Inside that shiny shell
Seeing how something is made, in the mechanical world, can be very educational. Plus, when you don’t have to disassemble something valuable (of your own, on your own), it can be the highlight of a vacation day. This afternoon, after following two pages of carefully printed instructions from the clerk at the campsite, we landed in Jackson Center, OH.
For those of you who don’t follow the trade, the RV industry is concentrated in pockets of manufacturing expertise. The day of the neighbourhood entrepreneur has passed, and now it takes a team of several hundred to get the job done right. We arrived at the security gate for Airstream, and were instructed to park over in their campground.
Not to camp; just to keep us out of the way of a constant ebb and flow of materials. The day when a factory kept huge warehouses of parts in inventory have passed, as well. Everything is JIT. After registering, we joined a group of about three dozen for a plant tour. A cross-section of society, from the family with too many small children to count, through the person in a specially modified motorized wheelchair. All together, following a veteran of the RV industry and his portable microphone and sound system.
We had to don ear and eye protection, and if you had worn sandals, you stayed behind. Danger, everywhere. Not exactly, but why take the risk in a factory setting with moving equipment and workers oblivious to the strange collection of gawkers passing through.
I learned that the Airstream is “done right”. They don’t wear out. They do mature, regally. Ones built back before I was born still move from campground to campground, providing comfort in a shiny aluminum shell. There’s a book about it (we now own a copy), and I won’t look at one in the same way ever again.
