Woodall's Campground Management Article

July 2004/Vol 35 No 7

Terry Cagle's company. Grandview-based Park Manor Inc., already the largest park model manufacturer in Texas, planned to triple its production and quadruple its workforce to 100 employees this summer.

A former RV dealer, Cagle knows what it's like to be on top of his game. He built his former company into the largest RV dealership in Texas from 1976 to 1982. "I retired at 46 and absolutely hated it," Cagle said.

So Cagle went back to work, bought a campground in New Mexico and eventually went into the park model business himself, providing campground owners and consumers with portable cabin products that can often be set up without building permits because they are technically considered to be RVs.

"We're selling them as fast as we can build them," said Cagle, whose company, Grandview-based Park Manor Inc., occupies a 250,000-square foot facility at Highway 4 and FM 916.

Park Manor is one of several new companies to throw their hats into the park model manufacturing business in recent years. Others include GS Manufacturing in Alba, Texas; KIT Home Builders West LLC in Caldwell, Idaho; and Adirondack White Pine Cabins Inc. in Saranac Lake, N.Y. These and other manufacturers are doing a lot of business in the RV park and campground sector, largely with cabin-style units as upgrade rentals. Because each cabin is delivered as a turnkey unit, they save campground owners the time and hassle involved in building their own cabins. "You just hook them up to utility connections," said Cagle, "and you're ready to go."

Cagle himself knows how long it can take to build a cabin from the ground up. Several years ago, he bought the Little Creel Resort, an 8,000-foot elevation campground in Chama, NM with plans of improving the park with camping cabins. "I hired a couple of local people to build two, 300-square-foot cabins," Cagle recalled. "They started on March 15 and were supposed to finish in 60 days so that I could rent them out for the summer. They didn't finish until November 15th."

Cagle found a ready-made solution to the problem in Indiana, home to several companies that manufacture cabin-style recreational park trailers that can simply be wheeled on to a campsite. Instead of simply buying another company's cabin units, Cagle met with a number of campground owners and manufacturers and discovered that there was enough demand for portable cabins in Texas and surrounding states that he could build his own cabin company and help expand the recreational park trailer industry in Texas.

He formed Park Manor in 1999, joined the board of directors of the Texas Association of Campground Owners (TACO), and is now marketing his portable cabin units to consumers and campground operators across Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. "There's a growing market for these units," he said, adding that he secured more than 80 orders for cabins this year during TACO's annual spring meeting and convention.

Campground operators, for their part, believe Cagle is on the right path and that there is considerable demand for park trailer cabins from campgrounds and RV parks Texas, Oklahoma and surrounding states that want to accommodate travelers who don't have RVs. "The cabins help us expand our customer base," said Kevin Brown, project manager for Braunig Lake RV Resort near San Antonio, which recently purchased three cabins from Park Manor. "We're going to start with three cabins, but I know we'll expand that pretty quickly," he said.

"We see the park trailer concept having great potential," said Mike Fawcert, owner of Red Bud Resort and Marina in Claremore, Oklahoma. "We recently bought two cabins from Park Manor and we're fixing to expand to 10 more. People like the cabins and we like the way Cagle's are built."

Fawcett also said the cabins will help him strengthen his business year round. "There's more people traveling and we'll have a little more fall and winter trade with the cabins," he said. "We're trying to convince marinas to put them on floats in between their docks. That's something we're considering. Even marinas that don't have campgrounds can take a park trailer and put it on a floating pier with a holding tank."

Jim Rowley, owner of Austin Lone Star RV Resort in Austin, said he has found strong demand for his rental cabins as well. He recently purchased a duplex-style cabin from Park Manor, which enabled him to make better use of two RV sites that weren't very usable because of the surrounding trees. But the duplex unit enabled Rowley to Generate significant business from the sites without having to cut down the trees.

Amy Poe, owner of the North Shore RV Resort in Onalaska, Texas, recently ordered four park trailer cabins from Park Manor, which she hoped to have in place this summer. "We've had tons of calls on them and we don't even have them yet," said Poe.