One of the biggest questions we receive is, "when will there be a Grand Design Owners Rally in my part of the country?"
Well if you are interested in a rally coming to your area, you could be the wagonmaster-- the one to run it. If you've been to a rally, you know how valuable the wagonmaster is. These are the people that set and plan the rally. They coordinate all the registration, schedule of events, location, etc.
"All the rallies are put on by individual owners," explains west coast wagonmaster Jeret Burnett, who recently ran the Las Vegas Owners Rally in March. "A lot of people think that Grand Design puts them on like other manufactuers do. Grand Design is just a supporter of the rallies. Every rally across the country is run by individual owners just like myself. We're not employed by Grand Design in any way. We are just individual owners who have a knack for organiation and apparently a lot of free time on our hands."
Jeret and his wife Jenn run multiple rallies but they are the only wagonmasters that currently do more than one a year. The owner rallies are in high demand and they fill up fast, selling out quickly because of the limited space and the popularity of the event. That means in order to have more rallies, more wagonmasters are needed.
"They are roughly quite a few hundred thousand owners across the nation and there are only about 20 Grand Design RV rallies across the country," Burnett says. "For instance, California only has three rallies and you know how big California is. Texas only has a few of them and it's huge. We definitely need more rallies. A lot of people don't want to travel 3,4, or 5 days or in some cases a week and a half just to get to a rally so we definitely need a lot more people out there that want to setup and organize more rallies and have a lot of fun."
And while Grand Design doesn not run the events, they do provide support. Wagonmasters are assigned a GDRV Rally Support Coordinator (depends on where you are having the rally as to who your coordinator is) who helps you with the things that GDRV would be involved in.
"That GDRV support coordinator is with you every step of the way to assist you with support from GDRV," explains Emily Stahley of Grand Design. "We currently have three sets of support coordinators who are ALL Grand Design owners as well as work for GDRV. They are there to help with things like gift items or GDRV swag, hosting a meal, having GDRV reps on site for Q/A etc. We (GDRV) take a back seat to this. We are merely there for support, this is YOUR SHOW!"
So if you are interested in in learning more about being a wagonmaster, you can email [email protected] and put it in attention to Emily Stahley. You can also reach out to wagonmasters like Jeret for advise. Burnett says that if you are someone who attends a rally, get with the wagonmaster and ask questions then too about what all it takes.
"All the wagonmasters love doing this job," Burnett says. "We don't get paid to do it. We do it for the passion of it. We'd love to help you out."
