Camping World President and CEO Matthew Wagner said the nation’s largest dealer chain is taking decisive action to streamline its inventory.
Wagner said he believes numerous consumers are entering a trade-in window after buying RVs from 2020 to 2022. He said 4.1 million consumers who bought RVs during that time are approaching a “manageable” equity position that will lead to trade ins. He said Camping World is clearing its “non-core assets” to be in a position for trade-in customers.
He said approximately 18% of Camping World’s new RV inventory is model year 2025.
“We are on the shot clock right now, where model year 27 RVs debut somewhere in the June/July timeframe,” he said. “So, we want to position ourselves to be completely out of those [2025 model year] assets to take advantage of the opportunity of our newer model years.”
Wagner said the idea is to maximize turns, particularly in used RV inventory. He said new RV turn rate in 2025 was approximately 1.7. By improving the turn rate to 1.8, he said Camping World would add $7 million in gross profits.
Ideally, he said new RV turn rates would range from 2.2 to 2.4, which Wagner said was historically healthy. At those turn rates, Camping World would add $30 million to $50 million, or more, in gross profit.
Wagner said new fifth wheels and new entry-level motorized RVs were performing well to start 2026. He said same-store fifth wheel sales are up over 25% through the first two months of 2026 compared with the same time in 2025.
Travel trailers, he said, were not. Travel trailers account for over 50% of Camping World’s new RV sales and approximately 60% of used RV sales.
“We, as a company, have a heavy dependency on that category, and we are going to be working extensively to see what we can do to turn that fortune around,” he said. “We feel good with the general demand out there.”
Wagner said private label brands continue to sell well, particularly in fifth wheels. He said he would be shocked if the RV industry saw the gains Camping World did in the category this year.
“I would assume that within each of these categories of fifth wheels and motorized, we are picking up material market share,” he said, “because we just had a more creative strategy heading into this year.”
The gains have come despite store disruptions related to unusually cold weather over two weeks in January and the first week of February.
The weather forced 60 stores to close temporarily for at least one day. He said the weather affected the Atlantic region, all over the Midwest, down to Texas and back to Florida. Wagner said the quadrant includes a tremendous density of Camping World dealerships.
The weather disruption’s cost, he said, was estimated to be approximately 1,500 missed new and used RV sales, totaling $13.5 million in gross profits.
“The brutal reality is that a large portion of those sales are oftentimes just lost,” he said. “We do hope that some of them will come back in March, but we certainly are not banking on that. We are doing everything within our power to continue to solicit more customers to come back in to at least make up for whatever the shortfall was.”
