In his autobiography The Wheel and I, Fleetwood Enterprises founder John C. Crean explains his lifelong befuddlement with corporate America. “It is always amazing to me,” said Crean, “to see the ways businesses find to throw money away.” A charismatic visionary and pioneer of the RV Industry, Crean believed there was little to be learned about how a given RV might fare in the marketplace by looking at charts and graphs in a boardroom. “Instead of hiring consulting companies and commissioning endless studies,” urged Crean, “why not just get out there in the world and see what works?”
Being out in the world RVing was one of Crean’s favorite pastimes. The open road was his personal product study, and sitting around a campfire with fellow RVers was his idea of a focus group. “I got most of my ideas for our products by talking to people who own Fleetwoods,” Crean asserted, “and experience the product first hand.” It is safe to say that the trips Crean and his wife, Donna, took to experience the company’s RVs over the course of more than a half century had an enormous impact on both Fleetwood’s success as well as that of the entire RV industry. Yet perhaps no journey was more significant than the one that led to Fleetwood’s most influential product in its storied history – the Bounder motorhome.
It was winter 1984, when on a trip to Michigan to visit his daughter, the plumbing froze in Crean’s motorhome, rendering their sinks and toilets useless. “That was just an accepted fact about motorhomes then,” confessed Crean, “but after you’ve experienced it a few times, you start to think that maybe it isn’t so acceptable.” Upon returning home, Crean went to work designing and building an RV with an enclosed basement in which water tanks and pipes were insulated and heated. At the time, Fleetwood had a strong motorhome line-up, which was anchored by the Pace Arrow, Tioga, Southwind and Jamboree models. Not wanting to disrupt production at Fleetwood’s main plant in Riverside, California, Crean set up shop in Costa Mesa and went to work developing his latest idea.
“I have no patience for engineers who will only look at something on paper or on a computer screen just so they can tell you why it won’t work,” lamented Crean. “My thing is to just do it.” In the spring of 1985, locked away by himself, Crean designed and built a prototype motorhome that would soon turn the industry’s conventional wisdom-of-the-day on its ear. To deliver on his original intention of enclosing the water system, Crean raised the height of the motorhome’s floor. This seemingly simple design change radically altered the ways RVs were made for decades to come.
Crean also discovered that his raised floor design allowed for a tremendous amount of additional storage space, an amenity customers commonly requested. The raised floor also solved a problem that plagued most RVers. Traditionally, motorhomes had a step-down of 10 inches or more from the cockpit to the rest of the coach. This meant that if you weren’t sitting in the driver or passenger seat, you couldn’t see out the windshield, and if you were, you had a limited view. Crean’s raised floor eliminated this disadvantage and enabled RVers to see the country as they traveled, whether they were seated in the galley or the cockpit.
Throughout his entire career, Crean held true to his belief that an RV was a house first and a vehicle second. Comfortable as he usually was when the rest of the RV industry thought he was crazy, Crean set about outfitting his prototype with touches that made it feel like a residential home. The most influential of these touches was the decision to include two television sets, one up front and one in the bedroom, and include a switching unit so you could watch an antenna feed on one set and a VCR tape on the other.
Crean’s instincts as both a product developer and entrepreneur led him to two logical conclusions about his completed prototype. It was functional in a way no RV ever was and it was ugly. Really ugly. So in the summer of 1985, Crean and a group of Fleetwood associates took the prototype on a 2,000 mile trip visiting about 15 RV dealers in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Sacramento and down through the San Joaquin Valley. Crean recalls his experience with glee: “It was funny watching the dealers’ reactions,” he said. “They’d see this four-wheel atrocity pull up with me at the wheel and start sweating over what they were supposed to say to me.”
Despite their initial reactions, Crean was certain that his coach’s functionality would win over dealers, and he was right. “We’d take dealers on a walk around the outside of the thing,” recalled Crean, “and before we’d make the circuit they’d be sold.” Dealers marveled at the innovations that the prototype offered and momentarily forgot about its looks. The success of the initial road trip was all Crean needed to roll the dice and put the new unit into production. The prototype’s design was modified with improvements including a stretch chassis, and by the fall of 1985, it was ready to be introduced.
While meeting with his marketing team, Crean suggested the new unit be called the Bounder after a journalist friend had suggested the name much to Crean’s liking. The team looked uneasy until one of them spoke up and said they had looked the word up in the dictionary and discovered that it meant ‘unsavory character.’ Realizing he needed to paint the picture for his short-sighted team, Crean grabbed a napkin and drew a picture of a jumping kangaroo “bounding from one place to another.” The marketing department breathed a sigh of relief.
