When Fleetwood Enterprises needed room to expand its Anaheim factory 46 years ago, its founder looked east, where there was ample land and labor. John Crean, a pioneer in the recreational vehicle industry, didn't want a fancy headquarters, "so Riverside suited them fine," his son, Andrew, said. "It was strictly business." That business thrived, spending more than two decades on the Fortune 500 list of largest U.S. businesses. Fleetwood's presence in Riverside spawned a West Coast hub for other RV and manufactured housing suppliers and builders.
But a failed expansion starting in the 1990s buried the company in debt that it couldn't overcome. Today, a few executives remain to sell off the last vestiges of the RV and housing empire and finalize the company's bankruptcy by October. Factories scattered around the country have been shuttered or sold. The RV and housing divisions have been split and have new owners in different parts of the country. Fleetwood Enterprises, the Riverside-based company founded by John Crean and already all but gone, is about to dissolve completely when its bankruptcy becomes final in the next few months.
The company may not have been the first RV manufacturer in Southern California, "but they overshadowed all that came before," said Allen R. Hesselbart, historian at the RV and Manufactured Housing Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Ind. The milestones were many -- selling $1 billion worth of RVs in 1989 and $1 billion of manufactured homes in 1994. The company broke into the Fortune 500 in 1973 -- 230th at its height -and stayed on the list for nearly three decades. "They filled the shoes as the largest manufacturer for both industries," carrying the RV and manufactured housing businesses for at least 25 years into the 1980s, Hesselbart said. Continued Page 2
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