Jayco: 40 years young

1. Jayco founder and chairman Gerry Ryan is a hard-nosed businessman but a softie at heart.

Jayco’s oldest employee, 80-year-old Dottie Davison is one of a handful that have been with the manufacturer since the start, but it hasn’t been all smooth sailing: she feared the worst after once backing a work ute into Ryan’s then pride and joy, a brand-new Chevrolet Corvette, but it appears he quickly forgave her.

2. After an inauspicious start in a ‘cow shed’ in Cranbourne, Victoria, Jayco has had four major moves and numerous factory locations before re-locating to the current 50 acre, 'Jayco-plex’ production site in Dandenong, Victoria, which is so big it has a street named after it – Jayco Drive.

3. Celebrity BBQ chef Bob Hart has a customised version of the latest Jayco model, the teardrop-styled J-Pod mini-caravan. Nicknamed the Grill Pod, it houses three Weber barbeques and cooking equipment that Hart uses when touring his cooking show around the country.

4. Prototypes of new Jayco models are subjected to up to 14,000km of torture testing at the automotive proving ground near Anglesea in Victoria to see if anything cracks or falls off. It only takes four hours of corrugation-style punishment to determine if a fitted microwave is up to the task…

5. Predicting a rise in demand for motorhomes, Jayco is in the process of doubling the size of its motorhome factory. According to Jayco’s motorhome manager Bruce Astbury, “At 6500 square metres the new facility is more than double the existing area and will enable us to double our motorhome production.”

The new factory will also produce fifth wheelers and include a research and development department “looking at new designs in all classes of motorhomes and commercial-vehicle type vehicles”.

Could that mean a new line of van-based campervans and coach-based A-class motorhomes? Stay tuned…

6. Sent on a fact finding mission to Jayco USA as a young employee at Melbourne’s Sunwagon Camper Trailers in the early 1970s, Jayco founder Gerry Ryan came back brimming with fresh ideas.

But it fell on deaf ears so Ryan decided to take the plunge and build his own campers from a farm shed in Cranbourne. The rest, they say, is history…

7. No overnight success, the first humble Jayco camper trailer was built in 1975, followed by the first pop-top  in 1979, first fixed caravan in 1983, first Outback camper  (1988), first aluminium framed van (1991), first Expanda (2002), and first motorhome (2004).

More recently, we’ve seen the top-spec Sterling (now Silverline) arrive in 2006, Toy Hauler (2008), 5th Wheeler (2013), and this year’s J-Pod. What’s next?

8. As well as sporting fashionable fluoro yellow splashes on the exterior, one of the newest features on entry-level Jayco models for 2015 are built-in USB charging points to cater for the iGadget generation.

9. Jayco boasts more than 160,000 RVs and park cabins built over the past 40 years, and quite a few of the early models remain in service today. But others are less fortunate, like the forlorn, 30-something Jayco camper discovered abandoned on a corrugated track near the Central Arnheam Road, around 400km from the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory.

The owners of the well-travelled, broken-down camper were inspired to write the following epitaph on the body: “We got our money’s worth. R.I.P beloved caravan 1980-2009”.

10. Gerry Ryan has sunk many millions of his personal wealth into supporting countless sports teams and athletes and sponsoring many a good cause over the years, but it all started with a helping hand to cash-strapped cyclist Kathy Watts prior to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

She repaid Ryan in spades by winning silver and gold medals. Gerry's response: “What a great return on investment.”

Source: RVX: The RV Experience, 2015