Though Travel Lite RV started in 1982 as a travel trailer manufacturer, the company quickly concluded unit construction, returning in the early 2000s with truck campers. Larry Johns “re-founded” and bought the company in 1989.
In the late 1960s, Larry Johns worked for Boise Cascade Manufactured Homes. The company transferred him to Elkhart, Indiana, in 1971, where he shifted to the RV industry. Johns started his own van conversion company and later was vice president at Tiara Motor Coach before the company was bought.
In the early 2000s, Johns started making truck campers for his first official product line. Though Travel Lite RV still makes truck campers, its more recent best-seller is the Falcon brand of ultralights: 14-to-24-foot travel trailers.
Dustin Johns began designing for his father’s company in 2009 and became president in 2015. Johns spearheaded the 770 Super Lite truck camper’s design, producing a half-ton pickup camper that could fit on long or short-bed trucks at a time when most truck campers were designed for three-quarter or one-ton truck models. Johns also helped to expand the company into the travel trailer market starting in 2011.
When Travel Lite moved from New Paris, Indiana, where it was founded, to Syracuse, Indiana in 2019, the company also underwent reconstruction and Johns left. Ryan Rebar, an industry veteran from Thor Motor Coach and Forest River Inc., was named Travel Lite’s COO. The company’s 660,000-square-foot plant makes around 30 units every day.
