A Line in the Sand

[sawdust_128]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...n4298883.shtml

[sawdust_128]

Here are the numbers that I have heard for new coaches a year ago or so.
Marathon 65
Liberty 28
Country Coach 18
Featherlite 20?
Parliament 12
Millennium 8

I doubt that these are accurate now,I bet the numbers for 08 and 09 will be much less than 07 production.What numbers have others heard?

151 coaches at an average of $1.3million sales price yields gross revenue at $196,300,000. At 40% margin approximately $78-million.

$118million in cost for 151 coaches yields $780k per coach at cost. (My guess)

From what I remember of the pricing-depreciation models I did with various log-log, natural log, exponential and power curve transformations, prevost conversions appeared to retain a high percentage of their purchase value for the first 3-4 years. First year values were scarce and I could not get a sufficient amount of data for any reasonable determinations. If memory serves here, after about year 8 maybe 9, prices paid for that age coach had no relationship to original price. The most direct relationship after year-8 was cost/ft plotted against age of coach which yielded a high correlation value.

Within each year grouping, the distribution appeared to reflect what Jon said, that with good condition and available records one could bubble the selling price upward. I stopped looking at that because I didn't have a coach at the time and was only guessing at something that was just common sense on this forum.

I don't remember a lot of the details but I remeber that after 10 years of age, you wouldn't want to own any other coach. The model for prevost conversions carried out to about 25 years and there was nearly zero loss of value (small sample with large variance).

First, If I can locate all those analyses, I will share them. Second, if I have a chance, I will try to add some more recent data to them to see if there is a measurable effect from the recent economic turndown (hard to do with slow sales). Lastly, I bought in a declining market and I was comfortable doing it because I concluded that I would be better off owning a Prevost over any other kind of coach out there because in the long run, I will retain more on a Prevost.

Although I agree with much of what Jon said, I would have to qualify that the fire sale pricing has more of an impact in that portion of the market for coaches between 0 and 4 years of age. Lack of sales and duress sales are about the same for every market and commodity. Hopefully, no POG member will have to deal with it. In regards to financing, what I suspect will be that as soon as things begin to settle down, a few calculating minds will adapt and figure out a way to finance anything again.

For a different perspective look here:

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/g...asp?grpid=6967

The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I have watched the ups and downs from the sideline because I am not a "player". We get the best compromise we can in a coach, and don't plan on selling it. We do that with all our "stuff".

But we also see some tremendous opportunities right now because there is no way to rebuild or build some of these coaches for the prices they are going for. The value received for the dollar spent is in my opinion unbelievably high.

I disagree with what AJ did on one level. If you can find a reasonably cheap way to store a bus for its occasional use (inside storage) that coast of ownership once the coach reaches a certain age is almost inconsequential. We aircraft owners can clearly understand that owning a bus is cheap compared to a plane of like value. With the plane, even before it is used that first hour you have the cost of annual inspections, IFR certifications, hangar rent, GPS or MFD software updates, charts, recurrent training, insurance, and hours needed just to remain legal, to say nothing of proficient.

Yet a bus that you like, that is in good shape, costs the price of insurance and license and storage. And even if you have a busy lifestyle there will always be a rally you can get to or some weekend getaway.

Yes tires and batteries age and need to be factored in, but if we can afford the bus in the first place it seems to me we need to have a drastic change in our personal finances or lifestyle to not be able to afford to hang onto an underutilized coach. Having said all that the proviso is that we have a relatively small sum invested, and not serious money needed for other purposes.