(engine humming)
(upbeat music)
- What's up, everybody?
Good morning.
Welcome to Marathon Tuesdays with Mal.
It's Tuesday, the day after 4th of July,
we're gonna show you real quick
how patriotic do you need to get on the 4th of July?
This is what we were gonna show you.
1366, we were gonna go inside and show you
kind of the progress on what is known
affectionately around here as the eagle coach
or the American flag coach, let's go inside.
We're gonna show you the status and progress inside 1366.
This beautiful floor is coming together.
The grout lines, the grout hasn't been put together,
but a portion of the floor has been done.
But as you can see, lots of walls have gone up, cabinetry.
I'm gonna show you, I'm gonna let John actually go in front
of me here and I'll narrate what you're seeing here.
Hope everyone had a good 4th.
John's trying to walk through and show you that shower.
It's about to be tiled.
So just kind of wanted you to see where we're at with 1366.
This is one of those coaches
that's a complete custom X3.
I think you can tell by that exterior paint job,
but I thought it was fitting for the 4th of July
to show a little bit of 1366 because of that paint job.
Now, the other thing I wanna show you,
we're gonna zip down this way.
John, watch your step.
I wanna show you something that caught my eye
last week when we were doing that pre-record
and that's the flooring in 1368.
John, I'm gonna let you go up in front of me here.
Take a look at the flooring that's going on in 1368.
Every single tile is planned out.
This is a H3 Double Slide 1368
and every single tile has its own corresponding location.
And as you can see, they're all labeled.
We're gonna go down here in just a second.
I'm gonna show you the remainder of the tiles,
but this is gonna be completely done in this beautiful tile.
But look at that, every single one has a location
and what they do is they lay it all out and they label it
so that there are some tiles that are either too dark,
because it's a natural stone.
You want it to look correct
and you want everything to be cohesive, so look at that.
Driver's side A4, driver's side A5, driver's side A6.
So everything was pre-planned before bringing it
into the coach and starting to lay it out.
Isn't that really cool?
Driver's side C1, C2, C3.
And it's got the initial of who decided this goes with this.
Now, what I'll tell you is that our flooring team
and the design team work together to make sure
that the floor looks correct.
I'm gonna show you what they do when they have rejects.
So what you have here is the remainder of that floor
that's gonna go up in coach 1368.
And so like driver side A8, driver side row C on top.
So driver side C1, all these tiles have to look correct.
Now, look at this tile.
See how the fibers, and I'm gonna call 'em fibers,
I'm sure that's wrong, but see the pattern is dark,
whereas this pattern here is much lighter.
It's natural stone so it's gonna have different variance
to it throughout the stone.
What Marathon does, and this is why I'm highlighting it,
Marathon takes the time and effort
to go through each individual piece
and make sure it's gonna look good in the coach.
This piece was rejected because it's just too dark.
There's just too many elements
running through this natural stone
and so it's been rejected.
And if you look down there, this is something that John
and I were looking at last week with Santara,
who is the designer of this coach,
there's several tiles down there that were rejected
because they didn't look good
when they laid this flooring out.
I love the fact that we do that
because it shows how much time and care
and effort goes into, you know, building this coach.
You could just lay a floor out and say, "Ah, it looks good.
It's what the customer picked, perfect, perfect."
But the customer wants it to look correct throughout,
so does the Marathon team
and I think that really shows the care
and effort that it takes to lay a floor properly,
not just lay a floor, but to do it right.
We got one more thing I wanna show you.
We're gonna go all the way across the production floor.
I'm gonna show you all the drawers
that are set out for coach 1361.
1361 is that beautiful, I'm gonna call it electric blue,
but it's 1361 Double Slide X3.
We're gonna go all the way through here, John.
This is something I saw this morning
that really stood out as far as,
good morning, how was your 4th?
- [Woman] It was great.
- Awesome.
Take a look down here.
These drawers are down here, ready to be installed
in the cabinetry and what we're kind of in an area
right here where it's kind of like a holding area
for drawers and inserts and everything.
Look at how beautiful this is.
1361 rear wardrobe, 9 11/16.
These drawers come in,
we line them, look at this beautiful lining in here.
What that is is that's, you've seen that before,
but it's got a little bit of a sheen to it.
It's got some texture, logo embossed in there.
Each drawer has that and this is a dovetail bamboo.
These are outsourced.
We do not build these drawers in-house.
And then we bring them in here and we line them.
But I wanted you to see all of these beautiful drawers
together, getting ready for 1361,
and across from John, take a look at these.
Doors and drawers storage.
Here is an alternative to what we just saw.
What you saw over there was kind of a darker color.
Look at this light color.
Now in the lighter color, you get to see more of the detail.
Pardon the dust here on the production floor,
but you get to see a lot more of the detail.
Look at this beautiful bamboo, the detail of our drawers.
I know I've shown this before many times
because it's something I truly love
about our interior of our cabinetry.
We do such a good job at sourcing.
Gosh, this is a beautiful piece.
What is this?
1366, which is the coach we were just in,
the American Eagle coach.
This is the sink lid holder.
So guys, this goes underneath the galley
and it's gonna fit like this in there.
You like that sound effect?
And basically it's the sleeves for the corian top
that cover the sink.
When you're not using those covers,
when you need to use the sink,
you need to have proper storage of those corian covers.
But look at this beautiful piece.
Custom made for 1366.
It's fantastic.
I just, I love showing this stuff off because
Marathon doesn't cut corners.
I think you see that on that flooring
that we were just looking at at 1368.
You see that in how we source these drawers.
We don't just bring them in and have they're, you know,
they're not lined on the bottom.
They are lined, they are scribed just so well, look at this.
Here's 1361's pantry.
I love that choice.
