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B&B RV, Inc.’s Owner, Tim Beckett’s Story
and Love for the Outdoors

I grew up in a little town of 300 in the middle of South Dakota. I was always outdoors hunting, fishing and playing sports.

From 7th grade through high school, I worked on a farm 30 miles from town on the Missouri River irrigating many fields of corn with siphon tubes. I would ride my Honda 90 motorcycle into town when I did get a day off, typically if it rained enough.

After high school I was recruited to play basketball and thought I wanted to be a coach but after a year in college, I knew that wasn’t my future.

Back in the neighboring town of 1,000 I ran the outside portion of the local lumber yard for a year. 

I moved to Pierre, the capital, with a population of 10,000 where I worked as a carpenter for three-months. When a co-worker informed me that the railroad was hiring, I interviewed and was hired as a laborer on the tracks of the Chicago and Northwestern railroad for five years.

Here I learned about the role of the unions and by my second year I had foreman, assistant foreman, class A, class B and class C machine rights.

I had always been intrigued by computers as it was somewhat new to the public at that time and decided to go back to school. Most of my fellow railroad workers told me I was crazy as the railroad was a good paying job and they said, “Do you know how expensive it is to go to college?” I have one great friend that I have always looked up to that said, “Do you know how expensive it is to not go to college?”
I moved to Denver, returned to school and after three years, I had degree in Computer and Management Science.

I became a lab technician in the newly formed microcomputer lab at school and I was voted in as the vice president of the data processing management club. Over the second summer break, my wife and I spent 5 weeks backpacking through Europe. One exciting day on the trip was being in Berlin when President Reagan gave his speech telling Gorbachev to tear down the wall!

During what was my Junior year, I went to work for a startup consulting company working from the entrepreneur’s attic with him. We grew that company into a high-rise office building with a view of the mountains in downtown Denver with a clientele that included local, national and international companies. During my 15 year tenure there, my desire to travel moved me to convince the business that I could work on the road. Laptops were not yet invented so my portable was a Mac SE which was much more luggable than portable. 

Because I was the IT person for the business, they didn’t want me to be away for the entire year so my arrangement was to be gone and work away from the office for three months then be back in the office for a month.

This allowed for three, three-month excursions over the course of the year. We sold the house, purchased a 24’ Class C RV and hit the road. 

With a daughter five and a son three we spent the summer in Alaska, the winter on the beach (literally) in Mexico and the spring along the west coast from California to the Canadian border. We had experiences from watching a grizzly in Denali to climbing ruins in Mexico and everything in between.

File sharing and compression was new at the time. It allowed me to plug a modem into a phone jack and make a local call to download files for new jobs and upload files of my finished work. In rural Alaska, people thought I was an alien when I asked if I could plug into their phone outlet. In Mexico, we parked on the beach about four miles north of Playa del Carmen which is south of Cancun. 

At that time, all the oceanfront property was still owned by Mexican families and we were able to live on the beach in our RV with one of those families. I met the manager at the hotel in Playa del Carmen and he allowed me to leave my computer in his office and come and use it. I would walk the beach to work and could use the phone line, which was the southern-most phone in Mexico and typically worked two or three days a week, once the hotel had finished their business on it.

After our year in the RV, it was time to get back into a house and get the kids into school, so we sold the RV and bought a house. My daughter was proud to tell everyone and anyone that she was in motorhome kindergarten.
Missing the RV lifestyle, the next project was to purchase a small, used school bus and convert it into an RV. We put a rack on the top for our canoe, had a hummingbird feeder which hung just outside the window on a plant hanger at the rear of the bus and while it had a king bed and a full bed we also included hooks for a hammock down the center of the bus. We took that bus exploring all over Colorado. At that time, I had the month of June off and we would live in the bus for the month. 

After 15 years with the consulting company, while on a family trip to Havasupai in the Grand Canyon, the idea to start an RV rental company was tossed around. We purchased an RV to place into a local rental fleet for experience in renting and for due dilligence. 

The next year, 1999, B&B RV, Inc. was founded. It started out as a rental only company. Our business plan was that we would have an upgraded rental fleet and sell off our fleet units after one or two seasons to replace them and keep the fleet new. Over the years, we grew the company into the largest single-location rental dealership in the nation. Our philosophy was and is to have an upgraded fleet that will be desirable for retail customers so that we can more easily sell the units to be replaced and keep the fleet new. The second part of our philosophy is to do our best to provide customer service in the way that we would like to be treated.

As time went on, we started to dabble in sales and as the sales department evolved we became more specialized and grew to become a leader in the off-grid, off-road market segment. Our philosophy for our sales is to carry unique, quality trailers that provide a great value to enjoy the great outdoors.

After 18 years in business, we moved the dealership to a much larger lot on the interstate across from Bass Pro which included a 12-bay service center. This extra space also allowed us to expand our sales offerings and have an indoor showroom and offices.

After 23 years we continue to strive to provide the best values in camper trailers and motorhome rentals. I enjoy establishing relationships with new manufacturers as well as the continued long-term relationships with several of our manufacturers and other dealers around the country.