Newell Coach Factory Tour: Hand Built In Oklahoma! (2+ Million Dollar RV Build)

you know we we are american-made it's a great place here it really is a lot of people work really hard a lot of people's fathers grandfathers work here 15.1 liter cummings we have night 1 950 pounds of torque this is where it all starts to be honest with you i mean you do your prefab stuff right there say have your bellies your front end and backing that's how you do it what we do here is i think this is the cool part because i make stuff out of metal yeah this is my zone here actually how we start you see this is going to be a mid-entry coach so every chassis is a little different depends on where you put your slides position of your slides the length of your slides you all have that many different options but the chats will be really different here because you have a mid-entry so all they really do is everything's still bottom let's go through there we start with that piece of steel right there on saw horses get it leveled out all that stuff and then we don't do a sea channel bean we do a full bean and the 90 degrees we have a little um gussets there little truss is there to help support it so that way it stops a lot of flats this right here should be the water bays that you call water compartment sewer compartment your tanks and all that right here and that's why you have this little cutout right here for your uh sewer hose you just push the front end on it you see the disc brakes right there that's some serious equipment yeah you get up in there see the air arms made in usa you can sell everything back buy steel and they'll fill all this other stuff in before they stand down and go to rustoleum like i got a big hand and that is a huge a huge caliper yeah generator area is going to be steering i see this steering shaft that's interesting he'll play his back so the front end's all zf designed yeah uh well porsche design helped us with the front end exterior design of it but zf helped us with the front end suspension rear suspension and we also have an active terrible tag action um and what active means is it works forward and backwards it's not locking place so it's more of a true four wheel steering so we turn a 38 foot circle 45-foot coast to turn a 38-foot circle what is the towing capacity 25 000 pounds so you bump or pull 25 000 pounds darker off one of these yeah that's pretty crazy it is crazy you see this right here is pretty cool we obviously have 150 psi so you can fill your tires up this coach right here is going to have a pressure washer right here that um will connect will have a connection to the front and the back you'll have a little hose uh reel right here so you can reel it in really easy go through the mounts for it yeah what's pretty cool about this right here is we run de-iodized water we have built-in de-iodized water tanks therefore you can pressure wash off at a gas station you don't have to worry about wiping water off and we get water spots there's been times i've been at shows and stuff i thought someone's gonna clean the coke for me backed out i just pulled the pressure washer out did it no problem that is like the coolest thing ever built in you can see how we have everything nice and labeled for each individual coach and then um you can start the coach from the back you're working on it um and uh you have your chat batteries right here but you have a nice little compartment light that um you can flip on right here shine down but you'll also see when we get our rear cap on we'll also have another light right up here that shines down this belt may come off you can get a little sock wrench easier to loosen that up put the belt back on we do run the x-15 cummings you can see a really good look at the cummings engine right here that'll be going in coach uh and this is the 4 000 transmission with the 605 horsepower 15.1 liter cummings we have night 1 950 pounds of torque so um kind of look right through here this is cool like you don't really realize how big these things are oh yeah until you see them outside of their compartment nice watch board there in an airline right through there you'll have um exhaust coming out if you look right there we already have your aqua hot and generator exhaust that will come out of this side your engine exhaust will come out on that air bags right there the same concept is we haven't we don't we put our airbags on the outer part of it because if i'm standing like this you can't push me over if i'm standing feet together and it's easy to push me over so same thing wider more stability um as we build the coast building coaches weighed in so it's built with flex we also put fuel and depth in it because you want to start adding flex to the coast immediately so you build it as the weight would be on it yeah you kind of see right through there you see the big weights this will be the water compartment right there kind of see these guys are here installing ballast slides see all of our little every little spot that has a little open hole with the metal right there we have a nice little little things makes a big difference that's a cool little technique there so what that does is it provides this wiring it's what that's what you have what a 2000 coach 2001 96 you got a 96 coach yeah here 25 years later still going strong yeah yep i mean there's a lot of people that have 96 coaches there's a lot of some people have mid 80s people bring their coach back here that's been in the 70s many times still going because we did a little stuff like that right there so every floor plan is going to have a chassis that's going to handle the best of that floor plan and matches that four points that's what makes newell different than everyone else nothing's mass produced nothing's sitting outside for a long time nothing's dripping on the road getting re-washed out they converted over none of that none of this stuff is sitting outside wires and boxes getting it coats weathered only time it goes outside when it rolls across right over there to go to the paint for the chassis paint it comes back then only other time is when it goes back outside to go back to the paint booth again to be completed so during that whole process the coach only goes 760 feet so and it's not ever exposed to outside weather elements so wires that you might have that might be going to your brakes hadn't been sitting outside in snow having been driven down from the north to the south with road grime and salt and everything else put up in it getting those wires exposed you pay this kind of money it should be built one-stop shop um that's how we do it um and that's what newell is known for he's got one he's actually got a 1996. he's got that escalade out there that turquoise escalade looks pretty badass like a detroit yeah my coach is a detroit it was uh unser juniors and then robbie gordon's that's why it's got like the checkered flag paint job my full time in it so hopefully probably george you like the detroit's here i straight piped it so it sounds real good yeah maybe y'all start doing some of ours like that have a good day hey you too have a good one no but seriously this is over here how long have you worked here 22 22 years it's almost as long as i've been