RV News On Line - The Voice of the RV Industry


December 2004		Volume 30 - Number 5

RV News Feature

Coach House Raises the Bar
A New Standard in Class C Quality

by Bob Zagami,
Editor

Coach House is owned by Steve Gerzeny, (left) vice president and brother Dave Gerzeny, president.

There are so many RV’s manufactured in Indiana, California and Oregon; it is rare that we report on one that marches to a different drummer and does it far away from those three states. However, we recently visited the corporate headquarters and manufacturing facilities of Coach House, Inc. in Nokomis, Florida. Situated just off Route 75, about an hour South of Tampa in an upscale industrial setting, the company is quietly setting a new standard for measuring quality in a Class C motorhome.

In 2005 Coach House will celebrate their twentieth anniversary in the RV industry. They have continuously improved the product line since they first started manufacturing a small Class B motorhome with a hydraulic lift top that allowed the motorhome to be garaged.

The company was founded by Ruben Gerzeny, who had worked for Volkswagen in Ohio and a local Florida RV dealership. Coach House is now owned by two of his sons, Dave Gerzeny, president, and Steve Gerzeny, vice president. They purchased the company in 1990 and incorporated; then never looked back.

Steve said, “I had worked in the company since high school and knew immediately what I wanted to do in life. This was an opportunity that I wasn’t going to pass up.” While Dave perfected his skills in RV retailing, Steve mastered his marketing expertise in school.

A major turning point in the company’s history was April 1999 when they made the decision to discontinue manufacturing Class B motorhomes and focus exclusively on low profile Class C units. Coach House also made the decision to utilize only the Ford E-450 Super Duty chassis, with a V-10 engine standard. A diesel engine is optional.

Behind the scenes, there were also significant developments on the manufacturing floor that would lay the groundwork for the quality standards the company would employ and improve on through the years ahead. It was 1998 when Ron Frank, the former owner of Xplorer, came to Florida seeking a new career in the RV industry. Ron is the son of Ray Frank, who was featured in our September issue. Ron knew fiberglass … perhaps better than anyone else in the industry. Steve noted, “As we began product development work on our Class C designs, we were not sure if we wanted to use a one- or two-piece body. With Ron’s expertise and the tremendous wealth of local knowledge, the one-piece fiberglass body design was unanimously approved.”