RV Caravan Manufacturing: Where ABB Robots Fit

RV caravan manufacturing still looks more like boatbuilding than car making. Walls, floors and roofs are laminated, glued, screwed and wired by hand, in small teams, around a chassis that moves down the line. This post follows the caravan from a horse drawn "land yacht" in 1880 to the motorhome plants of today. It covers the first caravans, how factories organised the work, what a new automated trailer parts plant in Oklahoma shows this month, and where ABB robots could fit into panel gluing, welding and sealing. No ABB RV plant is named here, so those parts describe possibilities.

A Winnebago motorhome parked at the roadside. Photo: Bull-Doser / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

From a horse drawn land yacht to the first assembly lines

The first leisure trailer was built in 1880 by the Bristol Wagon and Carriage Works for the author William Gordon Stables, who called it the Wanderer. It was an 18 foot wooden wagon based on the firm's "Bible Wagons". Stables wrote about his travels, and in 1885 his book The Gentleman Gypsy led the Duke of Newcastle to order a caravan of his own, called The Bohemian. Everything was carpentry and hand finishing, like a small house on wheels, and nobody thought of it as a product line. The Wanderer is the ancestor of every towed caravan sold since.

A traditional horse drawn wooden caravan on show in Newcastle upon Tyne, 2010. Photo: Roger Cornfoot / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Caravanning became an organised hobby in the early twentieth century. The Caravan Club was founded in 1907, with Stables as a vice president. In the 1920s travel trailers spread through the United States and Canada, and their owners were nicknamed "tin can tourists". By the 1930s, trailers had become comfortable enough to be called house trailers. The step from craft to factory came later, when demand grew and builders needed to repeat the same design many times. Spending on a caravan stayed a leisure choice, so builders watched costs closely.

Campers at a tent and car site in Washington, D.C., in the early 1920s, the era of the tin can tourists. Photo: National Photo Company Collection via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Motorhomes brought the production line. Winnebago Industries was founded in February 1958 in Forest City, Iowa, and its first motorhome came off the line in 1966. Airstream, known for its polished aluminium bodies, still lets visitors tour its factory. Yet most of the work stayed manual. A frame moves from station to station, and each station adds a floor, walls, cabinets, wiring or a roof. That layout suits people who can adapt to small changes between units. Aluminium bodies also need careful joining and sealing, which matters later when robots enter the story.

An Airstream caravan beside a pier on Furillen, Sweden, 2012. Photo: W.carter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What automation looks like on today's RV lines

Automation is reaching the parts that RVs and trailers depend on. On 7 October 2026, EMCO Industries announced a new automated plant in Claremore, Oklahoma, for heavy duty trailer leaf springs, and RVBusiness reported it on 12 October. Twelve robots take raw steel bars through shearing, tapering, forming, heat treating and quenching. The 30,000 square foot site roughly doubles EMCO's capacity and is expected to add about 20 jobs, with the robot cells working beside the existing workforce. EMCO describes each spring as dipped and painted for corrosion resistance after forming.

A Hymer motorhome built on a van chassis, 2020. Photo: Kahvilokki / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

A finished RV is harder to automate than a spring. Models vary, orders are small, and a sidewall can change length from one unit to the next. A fixed cell that makes sense for one spring design is harder to justify when the product changes daily. Still, some tasks suit robots well: gluing laminated panels, welding steel and aluminium frames, and sealing roof and window seams. They repeat, they strain the body, and each one needs the same bead on every part. Those are the jobs worth studying first. A cobot can be taught a new part by hand, which helps when batches are short.

The reception area at Airstream's factory, with a polished aluminium front desk, 2016. Photo: Chris Light / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

This is where ABB's catalogue applies. A mid size arm such as the IRB 2600 or IRB 4600 can carry a dispensing gun along a panel edge, and the larger IRB 6700 can lift a whole wall panel. For chassis and frame welding, ABB offers the GoFa Cobot Arc Welding Package, which lets a welder teach a seam by hand. Programs for cells like these are usually designed and tested first in RobotStudio, so the layout is proven before a line is changed. These are possible fits, not named RV installations.

An ABB IRB 2600 industrial robot at work in a production cell. Photo: ABB

What comes next for caravan and RV plants

The business case is hard. In September 2026, an Australian caravan maker entered administration and blamed an increasingly difficult operating environment, according to Sunshine Coast News. When margins are thin and volumes swing, a manufacturer cannot afford an idle robot cell. Flexible cells that handle several panel sizes, and cobots that a small team can move between jobs, make more sense than one big fixed line. Cost, financing and demand will decide how fast any of this spreads through the industry. Smaller makers may start with a single cobot cell for one repeated task.

ABB robots handling a body panel at BAIC's plant in Qingdao. Photo: ABB

Skills and safety are further limits. Robot cells need people who can program, maintain and adjust them, and a caravan town may struggle to find even basic labor. Cobots and tools such as SafeMove can keep workers safe near moving arms, but each cell still needs a risk review before it runs. Our overview of ABB robot use cases shows how this kind of work is usually set up, and it is a good place to see which tasks pay back first for a small plant. Training is part of the budget, not an extra.

ABB robots in the body shop at BAIC's electric car plant in Qingdao, China. Photo: ABB

For homes on wheels, the next years are likely to bring more prefabricated panels, more bonded construction and better quality records, since a robot logs every bead it lays. Electric drivetrains and lighter frames will change the vehicle again. The craft side will stay. Robots will most likely take the heavy, repeated tasks such as gluing, sealing and frame welding, and people will keep the fitting, cabinetry and final checks, where judgement matters most. Customers may also ask for traceable build records on each unit.

Visitors gather outside the Airstream factory for a tour, 2016. Photo: Chris Light / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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