Why You Should Get Excited About New Travel Trailer Manufacturer Braxton Creek
A promising new brand of travel trailers has just come on the market, and it's practically tailor-made for our friends and customers right here in Ohio.
Usually when people refer to startup companies they're talking about the next big smart phone app. Well, move over Silicon Valley, because today we're talking an RV startup here in the Midwest! If you follow JTS on Facebook you saw that just before the Thanksgiving holiday we announced a partnership with Braxton Creek, a new RV manufacturer located in Shipshewana, Indiana.
The folks who started this new company are RV industry veterans, some of them coming from one of our longtime favorite brands-Jayco. The word on the street is that a large percentage of employees working in the new plant are experienced travel trailer line workers who jumped at the opportunity to work at Braxton Creek because they believe in producing a quality product and wanted to be part of something special. We also see something special in this company, and that's why we signed on as a dealer with Braxton Creek.
Shorter Wait Times
We are impressed with the quality of the Braxton Creek units, and we'll tell you more about that below, but first we want to call attention to an important way this new brand will be good for you-the members of our RV community right here in northeast Ohio.
You may have heard us mention long order times on new RVs, which we expect to continue indefinitely. Units we are ordering right now won't be in until summer of 2018. It's not just our dealership having this problem-long backlogs on new units and wait times of several months are standard in the industry right now. There are more and more people out there discovering RVing, and there aren't enough companies making RVs to meet the demand.
Braxton Creek has their eye on this problem and is hoping to help mom-and-pop dealers like Jim's to get RVs delivered to YOU-the customers-in a matter of weeks, not months. Here's how Don Dorton of Braxton Creek put it in a recent article in RVBusiness:
"One of the main reasons we decided to pursue this is that the dealers in that small- to medium-size category were telling us there was a vacuum in the stick-and-tin segment. They were looking at large backlogs and long wait times. Our goal is to allow dealers to make quick turns, maintaining a 4-6 week lead time on product."
Trailer Quality
Here at JTS we're sticklers for quality, and we wouldn't be interested in Braxton Creek if their trailers weren't great.
We've blogged before about how the construction of the trailer frame, the floor and the outer shell matters. We've also mentioned that cabinetry construction and flooring material are clues that point to the overall quality of the RV. Braxton Creek hits all the right notes on these essential aspects of travel trailer construction. Here are some of the features that speak to the quality of Braxton Creek units, from the same RVBusiness article:
"The interior is designed to be very durable with high-quality leatherette upholstery. We also went with a lighter, bright wood that dresses up the interior. The roof is one-piece aluminum, which eliminates the issues with leaks and tears posed by a rubber roof"... Other discerning features that will be standard across the line include the use of a Norco Next Generation frame constructed with huck fasteners that "will last forever," according to [Don Dorton of Braxton Creek], along with tongue-and-groove plywood flooring, screwed-and-glued cabinetry and 16-inch on-center construction.
Product Features
Braxton Creek plans to expand to a line of 12-14 floor plans. We just got our first Braxton Creek trailer in before Thanksgiving: the 2018 Braxton Creek 26BH. Below are the product features on the unit.
Two year warranty
Walkable Aluminum Roof
Roof Ladder
B.A.L. Nex/Gen Frame
Smooth Aluminum Front Exterior Wall
Gas/Electric/DSI Hot Water Tank
Power Awning
Spare Tire
Roof Ladder
Mastercraft American Made Furniture
Ducted Air Conditioner
600 lb. Capacity Top Bunk
5/8" Plywood Floor
Thermo-Foil Seamless Counter Tops
Double Door Temperature Controlled Dometic Refrigerator