Brinkley RV: American Made Travel Trailers and Fifth Wheels Built in Goshen, Indiana
There is a word RV owners use for their first year with a new trailer. They call it the shakedown. What it actually means is that you handed over six figures, and now you get to spend twelve months discovering everything the factory missed.
Ask around any campground and you will hear the same list. Trim that pops loose on the second trip. Wiring nobody can trace. A slide that groans. Somewhere along the way the industry decided that was normal and moved on.
Brinkley RV was started by people who had spent their whole careers inside that industry and were tired of hearing it.
Four industry guys and a very big idea
Brinkley showed up in May of 2022, founded by Micah Staley, Nate Goldenberg, Ryan Thwaits and Ron Fenech, with Bill Fenech joining shortly after. These were not outsiders with a pitch deck. They were RV veterans who knew exactly which corners the industry cuts and where those cuts show up three years later in a customer's driveway.
They started small, in a leased 20,000 square foot building in New Paris, Indiana, and built four prototypes of a mid sized luxury fifth wheel.
Then Staley did something you almost never see from an owner. He hitched up the Model Z 3100 prototype and took it on a 30 day cross country road trip, parking at campgrounds and asking strangers what they thought. Over 250 changes came out of that trip and the prototypes that followed. Not from a focus group. From actually living in the thing.
They built the factory instead of renting one
Here is the part that matters most to us.
Elkhart County, Indiana is the RV capital of the world, and the easy move for a startup there is to lease a shed, hire a crew, and start slapping units together. Brinkley leased space for about a year, then went and bought roughly 250 acres in Goshen with room for nine buildings at 175,000 square feet each.
Plant 1 opened in early 2023 at 175,000 square feet. Plant 2 followed that summer for the Model G toy haulers. A dedicated lamination plant went up after that. Then on May 2, 2024, Plant 3 opened at more than 200,000 square feet to build Model Z AIR travel trailers. Every plant is air conditioned, which lets them keep about 95% of their materials stored indoors instead of sitting in an Indiana parking lot collecting rain and road salt.
The company went from 20 employees at launch to around 200 within eight months, and kept climbing. Co-founder Ryan Thwaits explained the staffing philosophy in a way that tells you a lot about the place:
We have hired and staffed at a heavier level than this industry is used to, but that allows us to train them in their job so they feel confident and prepared when their time is called.
Read that again. They deliberately overstaffed so people would have time to learn the work. In an industry that runs on line speed, that is close to heresy.
The bumper pulls
Brinkley builds three travel trailer lines, and they cover a lot of ground.
The Model Ix is the lightweight half ton towable, and it is genuinely clever. The 20x uses a 60 by 78 inch Murphy bed that lives as a couch during the day and drops down as a real bed at night, which is how you get residential comfort out of a compact trailer.
The Model I steps up in height and space, with a taller ceiling, a wraparound quadruple recliner and a king bed. Floorplans run from the 235 at 26 feet 11 inches and 6,987 pounds dry, up through the 290 and 294 bunk models at nearly 35 feet. Standard equipment includes R40 roof and floor insulation, 200 watts of solar wired for 440, an 18k BTU air conditioner, dovetail drawers and a Rockford Fosgate stereo with exterior speakers.
The Model Z AIR is the luxury end of the bumper pull lineup, with an automotive style exterior wrapped around a residential interior. The 285 is a rear kitchen couples coach at 33 feet 11 inches and about $87,545. The 297 runs 34 feet 11 inches with two slides and lists around $99,510.
The fifth wheels
The Model Z is the unit that put the company on the map, with something like 101 exclusive features and those frameless square Euro windows that made every other fifth wheel on the lot look a decade old overnight. Floorplans stretch from the 2680 at 29 feet 11 inches to the 3610 at 41 feet 9 inches with a bonus room.
Underneath, it is a Brinkley spec monotube chassis on tandem 7k or 8k axles, riding on 16 ply Load Range H commercial tires. Walls are laminated with high gloss gel coat fiberglass and Azdel, and the insulation package runs R40 roof, R11 walls and R40 floor with a double insulated front cap.
The Model G and Model Gx handle the toy hauler side for the folks bringing the side by side, the dirt bikes or the golf cart along.
Backing it up
Every unit goes through off road simulation testing and a pre delivery inspection covering more than 500 items before it leaves Goshen. Brinkley carries a three year limited structural warranty, and in May of 2025 they retroactively stretched the warranty on their exterior seals package from one year to three. Retroactively is the key word there. They extended coverage on trailers they had already sold and already been paid for.
They are also still privately held, which in an industry dominated by publicly traded giants means nobody is calling from Wall Street to ask why the line is not moving faster.
We have written about Airstream in Ohio and Globe Trailers in Florida, and we are glad to add Brinkley to the list. Four years in, they have nine new models for 2026 and a Goshen campus with room to keep growing.
If you are shopping for a trailer, go book a factory tour and watch your RV get built by people in Indiana. Then go look at Brinkley RV and see what all the fuss is about.
Just another great reason to buy American!