In person it shows up so much better, I would assume,
but it's got a great texture to it.
Yeah, it's just a well-built piece
and it leads right into what I always say,
the chassis is designed to go for decades
and the house should do the same.
Abigail, do we have any questions?
I really appreciate everybody hanging out with us
on a Tuesday, you know, because you know,
if you can't do it on Monday, why not Tuesday?
What's going on this morning?
- [Abigail] We do have a question that I know
that we've answered before, "From start to finish,
how long does it take to build a Marathon?"
- Yeah, that's a good question.
It all depends on the coach.
I'm just gonna say approximately four to five months.
Can that go longer?
Yes, it can go longer.
Why does it go longer?
Because we build custom coaches.
Depending on the coach.
You know, a designer choice is kind of what we call
our floor models, but a designer choice is a coach
that was completely designed from an interior
and exterior and engineering standpoint,
completely done inside by the Marathon staff.
That's a designer choice.
Then there is a hybrid.
A hybrid is right between a designer choice
and a custom.
That's where the customers can pick out their fabrics,
their textiles, flooring, ceiling,
work with Pete and Sara on the exterior, stuff like that.
And at the other end of the spectrum is the custom coach.
The custom coach is where someone comes in
and they do everything that they would do in a hybrid,
picking everything out from the colors and everything,
but also they might have a few things that they
want that are above and beyond a hybrid,
like custom features, a little bit of changes here and there
to the floor plan.
Marathon has a lot of floor plans,
but sometimes people say, "Oh, I'd like a desk here
or I'd like this or that."
When you make a change from the floor plan,
that's a complete custom, or that is a custom coach.
So all of them are custom.
No two coaches have ever been built alike.
No two coaches look alike
in our 30 whatever years of existence.
So they're all custom coaches, but you have
the custom coaches for each individual customer.
I hope that answers your question in the long version.
This is gonna be a cool coach right here.
If you can see the backside of this one.
Isn't that cool?
Nice.
All right, oh, 1387, let's show it from a long shot, John.
Excuse me, not 1387, 1287, you guys.
1287 is right behind me.
You see that quad slide back there
in that kind of a gray and cream and black over there?
That's a beautiful quad slide
that just came to us on consignment
so that's gonna be up on the website here momentarily,
if not already.
I know Abigail was working on that
over the end of last week.
So other than that, everybody,
I think we got one more question
and then we're gonna get up outta here.
As you can see, it's raining at the mothership
a little bit this morning.
It's cleaning all the firework mess
off everyone's driveways, right?
- [Abigail] We have a question from Emory Nelson.
Says, "Hello, from Texas.
Do the coaches come with the cruise control
that will slow as you approach another vehicle?"
- Yeah, so there's a great question.
Who was that from?
- [Abigail] Emory Nelson.
Oh, and we have a question after that too.
- Yeah, a very good question.
The question is about,
the question is about the cruise control.
It's called adaptive cruise control
and like you would find in a modern day car,
yes, these coaches, the Prevost chassis
has some amazing safety features.
One of the top features is the adaptive cruise control.
It not only tells you when the coach needs to stop,
but it warns you, hey, you're getting close.
It's gonna put on the brakes for you.
It's literally going to stop the coach,
put on the brakes for you.
It's got a use of sensors, it's got a use of cameras,
and of course, all of the new coaches over the last year
like these guys right here have what's called LDW,
or lane departure warning.
Lane departure warning, very similar to also cars
that are manufactured over the last several years.
To work with that adaptive cruise control,
that lane departure warning lets you know
with an indicator on the dash, that flashes from the dash
up onto the windshield, it shows you that you are,
you're getting too close or you're straying from your lane
and you need to get back in
and it's a great safety feature.
There is nothing safer on the road than the Prevost chassis.
And that's another reason why a Marathon is a good choice.
One more?
- [Abigail] Yeah, our friend, Ron DeMario.
- Sure.
- [Abigail] Yeah, he was talking about how he saw a reveal
from the Winnebago company about their first electric RV.
Do you think Marathon will ever do a full electric
in the future?
I think that's kind of dependent on Prevost.
- Yeah, Ron, you're asking an interesting question
that is definitely valid.
A fully electric Prevost is up to Prevost.
I think that, you know, our customers, our clientele,
they want a certain amount of reliability at this point.
They want a certain amount of,
I think that the diesel-powered Volvo engine,
and keep in mind everybody, Volvo Truck is a company,
bought Prevost, I think it's been 12, 13 years.
Don't quote me on that,
but there's the Volvo engine right there behind me.
Are we gonna go fully electric?
I tell you what, from a house standpoint, yes,
I would say that we're moving towards, you know,
we have coaches already on the production floor,
one of them is behind me,
that the house is electric with lithium ion batteries,
but as far as an electric coach,
that would be a Prevost thing.
We follow Prevost's lead when it comes to,
you know, building on their chassis,
so interesting question.
That about it?
- [Woman] Besides the fact that someone said that the coach
behind you, the black prince, looks beautiful,
this is Cynthia, of course.
- Yeah, that is a beautiful coach.
Let's walk out this way, John,
and we can see the front end of that
as we get outta here for Tuesday.
Thank you everybody for hanging out with me.
Apologies again for that 4th of July show.
I went live from my house, just to let you know
that our 4th of July show, but yeah,
that beautiful coach behind us, that is 1358, love it.
Anyway, everybody, take care.
Be yourself and do good things.
If you're looking to get into a Marathon,
it's Mal W., MalW@MarathonCoach.com.
Inventory is constantly changing, so let's get into it,
let's do it and we'll see you next Monday,
not Tuesday, next Monday on Marathon Mondays.
Thanks for supporting the show and for supporting Marathon.
It's raining, I'm out.
(motor humming)