The time between order and delivery

Most folks who have ordered coaches will tell you that it's hard to just sit around and wait for the day you can take delivery of your new rig.  You spent all of those months planning, writing down details, talking with people, doing research and walking through motorhomes so you can get to the day that you sit down and write the check.  Then, you wait.  And wait.

In our case, because of some graduations and retirement dates, we really want to take delivery of our coach at the factory around the second week of April 2016.  Knowing that Newmar typically has a four-week build time (start to finish) and a two-week prep time between manufacture and factory delivery, I'd ideally like to see them start the build about mid-February.

So why did we order in September?  There are a few reasons for that.  I recently heard from a person who works at the factory that they have a "four month backlog", meaning that you could expect about four months to pass between ordering the coach and its actual build date.  If that is true, then ordering it on October 1 would mean that the build may not begin until February 1.  Now factor in the holidays, when I would assume that the Newmar folks would want to stop what they're doing for a bit of eggnog and holiday cheer.  Then pile on the number of orders that they could receive as a result of the Hershey RV show that begins next week.  Last year, they sold over 50 Newmar coaches at that show.

Newmar is currently producing 8-9 coaches per day out the door.  That is pretty amazing, but given the possible delays, I want to do everything possible to ensure that we'll get our delivery that second week of April.  We are asking our salesman at Independence RV to specifically ask Newmar if they can plan to start the build sometime in January 2016.

On the other hand, someone recently posted online that they ordered their new coach in August and have a delivery date of October 12th.  That doesn't jive with the 4-month "backlog" we heard earlier, but we don't want to take chances if we don't have to.

Although we have ordered the RV, we are still going back and forth about the "specials".  On the first pass, Newmar denied about 17 of the 40 line items we submitted.  So we obviously are responding with questions and have yet to even finalize the price for the specials.

My wife is headed to Hershey next week to make a final determination about the colors, fabrics, materials and tile for our coach.  Between the specials and her final choices, I don't anticipate our "final" order going in until about the 22nd of September.

So we'll ask for a build between January and early February, hoping that we can meet our goal of a factory delivery around the second week of April.  If they build it earlier, it would have to sit there and "wait" on us - and I don't know how long Newmar will hold something waiting for pickup; we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.