When Bruce Hopkins announced last winter that he was going to retire at the end of this year from his position as RV Industry Association (RVIA) vice president of standards, he might have thought that seemed like a long time away.
But now that the time is just a few weeks away, he chuckles at the idea that the RV industry’s “Godfather of Standards” might have changed his mind and decided to stick around.
Although he admits he loves the industry and that stepping away is kind of bittersweet, he also acknowledges that he was married in July 2019 and is looking forward to spending some time traveling the country with his bride.
“The plan was to go to Australia, but COVID kind of changed our route,” he told RVBusiness on Wednesday afternoon (Dec. 2).
Hopkins is rightfully credited with building a set of standards for the RV industry to get all manufacturers to build all towables to the same guidelines as well as motorhomes. But he is quick to credit his success to coming on the scene at the right time.
He said industry principals in the 1960s and 1970s were anxious to work with each other to develop such standards in an effort to keep government – especially state governments – out of their businesses.
“One of the things I’m most proud of is when I came on (in 1974) there were 16 states that had regulatory oversights of recreational vehicles and each person operated independently, and that prevented the manufacturers from building a single unit to go into any market,” he said noting that, under that system, mass production wasn’t feasible. “Overcoming that was very helpful,” he said.
An early industry strategy meeting that included Dave Humphreys, who later became RVIA president, helped Hopkins develop a three-plank platform to inform his decisions regarding standards:
- Always allow manufacturers the greatest amount of flexibility providing safety is not jeopardized
- Always be consistent
- Prevent problems from occurring in the first place
Hopkins went to work with state representatives to make sure his standards group and the state regulatory agencies were extensions of each other and were doing things the same way. That allowed him to develop the industry’s handbook, which puts into layman’s terms how requirements would be applied. With the handbook in hand, he was able to train the state agencies.
Once the procedures and government affairs departments were established, most of the state regulatory agencies ceased to exist and the industry was able to regulate itself.
Hopkins credits Ralph Herzler of Coachmen and Bob Wilkinson of Fleetwood for helping him succeed along the way.
“They were good barometers – people you could bounce things off of and have individual conversations with,” he said. “If I look at that today, there’s probably three or four people I would put into that category.”
In more recent years, Hopkins has worked to ensure American-made RVs have a worldwide market. He has worked with foreign governments including China to make sure American RVs are not locked out of those countries.
But still, he said his proudest moments come from seeing the improvement in safety over the years. Stories about fires or explosions in RVs have become fewer and farther between as the industry’s standards have matured.
Most fire reports have to do with people falling asleep in bed while smoking between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., outside the realm of the manufacturer, Hopkins noted.
Also, the industry has added small towables to the types of vehicles that need a carbon monoxide detector – even though those vehicles don’t have engines – because the unit might be parked next to a large motorized vehicle or even next to a generator that could send exhaust into the trailer.
That change was made after a real-world incident and the industry didn’t wait for any agency to mandate better standards, but addressed the measure independently.
Fire extinguishers have been a more recent item to be examined, as different extinguishers put out different kinds of fires. Manufacturer data indicates many RV fires occur when the vehicle is unoccupied.
“We’re always trying to tighten it down – how do we get more safety in here without harming the manufacturers?” Hopkins said. “You could build an RV like a tank, but then it would be so expensive nobody could afford to buy it.”
As he winds down his final year in the business, Hopkins said he believes things are in good hands with Kent Perkins and Curt Richardson taking over some of the technical duties and organizational work, and with RV Technical Institute Executive Director Curt Hemmeler expanding his role to include senior vice president of standards for the RVIA.
“I think the industry has done a really, really good job,” he said. “If somebody wanted to put us under a microscope could we do better? Absolutely. But for the most part, we do really, really well as an industry. I’m very proud of it and very happy to have been involved with it.”
