Walk through the doors of Four Wheel Campers today and you’ll find a company that still embraces its rugged, adventure-driven roots while quietly undergoing a significant transformation behind the scenes.
At the center of that transformation is Larry Baab, who recently passed the two-year mark as CEO of the iconic and leading pop-up truck camper manufacturer. During a wide-ranging conversation at the company’s California headquarters, Baab discussed everything from quality control and customer service to employee engagement and the future of truck camper design.
One thing became immediately clear: Baab believes great companies are built through employee and customer feedback.
More Than Just a Camper Company
Before joining Four Wheel Campers, Baab spent his career working with major consumer-facing brands, including Johnson & Johnson, Stanley Black & Decker, Igloo Products, and Johnson Outdoors. While those brands provided valuable experience, he says Four Wheel Campers has offered something unique.
“I’ve never been with a company that had a showroom where customers come directly to us every day,” Baab explained. “You get to hear what they love, what they want improved, and sometimes what frustrates them. That feedback makes you better.”
In fact, Baab describes his current role as perhaps the most fulfilling position of his career.
Part of that fulfillment comes from the people. Four Wheel Campers serves a community of passionate adventurers, overlanders, hunters, anglers, mountain bikers, surfers, and explorers who view their campers as tools for living life outdoors.
“The people in this business are great,” Baab said. “Being part of the outdoor industry in the camper category makes every day inspiring.”
The Customer Comes First
Ask Baab about his priorities as CEO and the answer comes quickly.
“The customer has to be your priority,” he said.
For Baab, that philosophy influences virtually every decision. Whether it’s product development, manufacturing improvements, content creation, customer support systems, or service responsiveness, the guiding question remains the same:
What’s best for the camper owner?
That customer-focused mindset has led to a variety of initiatives over the past two years, including improved documentation, more detailed online resources, upgraded camper features, expanded service staffing, and new communication systems designed to improve response times.
One of the most significant projects currently underway is the implementation of a fully integrated customer service software platform that combines phone support, email, customer history, camper ownership records, and ticket tracking into a single system.
The goal is simple: faster answers and better service.
“We want customers to get the right answer the first time,” Baab said.
A Company Built on Ideas
While many companies claim to value employee input, Four Wheel Campers has put formal systems in place to encourage it.
Shortly after arriving in 2024, Baab launched an annual innovation process that brings together small cross-functional teams from throughout the company. Employees gather feedback from customers, dealers, and coworkers before developing and submitting ideas for improvement.
The teams then participate in an offsite workshop where ideas are reviewed, refined, prioritized, and eventually selected for implementation. So far, the process has generated more than 200 unique ideas.
Beyond the innovations themselves, Baab says one of the biggest benefits is bringing together employees who might never otherwise collaborate.
“The varied viewpoints give us a better perspective,” he explained.
The company is also running an employee Ideas Challenge program designed to encourage participation across the entire workforce. Every employee who submits an idea receives a financial reward, and if everyone participates, the reward doubles for the entire team.
It’s a clever blend of collaboration, accountability, and fun. In fact, their Ideas Challenge program last month generated over 150 ideas and 80 percent of the employees contributed. The ideas were across all aspects of the business and a cross-functional team will be evaluating, ranking, and prioritizing them for implementation.
Communication Is a Leadership Tool
One of Baab’s many initiatives is a weekly CEO letter sent to every employee. Every week , employees receive a detailed update covering company news, market trends, industry developments, business challenges, successes, and recognition for team members who have gone above and beyond.
Baab has written the letter nearly every week since arriving.
“It’s important that employees know our vision, strategies, and what’s happening, and understand what we’re working on,” he said.
That commitment to transparency extends beyond communication. Under Baab’s leadership, Four Wheel Campers has expanded employee benefits, clarified organizational leadership structures, and invested heavily in creating a workplace where employees feel heard and valued.
At a company of roughly 100 employees, that personal connection matters.
Raising the Quality Bar
One area where Baab saw an opportunity for improvement was quality management. Not because Four Wheel Campers lacked quality. Far from it.
“We had craftsmanship. We had pride. We had experienced people,” he said.
What the company didn’t have was a formal quality system. To address that, Four Wheel Campers created digital quality checklists for each manufacturing department and implemented measurable standards throughout production, with results and trends reviewed with each department every week
The results surprised everyone. Instead of departments competing against one another, teams began collaborating more closely. Employees discovered that small changes in one department could help another department improve quality outcomes downstream.
The initiative ultimately strengthened communication and teamwork while providing measurable quality data for the first time.
“The mindset is now less about finding mistakes and more about helping everyone succeed,” Baab explained.
Listening Drives Product Development
That emphasis on listening extends directly into product design. Every week, Four Wheel Campers holds dedicated product development and product improvement meetings. The company also hosts monthly customer feedback reviews where staff analyze everything from social media comments to customer emails and service requests.
Rather than relying on assumptions, the company uses owner feedback to guide future development. A perfect example is the popular Hawk+.
Before designing the camper, Four Wheel Campers surveyed hundreds of existing flatbed owners and worked directly with experienced customers, ambassadors, and influencers throughout the design process.
The results were enlightening. Management assumed owners would overwhelmingly prioritize either more storage or more counter space. Instead, the survey results came back almost perfectly split.
Fifty-one percent wanted more counter space.
Forty-nine percent wanted more storage.
That feedback shaped the final design.
“We knew we couldn’t choose one over the other,” Baab said. “We had to improve both.”
Judging by customer response, the strategy worked. The Hawk+ has become one of the company’s best, most capable campers, and that’s saying a lot.
Growing Carefully
Although Four Wheel Campers continues to expand, Baab isn’t interested in growth just for growth’s sake.
The company now operates through approximately 28 dealer locations across North America, with additional eight international relationships including Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Iceland.
But each new dealer must make strategic sense. Rather than saturating markets, Four Wheel Campers focuses on supporting dealers with training, marketing assistance, and product knowledge.
“We want our dealers to have the ability to support and service our customers and be successful,” Baab said.
The company’s long-term vision is simple: make ownership easier by ensuring customers can reach a showroom, installation center, or service location within a reasonable distance of home.
The Passion Factor
Perhaps the most interesting takeaway from the conversation was the diversity of Four Wheel Campers owners. Walk into the showroom and you might find a retired couple planning an Alaska expedition standing next to a 20-something mountain biker preparing for weekend adventures.
Some customers are full-time travelers.
Others are weekend explorers.
Some want a simple Project M topper. Others build fully equipped overland rigs designed to cross continents.
What unites them isn’t age, income, or geography. It’s passion.
“We can’t create that passion for the outdoors,” Baab said. “But we can help bring it to life.”
That perspective seems to guide much of what Four Wheel Campers is becoming under his leadership.
The company isn’t simply building campers. It’s building systems, processes, and relationships designed to help people spend more time doing what they love.
And if Baab has his way, the next chapter of Four Wheel Campers will be defined by the same thing that has guided the company for more than 50 years: listening to the people who use its products.
For a company built around adventure, that’s a journey worth following.
For more information about this and other Four Wheel Campers or to receive a quote, email the company direct at sales@fourwh.com.
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