Travel trailers are the largest segment of the US recreational vehicle market, but their ownership costs are reported piecemeal. We assemble an insurer's published average premiums, retail selling prices and financing shares from the largest US RV retailer's Form 10-K filings, wholesale values from the largest North American RV maker's filings, Bureau of Labor Statistics price indexes, manufacturers' price and weight lists, a rental marketplace's rates and Census County Business Patterns. A 12-month travel trailer policy averaged USD 594 in 2024 at one large insurer, USD 49.50 a month and 2.3% of the USD 26,000 average new travel trailer sold in 2025; a motorhome policy cost USD 1,052, 1.77 times as much. The average new travel trailer rose 50% from USD 22,000 in 2016 to USD 33,000 in 2022 and fell 21% by 2025, and wholesale net sales per unit fell 21.7% from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2026, while the producer price index for travel trailers rose to 288.4 in 2025, 2.81 times its 1985 level, consistent with a shift towards cheaper entry-level models. On a USD 22,100 loan at 6.49%, stretching the term from seven to twenty years lowers the payment from USD 328.07 to USD 164.64 but adds USD 11,956 of interest. Airstream floorplans weigh 3,150 to 8,550 lb and start at USD 64,400 to USD 227,900. Travel trailers made up 67.9% of the 342,220 RVs shipped in 2025, and Indiana held 56.5% of US employment in travel trailer and camper manufacturing in 2023.
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Kurz et al. (2026) studied this question.
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