Pedler: Hell’s Revenge at the Parts Store: A memoir

I have never told this story for two reasons. For one, it still makes me anxious 35 years later. And two, few audiences appreciate how auto parts counter people suffer for their art. 

It was around 1991, and I was working as a counterperson at a small, independent, family-owned jobber store in a small town. This was before the internet and before cell phones. This parts store had computers, but electronic catalogs were in their infancy. Our paper catalog racks still took up most of the parts counter real estate, and they were well-used.

This town’s economy is driven by diverse industries — tourism, recreation, mining, farming, and ranching. The town is Moab, Utah. (Off-roaders and mountain bikers will say I’m name-dropping, and I am.) Moab is situated next to the Colorado River, in a valley between two national parks. It's a desert environment, surrounded by iron-rich red rock sandstone cliffs and plateaus. Moab is home base for an endless number of outdoor activities, including mountain biking, dirt biking, river running, hiking, rock climbing, off-roading in every flavor of motorized vehicle, and desiccating in the hot sun. The scenery is stunningly beautiful, and it’s a really good time, especially if you are well-hydrated. 

This parts store had a weird mix of parts. We carried equipment, fleet, and small engine parts.  We mixed paint and built hydraulic hoses and pressed wheel bearings out of hubs. We made a giant urn of fresh coffee for customers every morning, and we knew many of them by name. It was one of those places that stocked an oil filter for your 1958 Jeep Willys and your 1987 Caterpillar 416 backhoe, but not your daily driver. 

We were closed on Sundays, only open half a day on Saturday, and Saturdays were typically slow. I was the only person scheduled to work on this particular Saturday. Things started to go south first thing that morning. It was the Saturday of Easter Jeep Safari.   

Easter Jeep Safari is an off-roading event that began in Moab in 1967. The population of Moab more than doubles during Jeep Safari. For a full week, thousands of off-roaders descend on Moab to test the capabilities of their 4WD rigs on specially designated trails and try not to die in the process. Routes are rated according to difficulty. The more technical the trail, the more white-knuckle the hazards — hazards that cause both kinds of skid marks. (You may have heard of Hell’s Revenge: one of the most famous off-road trails in the country. It lives up to its name.) “Off-road recovery” is its own industry. Being a Jeep Safari spectator is nearly as exciting as being a participant. The scrapes, wrecks, and rolls play out in slow motion directly in front of you. 

Jeep Safari is the worst time and place to be a counterperson because nothing on those vehicles is stock, and everything breaks on the trails. Picture 20-year-old me opening the store at 8:00 am on the Saturday of Jeep Safari, with many unhappy people lined up waiting for me to put the final nail in the coffin of their off-roading vacation. Frankly, it was so stressful that I was happy to oblige. 

We were one of two parts stores in town.  The other store — a Big A — had a better location, so the customers in my store had already been turned away at the Big A. Their situation was dire before they reached me. I was on one side of the counter facing a dozen customers holding broken steering and suspension parts, and the least relevant question I could ask was “year-make-model?” The nature of their hobby guaranteed some degree of unhingedness. We were all hopeless that I would be able to solve their problems, so in that respect, we were a team. It was Hell’s Revenge, but at the parts counter. 

It was chaos. After my first failed attempts to locate replacement parts for those Frankenvehicles, I recognized a familiar face — a regular customer! “You. You work here now,” I said, as I dragged him behind the counter and made him help customers. I sent customers to the back to use the hydraulic press to pop out u-joints and build hydraulic hoses. I can’t even guess how many OSHA rules were violated that day. 

Anyone who walked in with a broken drive shaft was laughed at and immediately ushered back outside with a warning: I cannot help you. There is nothing for you here. Tell your friends. Anyone with a broken tie rod was posted up in front of the steering component section of the store with a catalog and told to go through boxes until they found what they needed. Sometimes I made the time to charge people for what they took, but mostly I could not be bothered with thoughts of “invoicing” or “revenue.” Those were concerns for people who were not actively drowning. 

A chronic multitasker, I furiously phoned coworkers to come help. No one answered, and I did not blame them. I considered closing the store and leaving the state without telling anyone. I really, really had to pee. At two o’clock, I turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’, but there were still so many cars parked in front of the store that customers kept coming in. Eventually, I locked the doors and turned off the lights in the front of the store. When I finally got the last of the customers out the door, I made my escape. I did not clean up. I wept on the way home. On Monday morning (yes, I went back), I tried to describe the experience to my coworkers, who did not believe me because I’d generated about 12 invoices and made about $300. 

I have thought many times about the lessons I learned that day, trying to wring some greater meaning from it. But the circumstances were so narrow and specific that I never again found myself in that predicament. I had survived a really bad day. Maybe that’s the lesson of aftermarket leadership: never be the only one with the keys.