Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“Seaflo Marine executives were excited. They make component parts for boats, agricultural machinery, and recreational vehicles, and in 2019, they signed an exclusive five-year contract with one of the two biggest component distributors for RVs, Patrick Industries, for 500,000 units of a Seaflo plumbing part. It was a foot in the door with Patrick, a company with the scale and reach to put its products into many more RVs. Patrick even made an initial order of 30,000 units on day one. Five years later, by the end of the contract, however, Patrick had only made a partial order of 10,000 more units. It was a loss for Seaflo of about $2 million, and they went to court over the breach of contract. That’s when they learned through discovery that, even before Seaflo and Patrick had signed the agreement, a Patrick subsidiary named LaSalle Bristol was completing work on the exact same plumbing part.” (10/07/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/10/07/monopoly-on-the-open-road-patrick-industries-rv/