Forest River Bus, LLC told federal safety regulators on October 23, 2026, that the steering caster bushing bolt on 490 of its buses may have been improperly tightened. A bolt that works loose can leave a driver without the ability to steer, which raises the risk of a crash. Dealers will inspect each bus and tighten the bolt as needed, free of charge.
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Owner letters are expected to be mailed on December 21, 2026. Neither the fire-risk-when-parked flag nor the do-not-drive flag is set in the filing, so the record does not order the buses off the road while the inspections are scheduled.
The caster bushing bolt in NHTSA’s record
The filing appears as campaign 26V705000 in the federal recall feed on data.transportation.gov, under the subject “Steering Caster Bushing Bolt May Be Improperly Tightened” and the steering component heading. Forest River Bus numbers it 05-2110 internally. The defect summary says the steering caster bushing may have been improperly tightened, allowing the bolt to come loose, and the consequence line adds that a loose caster bolt can cause a loss of steering ability and increase crash risk.
The same entry reports 490 potentially affected vehicles, described only as “certain transit buses.” The text of the record reviewed does not carry a model-year range or a list of models, so how the 490 divide among Forest River Bus’s brands is not public in that entry. Operators of church, hotel and senior-center shuttles should expect that detail to arrive with the owner letters or on NHTSA’s page for the campaign.
The remedy is notable for what it leaves out. Dealers will “inspect and properly tighten the bolt as necessary,” the record says, which implies that a given bus may already be correct and need only a check, and it lists no replacement part. That makes the fix quick for a shop with a torque wrench and a lift, yet it also means the recall depends on operators bringing each vehicle in. A shuttle that runs daily for a congregation or a hotel may sit on a to-do list for weeks after the December letter lands.
Caster geometry and why a loose bolt matters
Caster describes the tilt of a wheel’s steering axis seen from the side. According to the reference entry on caster angle, the geometry places the wheel behind the steering axis, like the wheel of a shopping cart, so that it tends to return to straight ahead, which steadies the vehicle and makes it easier to hold a line. Incorrect caster forces a driver to keep correcting the wheel, even on a straight road.
The bushing in this recall is one of the pieces that holds that geometry in place, and a bolt that has loosened lets the setting drift. The filing does not describe the failure in engineering terms beyond the loss-of-steering consequence, and it does not say whether any bus has lost steering on the road. A reader should treat the mechanism above as general background on why the part matters and not as a description of how this particular bolt fails.
Forest River’s bus group and its 2026 filings
Forest River Bus is part of the Elkhart, Indiana, recreational vehicle and bus maker Forest River Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway company. It grew in May 2020 when it bought the shuttle bus business of REV Group of Milwaukee, which Bus and Motorcoach News reported included ElDorado National-Kansas, Champion Bus, Federal Coach, World Trans, Krystal and Goshen. Forest River president David Wright said at the time that both companies had a reputation for integrity, excellence and innovation and that the added brands strengthened Forest River’s ability to serve customers.
A tally of the company’s 2026 campaigns at VehicleSafetyRecalls.com lists four earlier ones totaling 576 vehicles: a wheelchair restraint retractor that may not lock on 277 vehicles in May, body panel joints that were incorrectly attached on 213 and 19 vehicles in January, and a modified floor plan that may exceed axle ratings on 67. The steering bolt recall is therefore at least the fifth for Forest River Bus this year, and it is the first on that list to touch steering.
A parallel from the same corporate family
Tightening has been the issue elsewhere in the group. In May 2026, Forest River Inc. filed recall 26V336 for 200 trailers whose suspension shock bolts, supplied by Lippert, may have been improperly torqued during installation. That filing said a bolt head could fracture while the vehicle was moving, and it replaced the bolts with Grade 8 versions at no cost. It is a different business unit, a different part and a different supplier, and no document reviewed connects the two campaigns.
For fleets that own the buses, the next step is to read the owner letter when it arrives in late December, or call Forest River Bus’s customer service at 1-800-348-7440 for a date. The VIN search on NHTSA’s recall site will show whether a given bus is in the campaign. What remains unanswered is the number of buses with a bolt that actually came loose, a figure the record leaves out.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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