“It’s like a family, you buy a coach and they stand behind you.” – Rick Raffanti 

Rick Raffanti is an expert on the RV lifestyle and has been a loyal customer of Beaver Coach Sales & Service for decades. We were lucky enough to sit down with him upon his last visit to the office and hear about his history with RVing and all of the great doorways it has opened for him throughout the years. Thank you very much, Rick, for sitting down with us! We can’t wait to see you next time.  

Transcript:

“My name is Rick Raffanti. I’m a Beaver Coach Sales customer. I live in, uh, actually now in the Sacramento area, but for a long time, for 30 years, I lived in Redding area, and this is the fifth coach that I’ve owned in that 25 years. RV [to me] and to my wife (who’ve been married 53 years) has just opened up so many avenues for exploring the United States, doing family things together, and going family places together. I now have uh, I have three children and ten grandchildren, and we’ve traveled, uh, from all over the United States with them and even by ourselves, um doing wonderful things in an RV and seeing this gorgeous, wonderful country from a hands-on perspective. I said 25 years; that’s how long we’ve owned a motor home. Before that, I owned trailers, and even when I moved to a job once, my wife and I and two children (and now I have three but two children at the time) lived in a small trailer. So we’re very familiar with RVing or trailers, been around a lot. Been seeing a lot of them, uh, and lived in, you know, in different circumstances from you know. Canada to even into Mexico to all over the United States. I, um, purchased my first RV motor coach, which I had a good friend of mine that said, “Come on, you should go RV with the motor coach!” and he talked me into it, and so I ended up coming home with this motor coach, and it had two slides out, and he goes, “Holy cow!” you know and so for about the next three years. Only, I uh, should we say enjoyed this coach and we RV together a lot, and we had similar families and similar kids you know, and it was just a great experience. And it really, a fairly early age my life (I’m gonna talk about 25 years ago or more) it really gave me a sense of family and togetherness and adventures. 

Only a little bit later, I was approached with what they call a Beaver Marquee. That Beaver Marquee was actually brand new and it was one of the last Beaver Marquees that was made right here. And in fact they made most of it here, until he took it down to, you know, they’d just been bought out by another company. I met one of the owners of the original sales people here in and he says, “For goodness sakes Rick,” he says “we made them there,” he says, “I’m glad you bought a Beaver.” he says, “bring it back to us and make it make it look exactly new like it should be.” Because I said, “oh, it has some scratches.” So i got a great deal on it. He says, “We can fix all so that it’s a brand new, the factory will stand behind it, I know because I’m there.” And so that was a beautiful relationship started with my Beaver Marquee that I had for the next 10 or 11 years. I got to know a lot of the old people. I’d bring it in and go, “Oh yeah, I worked on that before it was even completed.” And the people that are here, you know, I got to know them there and some of them are still here 20 years later. You know, and so it’s really great to to get to know these people and know who works on your coach, who took care of your coach and that really, from the salesman’s on down, you know, you develop a relationship. You become part of a family. To me that turned out over the years to be very important. So after about 10 years there was a lot of updates and I wanted to update, and of course they didn’t make Beavers anymore. 

Bought my first Cornerstone, Entegra Cornerstone from these people that have taken care of me so much. How do I say? I’m so excited that I bought it from these people. I’ve known Travis, I’ve known Ty the owner, the service manager, you know they’ve been all so good to them. Some of them i have to admit passed on in, the way of like Ken and other people that have passed on, but I still know Ron Estes that way back when. It’s like a family, you buy a coach and they stand behind you. And you know, they stand behind um, your coach. I guess that’s what i want to really kind of get across is that you know you just don’t buy them and say “Bye see you later!” I don’t care whether it’s a sales manager or the owner or whoever, they’re there with you and, you know what you’re buying. I’m not going to talk prices or anything like that I think they gave me…( I know because I checked them out) they gave great prices great deals, as good as I can get it anywhere. In Timbuktu, in Texas or wherever. And  the service that they give to you after the sale and even during the sale. Because I’ve been through it twice now, I just bought, you know, as you know, a new Cornerstone. My wife and I said, “Hey, we love it so much we want to go around one more time if we can.” You know, and our kids are spreading out so now, you know, and I’m Italian, so we’re family, you know our later years in life we’re going to use our motor home not only to still see and go back and see the country but to go obviously, I’ve got 10 grandchildren, I’ve gotta you know, Papo’s gotta be with them and Bama, (that’s my wife). We gotta get our kid fix, our grandkid fix. So this motorhome is still gonna be a huge part, it’s going to be our home on wheels that we can go visit, and my wife and I love when we motor home. 

We’ve learned that over the years, whether it be with the Beaver, the next Cornerstone, or this Cornerstone, we do things and we’ve done such wonderful things with families and stuff. Like for instance we, one uh, you know for about a month and a half or two we followed our, we went to 13 different civil war battlefields! One time we went to nine national parks! You know, and back to a lot of them that we want, whether it be  Escalante to Yellowstone to uh, you know, Natural Bridges to Moab, all those. I love the fly fish, and so naturally several times we’ve taken two months and gone through Idaho, Montana, you know, and I have some great friends up in Idaho. I go up there and fish with them. Even one time, the whole family in the motor home, there was almost eight of us at one time, and then some others flew in, but there was eight and my wife and I, we went to like Red Rock Ranch. I guess I want to also say that, don’t be afraid of a big coach. Um, I’ve driven probably a 45-footer for about 250,000 – 300,000 at least miles, probably more if I really think about it. Nowadays they drive so well, you know. I’ve used it to take my mother-in-law, we ended up taking her back to see one of her sisters. I had them all in the coach and, you know, it was a wonderful trip, even though they all lived in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. I drove 14 hours, 850 miles until we could stop in in Ewing, Nebraska. I don’t recommend driving a motorhome that far; enjoy yourself. Two or three 500 miles max. 

I think two things. Number one, they have a great variety of product here, number one. Number two is I think they can help you select the product that would be best suited for you. Obviously, I believe in their products but I believe in their honesty, their integrity, and the way they treat people. At least they treated me, and i know other people because I have other friends that have bought here that uh they’re family. One my Cornerstone, I’ll tell you, that even the first Cornerstone, I got a lot of coach for the the price and the quality of it, okay, and I’m really happy with it. You know, and I can honestly say that because i’ve lived in one for a good number of years, and I’ve listened. A beautiful coach called the Beaver Marquee which they don’t make anymore, um and uh, it’s an honest it’s a true coach you know, um and you know my wife and I love it.

 Um Beaver Coach Sales uh, you know my message to them is stay on track, stay golden, keep treating us as a part of the family. Don’t abandon us, families don’t abandon families.”