Three brothers and a small plant downtown.

Coachmen is a recreational-vehicle brand made by Forest River, Inc., Its story starts in 1964 in Middlebury, Indiana. A history page on the Coachmen RV website, archived by the Wayback Machine in January 2012, says the first Coachmen RV products were made in a small plant in downtown Middlebury by Coachmen Industries, a company founded by three brothers: Tom, Keith and Claude Corson. English Wikipedia’s article on the company, now titled All American Group, gives the same year, town and founders.

Both sources say the first year’s output was a mix of travel trailers, a truck camper and truck caps, the covers that fit over the bed of a pickup.

The company then grew into a listed business. The archived history says Coachmen Industries became a public company in 1969, was first listed on the American Stock Exchange in 1972, and was approved for trading on the New York Stock Exchange in January 1978. English Wikipedia says the shares traded on the NYSE under the symbol COA until 2009, and that the company was later based in Elkhart, Indiana, a short drive west of Middlebury.

The archived history adds that Coachmen RV products had been on United States roads since 1964, and the brand’s site at the time described its range under five headings: motorhomes, toy haulers, fifth wheels, travel trailers and folding camping trailers. It also ran a Coachmen Owners Association for buyers, linked from the same pages.

From Coachmen Industries to a Forest River brand.

The company that founded the brand did not keep it. English Wikipedia says that after a weakening economy and rising fuel prices hit RV sales, Coachmen Industries sold all of the assets of its RV Group to Forest River, Inc., a unit of Berkshire Hathaway, in December 2008. English Wikipedia’s article on Forest River, citing RV Business in November 2008, records the same purchase of the assets of Coachmen RV. The archived Coachmen history puts it in the company’s own words: in December 2008, it says, Coachmen RV “became a proud brand of Forest River Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway Company.”

Forest River itself was founded in 1996 by Peter Liegl, according to English Wikipedia, and was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway in 2005. English Wikipedia says Forest River began by making tent campers, travel trailers, fifth wheels and park models, and moved into Class A motorhomes in 1998 by buying assets of Firan Motorhomes.

The original company went on without its RV name. English Wikipedia says Coachmen Industries renamed itself All American Group in 2009 and continued in modular housing under the All American Homes and Mod-U-Kraf names. It says All American was acquired by Innovative Building Systems in 2011, and that Innovative Building Systems filed for bankruptcy in 2016 and closed those housing businesses. The Coachmen RV brand, by then part of Forest River, was not part of that business.

Under Forest River the Coachmen name has stayed tied to its home town. The 2012 archived history says Coachmen RV, a division of Forest River, was headquartered in Middlebury, Indiana, where it made its Class A and Class C motorhomes, fifth wheels and travel trailers, and that its camping trailers were made at a plant in Centerville, Michigan. A May 2026 capture of the Coachmen RV home page again says the brand is headquartered in Middlebury as a division of Forest River.

Design and documentation.

Small travel trailers and recreational vehicles occupy a particular corner of the road-going world. Some are built in compact factories in small towns, often by families who have run the business across more than one generation; others come from much larger groups that hold many nameplates under one roof. A lightweight moulded shell and a towing hitch can look much the same from one maker to the next, so the name on the side has to do a good deal of the work.

That is why the plain questions matter here: who started the company, who owns it today, where the trailers are actually built, and how the product range has changed over time, from the first floor plan to the latest one. Owner clubs, rallies and enthusiast forums often keep that history alive as carefully as the makers do. Model names, body shapes and liveries tend to persist for decades, while the people and owners behind them change.

Each guide in this group sets out what independent, dated sources record next to what the company says about itself, and marks clearly where a fact rests only on the maker’s own account.

Model names, slogans and a home-town headquarters.

The Coachmen brand has carried many model names. The 2012 archived website listed Class A motorhomes such as the Sportscoach Pathfinder and Encounter, Class C motorhomes including the Leprechaun and Freelander, and travel trailers and fifth wheels under names such as Chaparral, Catalina and Freedom Express. Some of these names, Sportscoach and Viking among them, had appeared as separate brands of Coachmen Industries before the sale, according to English Wikipedia. A visitor’s 2026 review quoted on the Coachmen home page mentions an Apex Nano trailer, a name from the same lightweight Apex family listed in 2012.

The slogans have changed with the owners. In 2012 the site promoted an “EASY” theme, with sections called “EASY to Buy,” “EASY to Own” and “EASY to Use,” and the tagline “Life Should Be So Easy.” The May 2026 home page instead calls Coachmen the “Leader to the Great Outdoors” and organises the range into motorhomes, toy haulers, fifth wheels, travel trailers, destination trailers and tent campers. Those are the company’s own words.

The brand also shares its home town with another RV name covered in this series: Entegra Coach, the luxury motorhome brand of Jayco, builds its coaches in Middlebury too.

For a design guide, Coachmen shows how an RV name can outlive the company that created it, passing from a family-founded, stock-listed maker to a Berkshire Hathaway-owned group while keeping its home town and a long run of model names. Compare Forest River, its owner since 2008, and Entegra Coach, another brand based in Middlebury. For this guide we use lake teal, campfire amber and canvas with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Coachmen’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.