There’s something almost spiritual about standing in the building where your home was born. Not the house you grew up in — I mean the rolling, 40-foot home you currently live in. Earlier this month, I did exactly that: I toured Thor Motor Coach Plant 850 in Wakarusa, Indiana — the exact factory where my Outlaw 38RE was designed, engineered, and assembled — and it changed the way I think about every inch of this rig.
Let me tell you about it.
If you’re not familiar with the RV industry, here’s a quick geography lesson: Elkhart County, Indiana is essentially the Detroit of recreational vehicles. Something like 80% of all RVs sold in America are built within a short drive of this corner of the Midwest, and Thor Industries — the world’s largest RV manufacturer — sits right at the center of it all.
Aerial view of Thor’s lot packed wall-to-wall with chassis and RVs in various stages of build. The sheer scale hits you before you even walk in the door. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
Fun fact: Thor Industries (NYSE: THO) operates over 50 subsidiary brands — from Airstream to Jayco to Keystone to Tiffin — and holds roughly 47% of the North American motorhome market. In 2023 the company reported over $11 billion in revenue with nearly 25,000 employees worldwide. Your RV dealer didn’t tell you that.
I arrived at Plant 850 a little early — maybe 15 minutes ahead of my 3pm tour — and was greeted by the receptionist at the front desk. She’d lived in Wakarusa her whole life, and we had one of those genuinely wonderful small-town conversations that remind you why people love Indiana. Warm, welcoming, and proud of what they build here. The perfect start.
Then my tour guide came out: Matt. Within about 30 seconds of chatting, he felt less like a factory rep and more like a high school friend you hadn’t seen in a while. Easy-going, knowledgeable, passionate about the work. It turns out Matt is a CAD engineer who has been at Thor since high school — he came over when Damon Motor Coach was acquired by Thor, and he knows the Outlaw lineup inside and out. Specifically the 38RE. Specifically well enough that I’m pretty sure… he’s the one who engineered my RV.
Let that sink in for a second.
No photos allowed inside the plant — safety glasses on, phones put away (those glasses were hideous, for the record, thank god no photos for that!) — but I was able to grab some screen grabs from one of Thor’s own factory tour videos, which gives you a really solid idea of what I walked through.
The process starts from absolute scratch.
It all begins with a chassis delivery. No body, no walls — just a frame and drivetrain. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
The frame is then retrofitted with Thor’s own modifications and welded to the frame so it becomes one. This is the start for where the floor, walls, and roof come together. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
The Outlaw 38RE sits on a Ford F-53 chassis with a 6.8L V10 gas engine. What arrives at the plant is essentially a cab and a frame — a vehicle that looks like it wandered away from a truck dealership. From that point, everything else is Thor.
One of the first things that struck me was the organization. Each worker starts their day with a cut sheet and an instruction sheet, and every single component coming down the line is labeled with the model name plus the last three digits of the VIN. That means a worker can triple-check — before they ever pick up a tool — that the right part is going on the right rig. It sounds simple, but when you’re cranking out these units at scale, that level of traceability is what separates precision manufacturing from chaos. Most of the units are built into place – furniture for example – all built on site from upholstery to framing.
One of my favorite moments of the tour was seeing the wall construction. I’d always assumed an RV wall was, well… a wall. Turns out it’s an engineered sandwich of materials, and watching it come together is genuinely impressive.
Wall panels go through a pressure-bonding process — up to 10 layers fused together. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
The panels start as flat sheets and get built up layer by layer. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
The sidewalls use a vacuum-bonded laminated construction process — layers of aluminum skin, structural framing, insulation, and interior substrate are all bonded together under pressure. The result is a wall that’s rigid, well-insulated, and resistant to delamination. Seeing how the layers actually come together made me feel a lot better about DIY projects — understanding that the wall is a structural composite (not just drywall over studs) changes how you approach any modification.
Outlaw 38RE Quick Stats: 40’1″ overall length · Ford F-53 chassis · 6.8L V10 gas engine · Sleeps up to 10 · 11′ garage · Dual slide-outs · Nearly 20,000 lbs GVWR
I’ll be honest — I’d never given much thought to the wiring in my RV. It works, I plug things in, lights come on. Done. Walking through the wiring bays completely changed that perspective.
Wiring harnesses are assembled on template boards before ever going into a coach. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
The complexity here is staggering — every wire has a place. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
Every connector gets labeled, numbered, and tested before installation. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
Wiring harnesses are pre-built on template boards — massive flat boards that map out exactly where every wire goes before it ever touches an RV. Workers assemble the entire harness flat, test it, then carry the completed loom to the coach for installation. This was one of those “I had no idea they did it this way” moments.
Every harness gets electronically tested before installation. No guesswork. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
Here’s something I didn’t know before the tour that genuinely impressed me: Thor hasn’t just built a factory — they’ve built an ecosystem.
