?You?re not going to buy an RV and drive it off the lot and have no hassles? In 2018, Tom and Becky Olesh were living their best lives. They lived permanently aboard the Winnebago motorhome they purchased from a dealer for about $140,000. Crisscrossing the country in a house on wheels was nothing new to the Oleshes; they had spent nearly five years on the road. And for two decades before that, 78-year-old Tom and 61-year-old Becky had owned all kinds of RVs: tag-along travel trailers, towable camper vans, even diesel motorhomes.

Experienced RV owners well acclimated to the lifestyle, the Oleshes knew what they were doing?which made what happened in their brand new Winnebago that much more of a surprise.
?The suspension was really bad,? Tom says. ?Whenever we went over 45 miles per hour on a two-lane road, it was a challenge to keep it on the road.? The trailers and camper vans they used to own tended to bounce up and down as they drove, a symptom of their leaf spring suspension systems, which is why they switched to a motorhome. Tom and Becky anticipated suspension that more closely mirrored that of an automobile: some bouncing, but certainly less than their previous units. Instead, they shelled out $2,500 to outfit their new RV with additional suspension.
The rule, typically, is don?t buy a new RV. If you buy a new RV, you?re going to be sitting in a dealership for two years getting it fixed.
Not since the years before the Great Recession has the market for recrea...