My Family’s $62,800 Camper Is So Poorly Built Something Falls Off Every Time We Go On A Trip

It’s no secret that the typical RV isn’t a high watermark for quality. You know it, I know it, and dealers know it, too. Yet, somehow, it seems quality got even worse during the pandemic. My parents bought a new camper in 2022 and it spent that year broken at the dealer awaiting parts. We’re finally using it now, but it’s not because it stopped breaking. This nearly-new camper is so poorly built that parts fall off on every time we take a trip.

The trailer in question is a 2022 Heartland Mallard M33. This is a large bumper-pull travel trailer that weighs 7,746 pounds empty, stretches about 37 feet from tongue to bumper, and is advertised as being able to sleep a big family of nine or more. Heartland is a family-oriented luxury brand within Thor Industries with a focus on following interior design trends. The Mallard model boasts an open floorplan and a supposedly lightweight design. Really, the Mallard looks like it’s trying its hardest to look like a mobile farmhouse.

My parents bought this trailer back in March 2022 and the trailer was just a couple of months old, having been built that January. The sticker price was $62,800 but Dad says he managed to get it for $58,000, or still not cheap. It’s been over two years since then and we’ve yet to be able to camp in this thing without something silly breaking.

You’re about to read about an impressive laundry list of issues and it may sound like I’m just straight up bashing Thor Industries. The truth is that I want everyone to be able to go out camping in their own way, be it in a sleeping bag under the stars or a multi-million dollar Prevost. Regardless of what “camping” means to you, I want you to have a good time. I want you to be able to spend 60 grand of your hard-earned money and feel like you’re getting what you paid for.

Every time I go to an RV show, I’m not just looking for something weird to write about. I’m scanning typical units and I’m talking with RV owners and RV dealerships. I have seen glaring quality issues with my own eyes and the operators of dealer chains have been open that some units are built like garbage. That’s a shame. I don’t want to trash RV manufacturers. I want them to build better products so families can create memories without worrying about busting out another thousand bucks to fix something that shouldn’t have broken in the first place.

Unfortunately, one of the brands that has disappointed me is Heartland Recreational Vehicles, and not just because of my parents’ unit. When I go to an RV show, I usually see a Heartland unit displaying what I feel is sub-par work. Sometimes it’s a fifth-wheel trailer pin box that’s covered in spray paint to cover up surface rust, missing fasteners, or interior trim that’s already coming off of a new unit being demoed for media at an RV show. Again, these are things I’ve seen with my own eyes over the past couple of years.

I’ll even give you photo evidence. The RV in the photo above is a Heartland Torque that was just a few months old when I took the picture. Rust was already appearing on the fifth wheel and someone just lazily sprayed paint on it in an effort to hide it. Check out the overspray on the decals:

Again, I’m not trying to bash the manufacturer here, just point out that regular people can see stuff like this and want the industry to do better. It’s not just me, either. RV experts have been blowing the whistle on bad quality for years. In 2021, Dave Solberg, an RV repair expert over at RV Travel, reported what we’ve all been seeing:

Most RV manufacturers build the cheapest rig as fast as possible

Keep in mind that most RV manufacturers strive to build the cheapest rig as fast as possible. Fit and finish is hidden with expandable foam, silicone, and a product called gimp, which is a vinyl strip used between cabinets and walls to hide uneven cuts and gaps. They use cheap fabrics, single-layer foam in cushions, and even low-level furniture that they give a fancy name like it’s designer quality when actually it’s a lower level than what you would find at a big box store!

Take a closer look. You’ll find particle board with a vinyl wrap, paneling used to look like solid wood, holes that look like they were cut out with a hatchet inside those cabinets rather than a nice cutout with decorative trim to finish it off. Nope, that all takes time, which costs money. Since the unit sitting across the aisle doesn’t have it, it’s a waste of money.

Things got even worse during the pandemic, with even dealerships sounding off about how bad things have gotten, as reported by RV Travel:

“It’s some of the worst stuff I’ve seen in 30 years,” said one longtime RV dealer. “It’s horrendous inside and out. But we have no recourse but to put it on the lot and try to sell it. You take what you can get, and you move on.”

The East Coast dealer said RV manufacturers are “building them as fast as they can, and there just isn’t any quality control. Manufacturers are not doing a good job of taking care of their customers. It’s gone from bad to worse.”

Friend of the Autopian attorney Steve Lehto frequently uploads videos about RV nightmare stories and there are entire YouTube channels dedicated to pointing out bad RVs. Liz Amazing lives up to her name:

So keep all of this in mind as you read on.

