Why Spartan?

[MoBlue]

Set aside the ride and handling differences, because they just are not that large, but Freightliner and any RV manufacturer using their chassis is facing a large problem with service centers. Many of the Freightliner service center are rejecting to work on motorhomes, regardless of being in warranty or not. I've grown very frustrated with Freightliner and their lack of concern over the problem. I would have preferred Spartan initially, but as stated above, Newmar stopped using Spartan on the Dutch line, coupled with the many, many Freightliner centers nation wide, I thought it would be advantageous if and when I needed service. I'm here to tell you, that's not the case.

I spent time at the Freightliner booth in Tampa last week and they told us that service centers are independent franchise's and don't have to work on RV's, but said to call the hotline and they would help finding alternatives on a case by case basis. What a giant PITA!

Wrong answer for me! I'm going Spartan next time.

[Ann n Gene]

As we all know, both Newmar and Entegra are great coaches. HOWEVER, the trump card for me (among other outstanding differences including price) Newmar took themselves out of consideration for me when they went with the freightliner chassis because of the service issues. We had OTR trucks for years and freight liner was ALWAYS a pain in the rear to get timely service. They basically bought the truck market by undercutting everyone on long term leases for millions of trucks and overwhelmed the service centers, and they have never recovered. That coupled with the fact that most of them do not want to work on RVs effectively eliminated Newmar from consideration. Spartan, on the other hand, while they do not have a ton of service centers, will bend over backward to get your problems corrected and back on the road (sounds like Entegra customer service doesn't it). Everything put together(chassis, price, quality of materials and workmanship, features included as standard, customer service etc) made it an easy choice to go with Entegra for us. All JMHO

[brobox]

One thing to add to that Gene.....I needed a Spartan part in a small town and NAPA had it. I was surprised and ask the counter person why they stocked it. His answer was their Fire Dept had Spartan chassis on there trucks so they stocked common parts for the Spartan. That was a nice bit of information.

[Cruzer]

The Tiffin RV Network forum was started by a bunch of fire fighters. They had plenty to say about Spartan reliability and service versus Freightliner. There's a reason why critical mission places, like the military and firefighting services, lean towards Spartan. Interesting that the local NAPA store had the part though.