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Camp Trucking, a delivery service for campers’ bags, shut down abruptly, leaving families with few options and causing general havoc.
Paige Axel was working when an unwelcome email arrived. It was from Tyler Hill Camp, where her 14-year-old son, Sawyer, has been a camper for the last seven years. The news was grim: Camp Trucking, the transportation company that had shepherded two duffel bags’ worth of Sawyer’s belongings to camp and back again, had closed its doors less than two weeks before camp was set to end.
Ms. Axel was flummoxed. She had received a message from Camp Trucking on July 26 confirming the date her son’s bag would return home, about 10 days after he did in early August. Now the company was defunct?
Soon, Ms. Axel’s phone began blowing up with texts from panicked parents, many of whom had planned post-camp vacations and had paid about $200 round trip per bag for door-to-door service — on top of camp costs, which can run more than $15,000 for seven weeks.
Lauren Goldberg, a middle school principal in Chappaqua, N.Y., who has two sons at Camp Killooleet in Hancock, Vt., was angry. “I know that during Covid scary things happened and everyone’s struggling with staffing, but it’s crazy to not be able to keep your business open to get the bags home,” she said.
Moms took to private group chats to vent their frustration and bandy about conspiracy theories. They tried to reach the company, which has its headquarters in Avon, Colo., but no one answered.
Camp directors were equally blindsided. Sam Aboudara had been strolling around Camp Cedar Lake with members of the Secret Service and the White House advance team when he received the information. The camp was preparing for a visit from Doug Emhoff, America’s second gentleman and a camp Nah-Jee-Wah alum (he was voted most athletic at age 13).
“It is with profound disappointment that I must acknowledge our inability to fulfill our August responsibilities,” Daniel Maguire, Camp Trucking’s managing director, wrote on company letterhead. He blamed “the enduring financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic,” adding that he had used an inheritance and local lines of credit and remortgaged his home to get July payroll done. But nothing sufficed.
After apologizing for the inconvenience, Mr. Maguire concluded: “When the wound of this news has healed, I will cherish the memories I have.”
Mr. Aboudara, the chief operating officer of NJY Camps, a network of Jewish sleepaway camps in Pennsylvania, was frustrated. “We weren’t majorly freaking out — we’ve got a great team of professionals, and it was an operational issue,” he said. But it was an unnecessary nuisance.
The Great Bag Debacle has upended the operations of hundreds of summer camps and the lives of parents from the Poconos to Maine. Camp Trucking, which had been in business since 1974, was the exclusive provider for nearly a hundred camps. An average camper, staying three to four weeks, arrives with two duffels big enough to accommodate a six-foot human, Mr. Aboudara said.
“It obviously was a huge shock,” said Gary Glaser, the owner and director of Camp Nock-A-Mixon, in Kintnersville, Pa., which serves about 500 campers and 1,000 duffel bags each summer. “I’m really disappointed with the owner of Camp Trucking. If they had reached out and said, ‘We’re in some financial trouble,’ I would have said, ‘My people will help you load the trucks.’”
After asking parents for time to sort it out, camp directors began working the phones. Some chartered separate buses just for the luggage. Some linked up with UPS, FedEx or U-Haul. Others reached out to or were contacted by Camp Trucking competitors.
Keith Klein, a senior partner at the Laurel Camps, which has programs in Readfield and Casco, Maine, oversaw about 1,000 campers this summer. Within 18 hours, Mr. Klein and his staff figured out how to shuttle 1,450 duffel bags to 23 states and seven countries in less than a week’s time — with Ship Camps. All bags will be whisked to children’s homes. Laurel Camps is footing the bill. (According to a spokesperson for Ship Camps, the company has transported over 10,000 large trunks and duffels. Only about 20 to 25 percent of the camps are paying for these services, which leaves parents to pay the extra costs.)
Parents are disputing the Camp Trucking fees with their credit card companies, but so far there haven’t been any resolutions. “We told them they’ll probably become creditors in a liquidation and get 20 cents on the dollar in five years,” said Mr. Aboudara.
Emails and calls to Camp Trucking headquarters went unanswered. An employee, Stuart Seller, hung up when contacted. In a subsequent email, he wrote, “There’s nothing to say.”
In the end, Ms. Axel used a little parental ingenuity to get her child’s bags home. She called Natalie Matus of First Class Laundry Services, in West Palm, Fla., which offers post-camp pickup, laundering and clothes sanitization. After Ms. Matus learned about this situation, she offered trucks to pick up more than 30 bags from a warehouse and deliver them directly to families’ doors for $25 per bag.
Ms. Axel jumped at the opportunity. “It’s not over until those trunks are in my garage,” she said.