alive yeah so 22 years so he's very experienced that's his cousin he's got a brother to work here so we have a lot of family that works here and what's cool about this place is we love town and the town loves us so you know it's pretty cool that we're still here in the same place we started yeah and so everybody in miami appreciates doing appreciates the customers and it's pretty neat i mean um it's a great place here it really is a lot of people work really hard a lot of people's fathers grandfathers work here there's some of that going on this right here is the steel line this is coach 1716 that's coach 1717 and that's starting 1718. so you kind of see and then you talk soft coach 709 in the detail bay okay so it's the ten coaches are being built at one time you just go from section to section for four tens our friday's quality control date for instance quality control we do a water test up top here and this is our skin line the reason why we do a water test is because it connects our front cap and rear cap and the aluminum size aluminum roof all that together we want to make sure it's not leaking before we advance any no house wire has been laid in this coast yet only chassis wire interesting so we want to make sure it's not leaking top to bottom before we expose it to more wires or anything like that so we immediately get it fit kind of look right through there if you want to stand back around and this right here is a little coat medicinal coat that has not been fully insulated it's just the bare bones of it if we would say this was a new coat shell this would probably be the shell would you actually put the foam and all that in but this means some of the final touches going through a shell process after a good diagram of how we do it you got the aluminum studs you got the aluminum side good and you have the clothes cell phone uh three plywood repair wallpaper right there so um and i see they're starting to lay some wires they've already done the water test that's why you see the ripped plastic by the way here on the windows so it's past the water test so others pass all the water tests now they start laying some pre-ground wire in there doing some free lane work that was about 17 miles away per coat over there wow so you just kind of see how that's going right through there that's why it's so important with water test because we run a lot of wires right through there it's really simple common sense stuff it's just years and years of experience of little things that makes us different um there's a thousand little things we do like that that a lot of these guys know i mean you do something enough you just pick up you already can see a problem happening before it even gets started so that so experience is really key um we train a lot most of our people in house um some we hire outside uh such as our cabinet shop you have to have five years minimal experience to pass the skills test same as the welders but some of our guys start out as janitors and we'll start training them to be a welder be a cabinet guy to be an electrician so we do have a training program to help people succeed so there's a lot of promotion from within here that's a really cool thing because i think a lot of a lot of younger people that watch my stuff are like oh that doesn't even look like a job that looks like fun well like you can have a fun job like this stuff is it's a real thing yeah i mean you only live once my man so you might as well enjoy it all and do what you love because you gotta love what you do and do what you love or else awesome kind of be pretty shitty for at least 40 hours a week yeah you know i feel that that's why i live in one of these things you kind of look through here you kind of see some of the wires we got going through there um i'm doing kind of look right through here you can kind of see why it's so important we do the water test and all that stuff that we do the testing we do before we lay wires because there's a lot going on since they got like individual stations for different things and it'll move down the line it will shift every 16 work days here four quality control days 16 work days and it'll shift so in essence it's just once a month roughly well it spends two months in here it's been um four months in here then it goes off the paint and shake down and all that other stuff so it's a five and a half month process but uh you kind of see for instance this one right here has the windows in it i mean don't have a window this one does so obviously you know this right here is further along you kind of poke your head in there a little bit you can see it starting to take shape it's gonna become 1712 you put the washer dryer in so they put the headliner in and like work from the top down because that looks like that's all yeah that ceiling package is done i mean right now they're finishing the uh pulling up and just kind of installing stuff i mean it's kind of really it's not far away from being completed um they probably within it's not here's going to come off 8 19. it'll be going to pay 8 19. you guys see they're going last minute this is where cabinet shop is we stay same temperature same humidity year around here and now our shop is you got the garage doors they're done they lift the garage doors everybody gets a little cart dips it over and they install to minimize the time that the air has changed from this regulated state yeah our own upholstery work here is amazing i think we don't upholster is uh the driver passenger seat and the couches and recliners but the walls and everything for instance you got the hand stitching right down through here and this right here is gonna be the end of a slide obviously we'll have a caddy corner tv how are you trying to get all cliches and stupid but that's just the truth it's pretty cool when that's what's being created it is that's why it's cool the fact that it's created in america that's why i'm so fascinated with it because just like i know what it feels like to take a car and to build it and you make brackets and you wire it and it's like your baby and when it's done you did everything with your own two hands like that's exactly what's going on in here exactly you know what it is and you know we we are american-made we are american-made a lot of the vendors we use are local vendors around here um we do a i mean our slides are made in canada valid slides you saw valid we use um cf is german uh company porsche design helps us so we do have some overseas help but almost everything else is american made in here and that's really freaking cool as we continue to grow in advance for our small company it only builds 26 or 28 units a year um so we don't have like a whole engineering wing or nothing like that but what it does is we have everyone's very hands on each coach's build so we do so few that we know everyone's names you know who's buying it trying to get a trend of what they like what they don't like people start picking up on that and so maybe by the third coach they have they kind of know that they're learning the person with the coach so it's kind of neat it's crazy to think that one's being made right now or somebody like me is going to be driving around in 25 years wondering wondering how it started