for any new campers from Palomino at the RVIA Show in Louisville, Kentucky this year? Gene: Truck camper wise, we already updated for 2010. We have a two day dealer open house in September and that’s where we tend to show the new stuff. We have over 2,000 dealer personnel attend our dealer open house at the Forest River corporate offices in Elkhart, Indiana. At Louisville, we are very limited on space and we can’t show every model. At the dealer open house we can show off every camper we make and even have more of the more popular models in more decors. The dealers can bring in sales staff and become familiar with our products and all our models. We bring in 500 units total, all of which are part of Forest River. We’ll bring two campers at Louisville. We build a lot of different products and need to bring a mixture of everything, so we bring two or three models of each brand. TCM: What was new at this year’s open house? Gene: We debuted a prototype that we’re not talking a whole lot about yet as we are still in the design and test stages. We were looking for dealer feedback and we’re planning on introducing that as well. It will be a Bronco. We’ve also re-designed our Maverick 800 for a half ton truck. We were able to get a couple hundred pounds out of the camper and add more storage. TCM: How important are truck campers in the Palomino product mix? Gene: Truck campers are about ten to fifteen percent of our gross sales. Truck campers are a growing business for us. We’ve seen an uptake in truck campers this year. It’s all because of the lifestyle. There are many more places you can go with a truck camper that you can’t go with fifth wheel or motorhome. Truck campers are a viable option, especially if you like to take your toys with you. TCM: How has Palomino adapted to our current economy? Gene: It has been an interesting and challenging economy. The biggest help for Palomino is being a division of Forest River and a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. We’ve kept all of our facilities up and running and actually spent quite a few dollars improving our facilities. When the market takes an uptick, we will be able to take advantage of that because we haven’t had to consolidate. TCM: How does Palomino’s location in Michigan affect your business? Gene: We are in the hub of RV manufacturing market and with that comes skilled labor that knows how to build RVs and truck campers. Most all of our vendors and part suppliers are within a half hour of our production facilities, so we pay less in transportation costs and get our deliveries more frequently. That goes in line with our “just in time” philosophy. We don’t have to inventory a lot of stuff. Being in the Midwest, we have some shipping issues to deal with to reach the west coast, but it helps with east coast sales as the majority of our competition manufactures on the west coast. TCM: Tell us about your dealership network. Gene: We have hundreds of dealers throughout North America. Palomino alone has two hundred plus dealers through out the U.S. and Canada. Pretty much any city has a dealer, so if you need any service, help is available. Any Forest River dealer will work on a Forest River product, so that would include your Palomino truck camper. All of it goes through the Forest River warranty company. If you want to know the closest Palomino or Forest River dealer to you, type in your zip code on our website and it will show the two nearest Palomino dealers. If there happens to not be a Palomino dealer in the area you can call our factory and we will point you to the nearest Forest River dealer. TCM: Is there anything we didn’t ask you that you want added to your interview? Gene: A majority of the public doesn’t know all that Palomino manufactures or how long we have been building recreational vehicles. We often hear from costumers, “As a kid I went camping in a Palomino pop-up!” People love our Palomino pop-ups and often times move up into a Bronco, Maverick, or Winter Creek truck camper. Palomino has been around for a long time. We produced our first truck camper back in 1968. As a business, we are committed to and build high quality truck campers and have done so for a long time. Palomino's Sales Crew (left to right): Adam Simonson (Regional Sales Manager West Coast), Gene Cronin (National Sales Manager/Northeast), Ben Meloche (Regional Sales Manager Midwest), Carlos Torres (Regional Sales Manager Southeast), Absent from photo: Dewey Walker (Regional Sales Manager Southwest) Palomino's Department Managers (left to right): Carlos Torres (Regional Sales Manager), Don Hoover (Production Manager), Don Cope (Purchasing Manager), Rob Foster (Maverick Plant Manager), John Marshall (Group Leader), Keith Ackerman (Bronco Plant Manager), Shirley Woods (Truck Camper Quality Control), Ben Meloche (Regional Sales Manager), Todd Hugett (Group Lead), Adam Simonson (Regional Sales Manager), Steve Vinson (Palomino Quality Control Manager), Keith Fisher (Lead Engineer) For more information about Palomino RV, visit www.palominorv.com. |
