Ok, so a critical piece of equipment when you own a pop up camper is the crank handle that you use to raise and lower the top of the camper.  This crank fits into a receiver of a winch that is mounted on the tongue.  All through this trip I’ve been a little paranoid about keeping track of this crank handle.

After leaving the Carlsbad area and arriving at my sister’s in Las Cruces, I was going to do a couple of repairs that required opening the camper.  You guessed it, my crank was nowhere.  Well, it was somewhere, probably laying on the ground in or near Brantley Lake campground.   Thinking back, I remembered that I was almost ready to leave, had closed up the camper, and had the crank in my hand, when I received a text.  One that I wanted to answer right away.  I laid the crank on the tongue of the camper. Yup, that’s what I did.

It has been my habit when leaving a campsite to pull out of the site, stop on the road and walk back around the site to make sure nothing was laying under where the truck or camper had been. Unfortunately, the crank did not fall off the tongue when I did this. But of course did fall off sometime later.  Yikes, what a dummy, especially in light of the fact that I had been so aware on this trip of taking care of that crank handle.

First I called the only RV dealer in Las Cruces. He said he didn’t carry anything like that but referred me to a company in Michigan where he would order it from if someone wanted him to.  I looked up the closest Palomino dealer (my camper make), which was in Tucson. Before I called them I did a web search of “palomino camper crank”. A link to both ebay and Amazon popped up. I clicked on the ebay link and sure enough there was a picture of my crank. The source was listed as Fun RV and Boat Center, Anthony, TX.  Folks, Anthony, Texas is right on the Texas/New Mexico border 18 miles from Las Cruces. You can’t make this stuff up.

My web search had brought me back to a mere 18 miles away.  The next day I drove over to Anthony and picked up a new crank.  God looks after fools.

But the other end of this story is kinda cool too. The guy who runs the parts counter at Fun RV is a great young kid who listened patiently to my story with a smile.  He told me he gets lots of calls about cranks.  He also told me that he had started the web based parts service.  He takes classes at New Mexico State in Las Cruces and after taking a class on web marketing pitched the idea to his owner.  He talked to some of his fellow students and his instructor and began to keep track of all the things they would get calls about. He would propose to his boss investing in inventory of various products and selling them on line.  He proudly told me, “We now sell over three times as many parts on line as we do over this counter. And we continue to add more.  I’m kind of a hero around here,” he said.

Great story, great young kid.