The First Time Around

Let’s start with what happened back in 2022, because that’ll just set the tone here.

My parents took delivery of a unit that was broken straight from the factory. Right out of the gate, the first thing I noticed was that the unit had cool LED light strips on the front cap. However, not only were these strips the kind of crap you get from Amazon for $20, but they were attached to the cap with a weak adhesive. Of course, the light strips were already peeling off and the trailer hadn’t even been on a single trip yet.

Honestly, that’s a small problem, but it got worse from there. I moved to the side of the trailer and found that one of the RV’s aerodynamic side skirts (the dealer tech calls these “J-channels”) was halfway through deleting itself from the unit. How were these even bolted on? Through cheap self-tapping screws. Then I saw how the sealant around every window looked like it was applied by a seven-year-old kid.

Somehow, it still got worse. One of the safety chain hooks fell off of the trailer on its first tow, the emergency brake cable disintegrated in my hand, and then there’s the rust. The trailer was just a few months old, yet the underbody had a surprising amount of surface rust. By that summer, the frame had more surface rust than our family’s old camper, a 2007 Adirondack by Thor. Don’t worry, the absurdity of that statement hasn’t escaped my family.

The solution to that rust? Our dealer said to spray the frame with Rust-Oleum Rust Reformer. Now, as a proud owner of rusty piles of junk, I’ve used a lot of Rust-Oleum Rust Reformer in my time. It works great to cover up unsightly rust and does seem to slow rust down, but in my experience, it is not a long-term fix for rust for cars, so I’m not sure how it would work for a trailer frame.

Mind you, all of this was discovered before my family even took the camper on its first outing. So, the camper went back to the dealer, where it sat for a few months waiting on parts. We did get the camper back in time for some summer camping, but oh boy did the trailer not want to go out. We found these problems merely attempting to take it on a trip, from one of my last entries on this trailer:

In addition to the safety problems, we found three light switches that weren’t even screwed in, random staples everywhere on the ceiling, a window valence that fell off a wall, and a bathtub that wasn’t even close to being installed correctly. In fact, the bathtub wasn’t even screwed in or secured, but just sitting in place. Because of this, there was a huge water leak when we tested the shower and tub. Amazingly, that wasn’t even the only place water was gushing out into the wrong places. The water heater also sprayed water all over everything inside and outside of the trailer.

All of these new problems meant that the trailer spent its first year sitting at the dealership. Sometimes, it took the dealership multiple tries to get things right, too. For example, the loose bathtub was finally screwed in by the dealership, but whatever tech did the job mounted the tub in a horribly crooked position. It took the dealership two more tries before the bathtub was finally correctly mounted in and as you’re soon about to read, it may have to go back again.

The rest of the year was spent waiting on parts or just a free technician. Our local dealer says it was swamped with work throughout the pandemic and immediately after, so even when the parts did come in there might not have been anyone to work on the camper. Oh, and while our camper was at the dealer for a year, someone broke in and stole some really specific items. They took precisely three dinette cushions plus all of the silverware, plates, pots, pans, and towels that my mom stored in the trailer.

The dealership later admitted that a tech took our cushions to put into another Mallard that came from the factory missing its cushions. But then, that guy just forgot to replace what he took, I guess? That also means someone got a brand-new camper with technically used cushions. It also doesn’t explain why someone stole plates, towels, and silverware. Thankfully, none of that stuff was special, but that just made it even more bizarre.

Finally, all of that drama ended in 2023. To our dealer’s credit, they fixed all of that stuff under warranty and even cut my parents a check for the stuff that was stolen while the camper was on the dealer’s property. That’s great!

Keep On Breakin’

Summer 2023 rolls around and my family is eager to finally take this trailer camping for the first time since it was purchased over a year earlier.

We thought we were out of the woods, but as I wrote last year, the trailer’s poor quality continues to show:

We first discovered things weren’t quite right when we tried to turn on the kitchen’s LED lights, which now don’t work. That switch knows what it did wrong…

Then, we tried to open the refrigerator to put food in it. The door jammed on the second closure, and when we tried to clear the jam, the door responded by snapping off its handle. I couldn’t help but laugh so hard that I started crying. This is the kind of stuff from a comedy movie, but a dumb one like an Adam Sandler flick.

And we’re not done yet. We found that the water heater wasn’t working. While I was troubleshooting it, I opened up the outdoor kitchen, which revealed that the refrigerator had pulled itself from the wall, taking its holder with it. Meanwhile, the ceiling of the outdoor kitchen is separating, causing a snow of particle board dust.

