Crawfordville Rentals opens
Crawfordville Rentals Owner Robert Gates with General Manager Julie Frederick.
By CHARITY TUMBLESON Reporter
Robert Gates, the owner of Crawfordville Rentals, opened up back in September. He always knew he wanted to live in St. Teresa ever since he was a child.
“I’ve lived in 28 cities on five continents in 25 years,” he says. “I knew I wanted to live by my grandfather’s fishing camp since I was 10 years old.”
Gates’ grandparents lived in St. Teresa and he would visit them often as a child. Gates and his wife Karen Bartley, who’s a physician, moved to St. Teresa five years ago, six weeks before Gates’ 50th birthday.
“I’ve wanted to open a rental business in Crawfordville for five years,” Gates said. After navigating insurance and getting maintenance support, the business opened.
“We’ve got a strategic partnership with Leppos up out of Midway, which we’re doing long-term rents and then we turn around and do short-term rents and that’s allowed me to partner with them to get their maintenance support which takes the risk off of me,” Gates said.
The team at Crawfordville Rentals consists of General Manager Julie Frederick and Store Manager Rosario Reyes.
Frederick’s dad, who is a physician assistant at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, met Gates’ as a patient.
“We kind of all just got together that way. I was looking for work and he was thinking about opening this, and it’s such a huge need so we were like let’s do it,” Frederick said.
Reyes, the store manager, just graduated from college and is “going full at it. She’s got all the equipment down pat and has been working it,” Frederick said. Crawfordville Rentals has a full line of Dewalt battery-operated power tools, air compressors, and generators, and is starting a new automotive tool line.
Crawfordville Rentals also offers larger equipment through their partnership with Leppo Rents, Bobcat of Tallahassee.
In the future, the business plans to make do-it-yourself videos. “So we’ll be joining the chamber of commerce at the first of the year. Right now we’re still starting to get a feel for everything. We’re just very excited about being here and reaching out,” Frederick said.
Crawfordville Rentals is also veteran-owned and offers a 10% discount to veterans. Gates served in Iraq, and also volunteers four days out of the month with Wakulla Fire Rescue as an EMT.
Scouts attend overnight adventure at space center
Special to The Sun
Cub Scouts attend Overnight Adventure at Kennedy Space Center.
In an adventure of intergalactic proportions, Wakulla’s Cub Scouts Pack 5 spent an incredible night exploring, discovering and dreaming at a one-of-a-kind Overnight Adventures program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island on October 22.
About 50 Scouts and chaperones from Wakulla slept underneath a 363-foot-long Saturn V moon rocket. This is the world’s largest rocket and it actually went to the moon!
The Scouts were inspired by various educational exhibits, space documentaries, hands-on challenges, a scavenger hunt, exciting space simulator experiences, and some even got to meet a real NASA astronaut.
Interested in joining Cub Scouts? Contact Cubmaster Jacob Blakesley at jblakesley50140@gmail.com to learn more about getting started in the exciting world of scouting!