Most of their key suppliers are located within just a few blocks of the plant. Paint shops, textile vendors, component manufacturers — all clustered around the facilities so parts arrive quickly and with minimal supply chain risk. But Thor took it a step further in a few key areas. Rather than outsourcing seatbelt certification testing to a third party, they hired certified engineers, bought the testing equipment, and do it in-house. Same story with certain paint and upholstery work.
Even textiles — carpet, upholstery — are produced close to or within the Thor ecosystem. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
The assembly line itself is modular. Work bays can be set up for in-house teams or third-party subcontractors depending on the workflow, and each bay is tied to a specific stage in the build sequence. The coaches move through the line on dollies — no one is driving half-built RVs down the aisle. (But, I did find out they can legally street drive these half-built RVs through town – down to the paint shop, etc.) They’re pushed by hand or with assist equipment, always in build order, always with the right materials waiting at the next station. They can move a RV through the factory in less than 4 days on average – and some days it can go in a day (minus paints, etc.)
Nothing drives until it’s finished. Dollies keep every coach moving in order, at the right pace. Equipment, like this, lift the components (generator here, for example) in place. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
Seeing a bare metal chassis slowly become a finished coach over the course of an assembly line walk is genuinely moving if you own one of these things.
The skeleton before the skin — it’s wild to see just how much structure goes into these. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
Coming back from the paint shop, an RV transforms almost instantly. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
One moment that stood out: watching the windshield installation. The amount of flex built into the coach body is intentional and significant. These coaches have to absorb the punishment of America’s worst roads — potholes, frost heaves, highway expansion joints — and they do it partly by being slightly flexible. Watching a worker maneuver a massive windshield into position, with the body flexing just enough to accommodate it, was a reminder that these aren’t rigid boxes. They’re engineered to move.
Windows and Accessory installation — deceptively precise and by hand, work. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
The cabinetry shop was another highlight. Watching raw sheets of material become the cabinets and drawers that end up in the kitchen and bedroom — all built to match a specific VIN and floorplan — made the interior feel less like “stuff that came with the RV” and more like furniture someone actually crafted.
Every cabinet, every drawer — built from scratch for a specific rig. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
The end of the line — finished coaches waiting to head to dealers. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
The graphics and storage bays on the Outlaw — always a head-turner. (Image via Thor Motor Coach)
I wasn’t aware, but Thor is one of (maybe the only?) the RV factories who do an actual rain test. We stepped into the “Rain Bay” – an enclosed rain garage, with more nozzles of water than I cared to count. They were set to spray different kinds of patterns, and locations – they sprayed up from the floor, down from the ceiling, sideways, and honestly you’d think you were in a nasty rain storm. They test every single unit. Twice. Once with the slides all closed. Then, with all the slides opened. For twenty minutes each, they ensure every nook and cranny is weather tight – there aren’t any leaks coming in or up, or around the unit. And, if there is a leak – it goes right back to the station where it’s found, and it’s all restarted. They then have to re-rain test it.
They also do a 30 mile drive around town – from stop signs to highways, to neighborhoods, to traffic (well, not like NYC traffic!). They do this to ensure all the rattling is settled and things are operating as designed.
It’s nice to see this level of testing go in BEFORE it’s shipped off to a dealer.
After the tour, I drove into Elkhart proper to poke around. I’ll be honest — my mental image of “the RV capital of the world” involved maybe a flashier main drag. What I found was something more authentic: a spread-out, older mid-size city that’s been the backbone of an entire American industry for decades. Quieter than expected. More real than expected. The kind of place where guys like Matt go to school, stay to build things, and take quiet pride in what rolls out of their factories.
There’s something deeply cool about that.
I’ve been pretty open on this blog about my experience with Camping World — it was not great, and it shook my confidence in this whole RV thing for a while. There’s a particular kind of damage that bad service does: it makes you feel like maybe the product itself isn’t worth it. Like the problems you’ve had are symptoms of something deeper.
Walking through Plant 850 dismantled that completely.
Watching real craftspeople — wiring technicians who label every single connector, wall-builders who pressure-bond ten layers into a seamless panel, CAD engineers who’ve been refining these floorplans since before I owned one — it reminded me that the rig is good. The people who built it care. The problems I’ve dealt with were dealership problems, not factory problems.
My Outlaw 38RE was designed by people like Matt, built by people who show up every day to a plant in Wakarusa, Indiana and take pride in what they do. That’s worth knowing.
Thor Motor Coach offers free factory tours at several of their Indiana plants. Tours run Monday through Friday and are open to the public — no purchase required. You can book directly through their website:
If you’re heading to the Elkhart area, it’s absolutely worth the drive. Wear comfortable shoes. Expect to be impressed. And maybe — if you’re lucky — you’ll get Matt.
Have you done a factory tour for your RV brand? Drop a comment below — I’d love to hear what you found.
Copyright 2017-2026 RVWorking