Inside, we found that the window shades don’t like to stay open on their own and perhaps thanks to Chicago potholes, interior wall trim is falling off. Also comical is the fact that every single fixture mounted to the walls is crooked.

I later found out that the water heater wasn’t working because its valves were still in the closed position from the trailer’s winterization. Unfortunately, the water heater itself immediately began leaking once I opened the valves. But hey, the water leaked outside of the trailer now, which was a marked improvement from the previous leaks!

Or, that’s what I thought. The kitchen sink began leaking out onto the trailer’s floor and the bathroom, which has its own door to the outside, had seals so bad that water got in during rainstorms. The bathroom door’s seal is such a joke that you can see outside light through the door when the door is closed. Just this weekend, I also noticed that there’s a part of the primary bedroom that isn’t sealed and thus you can see light through a tiny portion of the floor. It’s baffling me how nobody noticed or perhaps cared about this stuff at the factory.

But hey, these problems were not too bad, so my family took the trailer out a couple of more times before sending it back to the dealership for repairs over the winter.

Breaking Bad

Now it’s 2024 and the camping season is almost over. My parents were a bit too busy for most of the year, so they missed out on some good camping. I still took out the older Adirondack to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2024, enjoyed some fun tent camping, and even roughed it out in the back of a Volkswagen Touareg back in March. I may love RVs, but I still don’t mind doing things the hard way every now and then.

Anyway, my parents decided to take the Mallard out for Labor Day. By my count, this is maybe the fifth or sixth time the trailer’s been slept in since my parents bought it. So, it’s not even really broken in. Or, maybe that’s the wrong phrase to use since it’s definitely still broken.

The dealer spent the winter fixing as many complaints as it could. The water heater had to be replaced due to an internal failure and the new one doesn’t leak. The refrigerator now has working handles, shoddy wiring was fixed and now the kitchen LEDs do work, the random staples have been removed, crooked fixtures straightened up, water leaks vanquished, and the outdoor refrigerator secured again. By the dealer’s own admission, they effectively spent the winter fixing what the factory failed to do two years ago.

Well, the dealer’s going to be back at it again this year. Unfortunately, the trailer’s bumper-to-bumper warranty has expired, so these fixes will be coming out of my parents’ pockets.

My dad says this weekend’s headache began before the trailer even reached its campsite at Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park resort just south of Milwaukee. Dad reports that first, the cap for the tanks blew off on the highway. Ok, that’s stupid, but something that does sometimes happen with campers. Then he made me laugh immediately after when he said “Then, the handle for the black tank blew off.”

Alright, that one is new to me and I still cannot stop laughing. Look, it’s a small issue because you can still pull on the rod with your hand or a pair of pliers, but still, that’s silly.

Then there’s the glob of foam around the tank exit, which is supposed to protect the wiring underneath and keep wildlife out of the trailer’s underbody. Well, some animals have been trying to get their way through the seal.

Sheryl and I arrived at the camper on Saturday and we found that my parents filled the interior refrigerator to the brim with steaks and such, so Sheryl’s drinks had to go outside. That’s the great thing about having more than one refrigerator! Upon opening the hatch, I found more of the particle board “sawdust” material sprayed around the outdoor kitchen. The shifting wall problem has not been resolved.

Unfortunately, my parents have been told by the dealer there isn’t really a fix for this. The trailer’s frame and living unit are going to flex, which is going to cause these walls to move a little. I understand that, but it’s still janky as heck that you have to clean up what’s basically wall snow every time you camp.

This flexing thing is also occurring inside. I’m not sure the bathroom in this camper is deserving of being called a room. The walls of the bathroom are these outrageously thin pieces of board, and I’m talking thinner than cardboard. These boards are so thin that just trying to adjust the temperature on the thermostat causes the entire wall to flex. The walls are so thin that if you drunkenly stumbled into one you’ll end up in the bathtub.

The walls are also secured with this black piece of trim. Unfortunately, the trim dislodged during travel, which means everything is even looser than usual over there. Later, the trim finally liberated itself from the wall, hitting my mom in the face on its journey down to the floor.

With the trim completely removed, you can see and feel the absolute garbage quality of the materials used in the trailer’s interior and how they were put together. I get that the Mallard is supposed to be lightweight, but this is just bad.

It’s not just there, either. Trim pieces are buckling and falling off all over the trailer’s interior from the primary bedroom to the living room. The bathtub’s wall is also ripping itself from the paper-thin wall.

