At the mothership...Newmar Corporation (Indiana: state #16)

Nappanee, Indiana is the home of Newmar Corporation, the manufacturer of our motorhome.

There are dealerships and service centers across the country that can work on our brand of motorhome, but we were told that "you HAVE to go to Newmar at least once to experience it."

All work is covered for the first year of ownership, and we purchased our coach on Halloween of 2023. We booked our appointment a few months ago because we knew we would be coming south after visiting Traverse City. It seemed like the best time to visit the place where our home on wheels originated! We had our laundry list of little warranty things and a couple bigger things that we planned to get fixed/repaired while we were there.

Newmar Corporation has their own campground with ~50 sites directly across the street from their Service Center. While you are scheduled for service, your home on wheels is across the street for the day, but you are able to sleep in it each night, free of charge. (The only caveat is if you have paint repairs; then you are reimbursed for your hotel stay.) A Service Technician and team is assigned to your coach for the entire appointment block. They pick up your motorhome each morning at 6:00 am and work on it until approximately 2:00 pm. Their Service Center has ~52 service bays! It is quite the sight to see all the coaches being picked up in the morning and brought back in the afternoon.

Newmar's service center campground

The Service Center is set up with a kitchenette, a laundry room, parts store, two smaller pet lounges for those of us with pets, and one large lounge in the main part of the building. We chose to split up our days with Jazmine spending a couple hours in the Jeep, visiting a few local parks where we could all lounge, spending some time in the pet lounge, and going for quite a few walks.

Main lounge at Newmar Service Center

You are given a badge that gives you access to the service bays where you can watch your unit being worked on, and they invite you to talk to the service technicians any time you have questions. They were great about answering any questions, hearing our feedback, and fixing items that we didn't even have on our list because they were known issues that they check based on other clients' repairs. At the end of each day you would also get an update as to what work was completed and the game plan for the next day's items. Customer Service was stellar.

Our original appointment was booked for 5 days. Some of our repairs included paint fixes, and we could not get in to the paint department until the following Monday. So...we stayed another week! We stayed at a hotel for 2 nights to allow for drying time and then were back in the campground for the rest of the second week. All in all, our rig was worked on for 10 days and we camped the day before and the day after our appointment block at the onsite campground.

We signed up for a factory tour while we were there. No pictures are allowed on site unless you are taking pictures of YOUR coach being built. We were impressed by the level of efficiency, work ethic, construction practices, and quality of materials used. Newmar's current production level is around 7 units per day across the entire lineup of their chassis. Within the production facility, there can be the highest end unit in line to be built right next to their entry level unit. Each coach is built to order either for an individual customer or a dealership ordering for their own stock. That also means that all employees work on all levels of coaches, so there is a team of mixed experience levels working/learning/teaching together on every price point of coach.

What else did we do while we were in the area?

While in town, we partook in Nappanee's Apple Festival. Their Main Street was closed down for four days to host carnival rides, vendor booths, live music stages, and a ton of food vendors. We shared a piece of Dutch Apple pie and it was delicious! Once again, we hit upon a cool local event which we did not know would be happening during our stay. Our form of planning seems to be working out for us.

We took a little drive to the town of Shipshewana to check out their flea market. It is similar to the one in Mesa, AZ in that there are rows upon rows of vendors, some of which are selling the same type of wares. We have found that we are pickier on what items are going to take up any of our 375 square foot space! Food or consumable body care products tend to be the things we will buy. We ended up finding some soup mixes that came home with us. We all need to eat, right?

A little hard to see, but there is horse and buggy parking along many of the buildings in the area, due to the large Amish population.

Indiana makes state #16 on our journey thus far!