Charles Battery Chargers- No More?

I was told today by two different people that Charles was getting out of the marine battery charger business. One of the guys was a friend of mine who is a Charles distributor. The other was a friend who works for Newmar, a competitor of Charles.

Any of you guys hear anything?

Yes, it's true.
Too bad as I really appreciated it as an American made, quality product.
There was a thread on the subject recently...here you go!
Bruce

http://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s3/charles-industries-28893.html

Thanks Bruce. Don't know how I missed that thread. It wouldn't surprise me if someone buys that part of Charles and goes back into production.

As an aside, my Guest charger (made in Meriden, CT) just "quit" on me after many years of use albeit only while on the hard. But by "quit" I mean that when checking after 2 days of charging to top off my batteries for storage, it was charging at 16.5 volts both banks. A bad failure mode and I'm glad I caught it b/4 it boiled away all my batteries. A smart charger, but not smart enough to quit in a safe mode.
Guest, now owned by Marinco and made God knows where. I called them to see what they thought and surprise: "we have never heard of that b/4"
I'm quite sure there a 10 cent component that could be put on the output that would go to ground and blow it's fuse any time the voltage exceeded 15-16 to protect valuable battery banks. A company I represented at one time, a "continuous improvement" company at that, trained its telephone people to say exactly that and, for liability reasons, to keep no notes of failures. If I mentioned the product involved you would be shocked.

This is a bit philosophical, but at the end of the day, we get what we buy. Our culture has evolved to buying on price, and price alone. Given the choice between paying more for quality, and paying less for something unknown and likely crap, we buy the crap because it's cheaper. So guess what people sell? Cheap crap. Until we as consumers start voting otherwise with our dollars, the market will continue to be dominated by cheap crap. If we start insisting on quality, and buying based on quality, the market will respond.

I just picked up a three leg 80 amp Charles 5000 series charger for less than $900. Good timing. Looking forward to installing the unit. The boat came with a 40 amp charger that is still working fine. I'll use that one as a backup. I wanted 80 amps for charging the batteries while at anchor, using the 8kw Northern Lights Generator.

twistedtree said:

This is a bit philosophical, but at the end of the day, we get what we buy. Our culture has evolved to buying on price, and price alone. Given the choice between paying more for quality, and paying less for something unknown and likely crap, we buy the crap because it's cheaper. So guess what people sell? Cheap crap. Until we as consumers start voting otherwise with our dollars, the market will continue to be dominated by cheap crap. If we start insisting on quality, and buying based on quality, the market will respond.

Click to expand...

Exactly. Sadly I don't see most consumers changing their votes.

Sad. One of the most reliable marine products I know.. well.. we stil having IOTA,,

Recreational boaters don't seem to know Newmar chargers. I sell quite a few of them to commercial users and rarely do they have a problem.