Thursday, April 25, 2024
Almost 50 years ago, Wayne Bennett made extra money by repairing campers at the house on six acres where he and his wife Fae were raising their two kids.
At the time, Wayne worked at the soil conservation office in Fort Worth. He would pick up trailer parts during his lunch hour and spend weekends repairing RVs.
After a while, Wayne’s partner in the side business moved on. Wayne kept going, with help from Fae. They operated the business out of their garage.
The year was 1972.
Today, almost a half century later, Bennett’s Camping Center and RV Ranch is a thriving full-service RV dealership specializing in rentals, sales, service, parts and accessories. The business is on a complex that spans 12 acres and surrounds the brick house where the family-run business had its start. The house has been remodeled and now serves as a clubhouse for the RV park.
Wayne and Fae’s now-grown children are part of the enterprise, which is bustling despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Daughter Stacy Rist and her husband Jim have been helping for years. Son Greg lived in Colorado for two decades and was a disc jockey there, but moved back to Granbury in the summer of 2017. He helps with the family business, too.
“That’s what I’m most proud of; the whole family, even my son, are here now,” said Wayne, 81. Fae is 77.
Wayne and Fae look back with amusement at the time their shortsighted son, just 12 at the time, “sold” his share of the business to his sister for the price of a soft drink.
PANDEMIC SPIKE
Bennett’s never had to close when the coronavirus hit because it was classified as an essential business. Still, though, “business just pretty well stopped,” Wayne said.
It stopped, that is, until the government relief checks hit.
“Soon as they got their checks, they started coming out,” Wayne said.
Nationwide, the RV industry has exploded as the country seeks to come back to life, but carefully. Families and couples are opting to see America this summer from the safety of an RV.
According to the RV Industry Association, sales in some areas have skyrocketed 170%, and there are more firsttime renters.
Stacy believes that part of the upsurge has to do with governors reopening state parks. Not only are there more RV rentals, but people are renting them for longer periods, she said.
Bennett’s trailers are not stocked with pots and pans, dishes or bedding.
“But that means they’re easier for us to clean and disinfect, and we are disinfecting in between each renter,” Stacy said. “I think people feel more comfortable with that than going to a hotel room where you’re not taking your own bedding.”
DECADES IN THE MAKING
Stacy remembers that when her parents moved the family “out of the city” to Granbury, Highway 377 was two lanes. She was three, and her brother was 1. She remembers walking across the highway with her mother because that’s where the family’s mailbox was.
Instead of baking cookies in the kitchen like other women of her generation, Fae busied herself in the garage helping her husband with his side job.
‘‘79 is when it really started growing,” Fae recalled. That’s when the business was moved from the family’s garage into a 12-by-36 tin building.
Wayne said that Fae grew the business to such an extent that he was able to quit his soil conservation job in 1983 instead of staying there long enough to retire.
“I had no idea this would happen,” he said of the company’s success.
Bennett’s has a rental fleet of eight campers in various sizes. Details can be viewed at bennettsrv.com. The rentals are “completely booked up” for the 4th of July weekend, Stacy said.
People sometimes rent trailers with no intention of leaving Hood County.
Five of the units that have been rented for the July 4th weekend are being used by one family gathering for a wedding, Stacy said.
And every year at Thanksgiving, “75% of the fleet goes out as extra bedrooms for guests,” she said.
The Bennett’s RV park currently has 44 sites, 32 of them occupied by people who live there full-time.
“Some have been here eight or nine years, probably,” Wayne said of the fulltimers.
The city recently approved expansion that will allow the Bennetts to add 29 camp sites.
The complex has a bath house with a laundry room, storage sheds, and a playground for those camping with little ones.
Counting family, Bennett’s now has “15 or 16 employees,” Wayne said. Two employees who have health issues took off when the pandemic began and have not yet returned.
Wayne needs them back. Business is booming, and there is a backlog of about 30 RVs waiting to be serviced.
FAMILY TIME
Some have said that there have been blessings in the pandemic, and one of them is that families are spending more time together.
While some are discovering for the first time the kind of togetherness that an RV brings, the Bennetts became pros at dealing with close quarters decades ago.
“Every summer we went on a vacation, and 9 times out of 10 it was in an RV of some sort,” said Stacy, a 1986 graduate of Granbury High School.
With her parents and brother, Stacy experienced Colorado (Estes Park, Colorado Springs, Pikes Peak, Mesa Verde National Park), the Grand Canyon, Anaheim, California (Disneyland), San Francisco, Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Reno, Nevada and other locales, all in a “pop-up” trailer.
The family has spent decades helping others enjoy the same type of experience. Stacy said she has asked her parents if they might like to retire.
“They said, ‘Absolutely not,’” Stacy said. “They would not have any part of staying home.”