The original 1985 Bounder
Soon after, around a campfire in Breezewood, PA, a national club for Bounder owners was formed and named “Bounders United”. Today, the Bounder is still a popular motorhome. While its style and features have evolved through the years, the Bounder has held true to its core values. It remains an RVer’s motorhome, one that forgoes frilly extras in favor of function and purpose. There are now two national Bounder clubs (Bounders of America being the other) and dozens of regional chapters consisting of thousands of RVers who share a passion for RVing and a love for the Fleetwood Bounder.
Crean retired from Fleetwood in 1998 after serving as the company’s chairman for 47 years. At the time of his death in 2007 at the age of 81, many industry insiders proclaimed that the Bounder was Crean’s greatest legacy and one that he would be remembered by forever. They recalled sales records and soaring stock prices as the key indicators that the Bounder motorhome was changing the industry. Those who worked on the production line alongside its creator might have different reasons as to why the coach has become an icon, as might the thousands of adventurous RVers who have “bounded” across America in their Bounder motorhomes. Chances are John Crean would agree with the builders and the RVers. After all, you can’t learn much about an RV in a boardroom.
Bounding Down Memory Lane
Many People Recall Those Beginning Days
“I was the production manager at the plant in Riverside when we built the first Bounder. One of John’s favorite philosophies was ‘Don’t be afraid to use the dumpster,’ and he really showed us how to use it! John wasn’t afraid to throw anything out and start new. The other thing he used to say was ‘If you have a choice between making something pretty or functional, you need to make it functional first. You can always make it pretty later, but it’s a lot harder to make it functional after its pretty.’ That’s kind of a different way of looking at things, but that’s what we did with the Bounder. There have been a lot of changes through the years, but we’ve tried not to change the functionality of the Bounder. John always asked ‘How can we make the Bounder more functional?’ It was already good, but we continually worked to make it better.”
Stan Sassmann
Fleetwood Product Development Manager (1984-present)
“The people you meet and get to know in Bounder clubs become your family, and they’re really great. We’re all in the club because we own a Bounder. But we stay in the club because we enjoy each other so much. The Bounder is the type of coach that attracts a certain type of person. It was originally designed to be a functional coach that didn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but everything on it had a purpose. It worked. So, naturally, it attracted a lot of RVers who wanted a coach that worked. Every now and then a club member will buy another coach. They can still be in our club, but they’re called an S.O.B. We will say ‘Oh that’s so and so over there. He’s a great guy, but he’s an S.O.B.’ It means he’s driving ‘Some Other Brand.’”
Larry Hughes
Bounders of America Former President (2002-2004)
“We’d heard about this new coach that John Crean had personally built that was going to rock the RV marketplace. So we’re at a show early one morning and we’re all excited to see it. A horn honked and we all turn to look and this orange box-thing was coming towards us. We all thought ‘Oh no, please don’t let that be it.’ It got closer and sure enough, pulled right into our display. It was the Bounder. It wasn’t pretty. Don Wallace [Lazydays founder] and all of the sales staff at Lazydays thought the old man had lost his mind. But we bought about five units anyway. Our customers went wild. They loved the basement. They loved the two TVs. They loved that the Bounder worked. It worked and boy did it sell.”
Dana Philp
Lazydays Sales Consultant (1984-present)
The History of the Fleetwood Bounder
| 1925 | John C. Crean, is born on the 4th of July in Bowdon, North Dakota. |
| 1950 | Crean founds Fleetwood in his garage in Compton, CA. |
| 1951 | Crean establishes Fleetwood’s first manufacturing plant in Anaheim, CA. |
| 1968 | Fleetwood becomes a publicly traded company. |
| 1985 | The Bounder motorhome hits the market as the first RV in history to offer basement storage and sales are immediate. |
| 1987 | Bounders United, the first club for Bounder owners, forms around a campfire in Breezewood, Pennsylvania. |
| 1992 | The Bounder Diesel motorhome is launched. |
| 1995 | The first slide-out appears on the Bounder motorhome. |
| 2007 | At 81, John C. Crean passes away at his home in Newport Beach, CA. |
| 2008 | Crean’s beloved Bounder motorhome remains Fleetwood’s #1 selling RV since its inception. |
| 2009 | This is not your father’s Bounder. Though he might recognize a few things, like the supreme  the 2009 Bounder |