I also had to take a gander at the rust. Thankfully, most of it is still of the surface variety, but some parts are legitimately crusty like you’d expect from a Midwestern car after over a decade.

Again, this trailer is just two years old, yet it’s falling apart and rusting faster than the Adirondack, which is edging closer to 20 years of age.

Weird Design Decisions

When I wasn’t laughing about the broken tank handles or the walls separating, I began to notice some interesting design decisions.

Let’s start with the primary bedroom. Heartland boasts about the unit’s queen bed and truth be told, it’s a nice bed to sleep in. However, the bed also takes up the entirety of the primary bedroom, leaving no room to get dressed in, you know, the bedroom.

Then there’s really not much for privacy here. The Mallard has a hefty sliding door that blocks off the primary bedroom from the rest of the trailer. However, this whole deal is sort of stupid. First, the sliding door doesn’t lock, so there’s no real privacy. Second, the door scrapes the wall as it slides, leading to permanent scratches being put into the door. I think I can solve this with a bunch of felt pads, but again, it’s just another example of the manufacturer’s lack of detail.

There’s also little ventilation in the room. You get two HVAC vents, one tiny window, and the emergency exit window. That seems like enough until you put two people in the room.

The body heat of those two people is enough to make everything hot and stuffy. Opening the windows does nothing for this if there isn’t a breeze, so you’re left using the trailer’s HVAC system. However, you’ll find that the primary bedroom feels blazing hot while the rest of the trailer feels fine, so the other people in the trailer might not want you turning the temps down on the thermostat.

The smaller Adirondack has a solution for this with a bedroom roof fan. Sheryl and I have found that using the Adirondack’s roof fan keeps the primary bedroom in that trailer at about the same temps as the rest of the trailer. The easy fix for the Mallard was bringing my own fan and putting it in the window, but again, that’s a detail that could have been done at the factory.

Ok, my phone’s camera makes this look better than it really is:

Finally, the last oddity is that the Mallard has little side lighting despite having LEDs basically everywhere else. The awning has a dim LED strip and there’s a light for the outdoor kitchen, but that’s it. If you want to eat outside at night you’ll have to bring your own light.

Not All Bad

So, this trailer has found a way to break every time we take it out. Boat owners joke that “Boat” is an acronym for “bust out another thousand,” but this travel trailer is trying its hardest to be like one of those boats. The problems have gotten to the point where my parents don’t even want the trailer anymore, but there’s no chance they’ll ever make their money back on resale. So, they’re just shaking their heads and are sticking with it.

Despite everything that’s given my parents a headache, I do see some genuine good ideas at play here. The primary bedroom’s bed is legitimately comfortable, which I couldn’t say about the bed in the Adirondack or most travel trailers built in the 2000s.

I also like the open concept, which makes the Mallard feel a bit closer to a home and not an RV. Other high marks include the cool lighting, the trailer’s composite front cap, and generous storage. I also like how the unit tows with confidence and doesn’t entirely feel like you’re trying to ram a brick through wind.

There was some clever thinking with this trailer. There’s no way to access the rear of the trailer when the slides are closed, yet there’s a second entrance door right there to the bathroom. So, you could read the Morning Dump in a parking lot with the slides closed if you need to.

I also love how the main entry stair touches the ground. All RVs should have stairs like this. You no longer get the feeling of instability while climbing the stairs. Also, stairs that rip out of the trailer’s body, which is something that has happened to my family in decades past, are now a thing of the past. That’s genius!

If only the rest of the trailer were built like the stairway is.

As always, I want to end this with some advice. Never buy a camper sight unseen. I don’t care how good it looks in an ad or what the salesperson says. Go hook your own peepers on it before exchanging a dollar or agreeing to anything. Even better? Get a pre-purchase inspection. This is good advice for buying a car, too. Find someone who knows what to look for and have them take a look.

Speaking of cars, don’t think that RVs are built like cars or like houses because, usually, they aren’t. Don’t get blinded by flashy features or a cute design. Keep your eyes peeled for problems. If a brand-new unit is rusting only a month out of the factory, you might want to reconsider.

I do have some good news. While there’s so much bad in the RV world right now, you don’t have to settle for something poorly built. There are brands with a reputation for quality, even if you have to pay more to get it. Brands like inTech, Happier Camper, and Scamp have their own issues here and there, but a lot of happy campers. It’s why I try to highlight some of the cooler RVs out there when I find them.

No matter what you do, have fun. That’s what this whole camping thing is all about. Regardless if you’re in a tent or in a bus, just get out there and have fun.