When a local Boy Scout troop’s aging equipment truck failed its inspection earlier this spring, Pat Bramlett’s head started spinning.
As a camp master to Troop 10, he knew how important it was. The Leawood-based Boy Scout troop camps out once a month or so — and it also often shows up in community parades, serving as a sort of symbol for the troop.
So when the truck’s transmission was deemed cracked beyond reasonable repair, it meant saying goodbye to the vehicle that had quietly powered the troop’s camping adventures for years.
This created not just a loss, but quite the pickle: What would take all of those scouts and all of their gear on camping trips now?
“I don’t know if you would say devastated was the right word, but I was in shock,” he recalled. “(I was) thinking, ‘OK, we’re gonna have to start using a trailer, I’m gonna have to rent a truck from Home Depot to drive the trailer all the time.”
The truck is used for all-year camping
The troop truck carries everything for the troop’s frequent campouts: tents, poles, stoves, tables, tarps, you name it. The truck also makes appearances in parades and community events.
After the troop acquired its former white truck a decade or so ago, Troop 10 Scoutmaster said it quickly became central to how the troop operates.
“It gets a lot of use,” he said. “It’s actually easier to get a truck somewhere than it is to get a trailer somewhere.”
The Leawood troop, in its current form and now sponsored by the Leawood Lions Club, was chartered about 50 years ago by the Leawood Middle School Parent-Teacher Organization. And for a troop built around year-round camping, outdoor adventure and service, losing its troop truck wasn’t just a logistical headache.
The loss of the truck threatened to change how far they could travel, how many scouts could go and how much gear they could bring.
“They do some pretty awesome, adventurous camping,” said Joanna Bramlett, Pat Bramlett’s wife. “They go really far distances for campouts. It’s the major focus, really, of the troop.”
Then along came some help. Suddenly, Troop 10 had a bigger, better truck than before — thanks to a former scout in Kansas City, Missouri and his beverage truck.
The new truck came with a size upgrade
When the former truck failed its inspection and the cracked transmission was deemed too expensive to fix, the troop briefly tested life without it. One spring campout went ahead using only a trailer and limited gear.
Behind the scenes, Pat Bramlett was running the numbers on renting trucks and possibly buying additional trailers. Rodney Pierce, the scoutmaster, had also begun thinking about moving all the troop’s equipment to the troop’s equipment trailer, which was sitting mostly empty.
Switching back to the trailer would have required putting in shelving, repacking and finding adults whose vehicles could handle towing full-time.
Besides that, Pat Bramlett said, trucks like these are usually valued at $10,000 and above to replace. Where were they going to come up with that kind of money?
Joanna Bramlett had another solution.
“I immediately started pulling through contacts, and thinking about who I know and reaching out to people that might have access to a truck,” she said.
Her search ultimately led her to a friend who worked for brewing company Anheuser‑Busch InBev, who had their finger on the pulse of who drove beverage trucks in the Kansas City area — and who might have one to spare.
That’s where Ted Brooks, general manager and partner of Kansas City, Missouri-based United Beverage Co., stepped in. He had a red beverage truck to give the troop — one that the company had purchased new in the early 2000s and used for about 20 years to haul beverages across its Missouri-side territory.
He wanted nothing in return.
“Somebody out there with no connection to any of us instantly was willing to make such a generous donation,” Joanna Bramlett said. “He wouldn’t hear of us paying him.”
Upon finding out a replacement truck would be coming so soon, Pierce remembers feeling “dumbfounded.”
“How in the world did someone find someone willing to donate a truck in like a handful of days?” he recalls thinking.
In the meantime, as everything was happening behind the scenes, the Bramletts said most of the scouts barely felt the crisis.
“We solved the problem so quick that I’m not even sure the kids were very aware that any of it had happened,” Joanna said. “The kids never had that devastated moment.”
The new truck is roughly three or four feet longer than the old one — and it has roughly a dozen side panels, each opening to its own compartment. That makes loading and unloading faster, which in turn makes campouts smoother.
More storage also means more tents, more stoves, and more space for new scouts to come on camping trips.
“Right away, we were like, oh my gosh, there’s more storage here than we had before,” Joanna Bramlett said. “Which is great, because the troop is growing.”
From a logistics and safety standpoint, the truck came with another key advantage: Any licensed adult can drive it.
“With a trailer, you have to have the right person with the right truck, who can pull and can drive a trailer,” Pat Bramlett said — noting that many of the regular camping dads, including himself, now drive electric pickups with limited towing range.
The truck has now passed final inspections, Bramlett said, which means they can now start taking scouts and their gear to go camping this summer.
The truck was a donation from a former scout
Prior to the truck handoff, Brooks had no connection to Troop 10 or the Bramletts. He was just, as Pat Bramlett puts it, a kind stranger who will now be “getting Christmas cards from us for the rest of his life.”
The donated truck — a 2002 beverage truck, professionally maintained and recently pulled from active service — had originally been headed toward resale.
Instead, Brooks and Deron Cherry (former Kansas City Chiefs player and co-owner of United Beverage Co.) chose to simply give it away.
“It was nothing more than great timing, I think, for everybody,” Brooks said. “We were literally within a couple weeks of getting ready to trade the truck in. Sometimes that’s how those things work in life.”
But it wasn’t just a coincidence. For Brooks, there was a personal tie too.
Brooks, who grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, was a cub scout himself back in the day — as were his father and his brothers.
“It made sense for us, and it was [better] to give it to a good cause,” Brooks said. “They were appreciative as could be, and grateful and all that good stuff.”
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