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Wlaf1450Since 1919, Camel Manufacturing, now Camel Expeditionary, has been in business
PIONEER, TN (WLAF)- “My grandfather, B.A. Bower, founded Camel as Cloth World at Market Square in Knoxville in 1919,” said Chris Arnold.
Arnold tells the story like this. When Papaw Bower, a World War I pilot flying a biplane plane nicknamed Camels, returned from Europe, they were given $100 and new boots as they came off the ships. With that money, he bought a train box car of boots and canvas goods, started a business of repairing and sewing them and then selling them. He repeated the process. He began bidding on government jobs, took chances and worked hard.
One of the chances he took was buying biplanes, 14 of them, and bidding on mail routes. He and his fleet would fly mail from Island Home Airport at Knoxville to southeastern Kentucky. He crashed his plane at Harlan, Kentucky, and though he didn’t lose his life, he was injured enough that moving forward, he concentrated on his retail business. Two planes were sold at Island Home Airport to Charles Lindbergh for a similar venture.
Surplus City around Knoxville and Sky City, elsewhere in Tennessee and Western North Carolina, were his early outlets for selling Army surplus goods. He started the Army surplus business to sell to the people of East Tennessee, and from there he secured government contracts for canvas goods and clothing.
Ben B. Bower moved operations from South Knoxville to Campbell County in about 1976. Camel Manufacturing, the name Camel coming from the nickname of the biplanes Ben A. once piloted, had several locations in the area including perhaps its most successful run in the one time shirt factory building on First Street in La Follette. The main office for Camel was even moved to La Follette.
Caryville was one of the locations along the way, and the last move was back to Caryville; this time at the 141 Exit off I-75. From there, it was sold to current owners, Camel Expeditionary, company President/CEO Mark Riffle.
Previously known as Camel Manufacturing, the company re-branded itself as Camel Expeditionary several years ago to better reflect some of its key components and innovations in providing soft sided shelter solutions.
It’s been said that Camel was the first tenant in the industrial park moving in in the late 1980s.
Campbell County Mayor Jack Lynch, Vice-Mayor Brown and Campbell County Veteran’s Affairs Director Shane Prater stopped by Camel Expeditionary in the Collins Industrial Park earlier this month to “say thanks” and tour the facility.
Camel Expeditionary sponsored the September Veterans Breakfast, the 40th breakfast in the series. “There’s probably veterans from here that have slept in Camel tents at some point,” said Mayor Jack Lynch.
Camel Expeditionary started over 100 years ago in 1917, according to company President/CEO Mark Riffle, who said Camel had just recently made a “quarter of a million dollars investment” in equipment and that it would soon be investing in a new roof.
“There’s a whole lot of investment going on in our shop,” Riffle said.
The company currently has around 60 employees.
“They just called this the tent factory when I was a little boy, now, this is technology, the industry has really changed,” said Lynch.
Riffle said Camel used to do business mostly with the Department of Defense, but now Camel “builds tents for almost every other tent manufacturer” and that they do “build and print work” for industry leaders.
“We’re now the manufacturing arm for about five different tent manufacturers; since the volume has decreased instead of being good at just building those tents, we have created operational excellence so I can make it cheaper than they can,” Riffle said. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-09/23/2025-6AM-PHOTOS COURTESY OF CHRIS ARNOLD, CHARLOTTE UNDERWOOD & CHARLIE HUTSON)