Our History, Our Philosophy

Gulf Stream Coach was founded in 1983 by Jim Shea Sr., who quickly involved his sons in the new company.  Today, Gulf Stream Coach is the RV industry’s largest independent RV manufacturer and is still owned and operated by the Shea family.

As an independent producer, Gulf Stream Coach has earned a reputation for being a high-quality, high-value alternative to the RVs produced by the corporate giants that dominate the market in terms of unit sales.  

Time and time again, Gulf Stream Coach has been a pioneer in design, engineering, and features, winning new customers by leading the industry with bold, innovative thinking.  

One key aspect of Gulf Stream Coach leadership is its long-term commitment to listening.  As active campers, the Shea family talks with fellow campers for real-world advice and useful suggestions.  The people of Gulf Stream Coach remember that RVing is one of the most endearing, heartwarming, exciting, and memorable experiences any family can enjoy.

As an independent, family-owned business, Gulf Stream Coach has a nimble structure that enables it to change, improve, and enhance products based on what it hears from avid RVers and leading RV dealers.  Good ideas, smart features, unique innovations, and better solutions empower our design process. 
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Our Quality Circle Awards

With so many makers, brands, models, and styles of RVs being produced, it can seem difficult to find the best.  The Quality Circle Award, instituted by the Recreational Vehicle Dealers Association can help.  

This program surveys hundreds of leading RV dealers across the US, asking the dealers to rate RV manufacturers on their product quality, sales expertise, parts department, and customer service.  The survey responses are anonymous to avoid bias.  The Quality Circle Award is your best guide to the quality of the products and the company that produced them.  That’s why it is so important to know that Gulf Stream Coach has earned multiple Quality Circle Awards for multiple brands and products for years and years.  

Over recent years:

• All of our production facilities have been honored with the Awards
• All production facilities have won over multiple years
• Many specific brands have won the Awards multiple times, including these popular product lines:
   

  

     

 

 

     

  

  
   

Want the quality enshrined in the Quality Circle Award in your next travel trailer or motor home?  Choose Gulf Stream Coach.  All of its products are produced in facilities that are multi-year, multi-brand winners of the Quality Circle Award.
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The Power of Gulf Stream Coach PDI  

In the RV world, PDI stands for "Pre-Delivery Inspection," a step virtually every RV dealership takes to ensure their inventory is ready for retail sale.   In a pioneering step taken over five years, ago, Gulf Stream Coach created its own in-house Pre-Delivery and Inspection Department to inspect, test, and certify travel trailers and motor homes prior to shipment.  The Gulf Stream Coach PDI department is completely separate and independent from the production operations, giving it unbiased authority to check and judge the quality of the products we build. 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course Gulf Stream Coach production has always been quality-driven - It’s a hallmark built right into our company slogan.  While traveling through production, every trailer and motor home is built to exacting standards that are documented by110 inspection points, quality measurements, system tests, and team member signatures.  Our “traveler” document becomes a permanent record of those inspections and tests.  But after production has done its best, PDI gives units their Final Exam.  PDI holds the power to certify units are “OK to Ship."

PDI occupies its own facilities, employs its own staff of “picky inspectors,” and reports directly to Customer Service, not Production.  PDI is able to assemble company-wide data on best practices and materials, often inspiring quality-driven process improvements across multiple production facilities.

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Four Decades of Innovations

When you succeed in the highly competitive world of RV manufacturing, building hundreds of thousands of travel trailers and motor homes.  That’s just what Gulf Stream Coach is:  Successful, over decades, often because of its emphasis on innovation.

Here are just a few highlights:

The first “basement storage” in a Class C motor home. 

Now considered essential by many RVers, large exterior storage space was developed and introduced by Gulf Stream Coach.

The dimensions and location of our outside storage vary depending on floor plans, but part of our design process is to maximize available capacity for cargo, while at the same time maximizing living space for people.  It's a careful balance that takes innovative design and careful engineering. 

 

 

 

 

 

The exclusive “Cradle of Strength.”

This integrated and multi-faceted collection of reinforcements used on all our Conquest and BT Cruiser motor homes includes box-style steel trusses, fore-and-aft steel stringers, galvanized steel exterior storage boxes, a diamondplate sheet steel subfloor, and a Huck-Bolt attached rear hitch.  The Cradle of Strength puts the strength of steel where you need it, to add durability and rigidity to the motor home foundation to improve handling and on-the-road safety.

 

Steel “hurricane straps” to reinforce travel trailer walls.

These straps tie together the vertical wall studs and horizontal roof rafters every two feet along the length of the trailer.  An additional group of straps provides the same strengthening every two feet where the trailer walls meet the trailer floor.  The result is a uni-body effect to create travel trailers with resilient strength.

This reinforcement helps your Gulf Stream Coach travel trailer react to the bumps, jumps, sways, swings and other unavoidable hazards you will encounter on the road.

 

 

 

A solid steel reinforcing plate for main slide-out headers

A defining characteristic of our conventional trailer construction is the use of a 4” high, 1/4” thick solid steel plate laminated into the header used for main living area slide-out headers.  This incredibly strong reinforcement stabilizes the dimensions and shape of the slide-out to make it last longer and work more reliably.

The long steel plate (1) is bonded to structural plywood (2), then decorative fascia (3) is used to provide a finished look that coordinates with the interior decor. 

 

 

 

Laminated seamless fiberglass roof for V-Class trailers.

In a stroke of genius, Gulf Stream Coach designers and engineers eliminated issues associated with conventional membrane-style roofs and joints, by fabricating a seamless one-piece sheet of laminated fiberglass to create a roof that stretches from the hitch point at the front of the trailer to the bumper at the rear. 

The smooth curve of the leading surface provides an aerodynamic shape that is slippery to wind at highway speeds.  It also eliminates the possibility of roof leaks where the roof joins the front and rear walls, because there is no joints.  The fiberglass sheet extends across the entire expanse, forming the front, top, and rear of the trailer.  

 

Certified seat belts for all motor home seating positions

Family safety is essential - You won’t leave home without it.  That’s why Gulf Stream Coach motor homes provide frame-mounted safety belts for all seating positions.  Don’t risk passenger safety with seats that don’t have belts.  Get a Gulf Stream Coach motor home and give passengers a safe place to sit and enjoy the trip.
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