Touring Tiffin

Red Bay is a small town with a population of about 3,000 which I have to say, is more than I thought.  I figured maybe several hundred, not a few thousand.  Then, as we drove into town, I wondered how many worked at the factory.

It’s a cute little town.  We arrived in the late afternoon on a Sunday and much of the town was closed.  Everything except Subway was shut tight.  After the longer drive day than we planned, we needed to get out of the coach and get moving.  We set up camp then took off to explore this little town where our RV was built.

We walked toward the factory but completely missed it by heading down the wrong road.  That was okay since we just walked around the entire place instead.  More steps.  On that long walk around, we saw a lot of chassis parked and waiting to be built on.  Most of them were gas engines but we did find a section of diesels.

 

 

Getting back to the main street in town meant walking through a neighborhood with cute little duplexes and green lawns fresh from all the recent rains.  We circled back to the correct street and walked down to the factory entrance.  We wanted to find the tour gathering place beforehand and we found it, along with a nice security guard.   We hadn’t done anything wrong or gone where we shouldn’t have, he was simply manning the gate.  He told us we were in the right place for our tour in the morning and he advised us to be back about 9 for our 9:30 tour as the parking lot is also used by Tiffin employees.

Wake up, it’s tour day!

The security guard was right, the parking lot was busy but we easily found a spot and proceeded into the visitors’ center.  The staff couldn’t have been any nicer.  I know it’s their job to be nice, but they had it going on.  Brenda and another man led our tour, she is a retired history teacher and added little anecdotes about the Tiffin family and the town.  Did you know that in order to get a post office you had to be a town?  Yep.  In 1907 Red Bay was formed for the sole reason of wanting a post office.  And, a Tiffin was the town sheriff at the time.  She was full of fun facts all along the tour.

We started in the woodworking room.  I use the word “work room” loosely; this was a giant building that used to be a cotton warehouse.  There were stacks and stacks of alder and cherry wood.  It smelled so good.  I hope nobody but Mark noticed how I was breathing as deep as I could to get all the smells.  As we walked, there were cabinets, drawers, slide and ceiling trims and so much more being made.  They have fancy new routers cutting large pieces that would later become every single piece of wood in a rig.  I could have stayed there for hours talking to the staff and asking them questions.   Sadly, the bright yellow vests we were wearing made that nearly impossible.

Next up was another giant space where the countertops and ceiling material was cut using more fancy routers.   All the solid surfaces like the table, Corian around entry steps, counters and shower enclosures start as a giant slab.  It was wild watching it all be done.  It’s here that the finishing touches on the wood is done and everything for that coach is loaded into a giant cart on wheels for delivery to the production line.

We got to walk one part of the production line beginning when the chassis is driven in and the floor is installed.  Do you know what the very next thing installed after the floor?  If you guessed the toilet you win a gold star.   Next to the line where the two toilets were sitting oh so lonely on the tile floor was the sidewall insulation station (say that ten times fast).  Here, a router precisely cuts out the exact spots where a window, door, electrical wire track, etc. will be on the side of that particular model.

As we walked down the line, we began to see the motorhome take shape.  Shower enclosures, refrigerators, stacked washer & dryer and sidewalls were added followed by the roof.  With all that was going on, it was very orderly.  The slide-outs were wheeled over, completely finished and slid into place.  We watched as a man checked both hydraulic and electric slides on the coach.

When the inside was done, off to painting it went.  Brenda explained that the total process for painting was anywhere from three to five days.  After that, the coach would come back for interior finishing then quality control.  She explained that the entire process from date of order to when the finished coach leaves the factory is about four months.

We ended our tour in the wire room.  Here, miles of wires are bundled for every single part of the coach.  Even the windshield wipers have their own set of wires that ensure your wipers work when you flip that switch.  Each coach has between two and five miles of wires, depending on size.  She noted that we only walked about ¾ of a mile on our tour.  That my friends, is a lot of wire.

Our tour was done and off to Perry we drove for the big FMCA rally.  I was so glad we stopped in Red Bay for the tour.  As we drove, we fantasized about a new coach.  Which one would we buy?  The Allegro Bus or another Phaeton?  The Powerball jackpot was huge and all we needed was one ticket.