Boot Up: Start the Engine, Then Step on It

Mandee Flanders was cruising south on Route I-95 at 65 mph behind the wheel of a giant shoe — specifically, a giant duck boot.

It was a Friday in July and her road trip had begun hours earlier, in Freeport, Maine, at the headquarters of L.L. Bean, which employs Flanders as a driver of a company vehicle known as the Bootmobile.

From Freeport, Flanders had driven the Bootmobile to Portland, Maine, to begin a day of “what’s called ‘surprise and delights,’” she said from behind the wheel.

The itinerary involved driving from Maine down to Revere Beach in Massachusetts and back — a 200-mile round trip — and stopping along the route to dole out free branded trinkets and, at certain spots, free meals. A “surprise and delight,” Flanders said, is when the Bootmobile shows up at some restaurant or ice cream stand and she plunks down a corporate credit card to pay for everyone’s orders.

As she eased into the flow of morning traffic in Portland, Flanders typed a destination into a Garmin Dēzl, a GPS navigation system designed for truck drivers. “It will take us on known truck routes that are safe for the Bootmobile,” she said.

Like the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and Lindt’s Chocolate Gold Bunny Car, L.L. Bean’s promotional vehicle takes the shape of what the company considers its signature product: a duck boot — or Maine Hunting Shoe, as L.L. Bean calls it. At 13 feet high and 20 feet long, the Bootmobile, were it a real shoe instead of a billboard on wheels, would be a size 708.

There are three Bootmobiles in the company’s U.S. fleet; a fourth is in development. Boot 1 was built on the frame of a Ford F-250. Boot 2 used a converted GMC Sierra. Flanders was driving Boot 3, a customized Chevrolet Silverado that is used the most because it can tow a trailer full of merchandise. Another slightly smaller Bootmobile cruises Japan, where L.L. Bean has 22 retail stores.

“Driving the Bootmobile by itself isn’t as daunting as hauling the trailer,” Flanders, 35, said. “I had some experience because I have a horse, and a horse trailer.” She, like the nine other qualified Bootmobile drivers, holds no special driver’s license but did take a company-administered road test.

The first Bootmobile hit the road in 2012 to celebrate L.L. Bean’s 100th anniversary. Since then, the vehicles have traveled to 25 states and covered some 350,000 miles, going as far west as Utah and crossing the border into Canada.

But the Bootmobile’s home turf is New England and the East Coast, the region where L.L. Bean is most widely recognized. The vehicle’s high season is now: From midsummer through late fall, L.L. Bean sends the Bootmobile on the road with a team that takes it to beaches, college campuses and town squares, doing brand activations and opening a mobile pop-up shop.

At the first stop on Flanders’ recent excursion, a trendy Portland breakfast spot called Ugly Duckling, she met with an L.L. Bean employee who had saved her a spot out front. Parking a massive four-wheeled boot made of aluminum and fiberglass is among the challenges of the job.

A man walking his dog lit up at the sight of the Bootmobile, which has eyelets made of upside-down Bundt cake pans and 2-inch-thick laces made of mooring rope, the kind used on lobster boats.

“Yeah, boys!” the man shouted, before realizing that the driver was a woman. He amended the greeting: “Yeah, girls.”

Another pitfall, Flanders said, is that everyone approaches the Bootmobile and asks questions or wants their picture taken with it. It’s a little exhausting at times, even for Flanders, who loves her job.

“If we need to decompress, we will hide in the Bootmobile, if it’s lunch break or something,” she said.

Inside Ugly Duckling, Flanders approached a bearded server and told him that she had just pulled up in the Bootmobile and that when people went to pay for their meals, he could say, “It’s on L.L. Bean.”

Flummoxed, he replied, “This is something I’ve never encountered before working in the service industry for 15 years.”

Later, while zipping down Route I-95 toward Massachusetts — the Bootmobile can go — Flanders recounted how she came to drive a giant shoe.

She and her husband work in the events industry, and in 2017, Flanders was hired by L.L. Bean to work as a contract brand ambassador at Oswego Harborfest, a music festival in Oswego, New York, about an hour’s drive from her home in Watertown, New York. The Bootmobile was at the event, surprising and delighting Flanders and many others in attendance.

She was later hired as one of the seasonal employees who worked on Bootmobile tours. L.L. Bean pays her to drive or fly to Maine and other destinations when the vehicle is dispatched.

“Last July, me and another woman set out on the road for two months,” Flanders said, recalling a stop in Michigan where they came upon a field of life-size dinosaur models. At another stop, in Virginia, they were told that the world’s largest roller skate was nearby. They drove over and took a photo of it next to the Bootmobile. (The roller skate was a head taller.)

The Bootmobile team is a rotating cast: Some people join for one tour, others return for multiple seasons. The longest-serving member has been on the team for four years. Many of the Bootmobile drivers have been former Wienermobile drivers.

During Flanders’ Maine-to-Massachusetts trip, the sight of the Bootmobile on the open road seemed to turn many people into wide-eyed children. It prompted joy and wonder. A passing car honked and a man and woman inside gave the thumbs-up to Flanders. From another passing car, an arm jutted out a window with a camera. At a rest stop near the New Hampshire border, a man approached to snap a picture.

That affectionate response may be as attributable to the Bootmobile as it is to the footwear that the vehicle advertises. L.L. Bean sells 250,000 to 500,000 pairs of Maine Hunting Shoes each year, and the boot remains “a symbol of our company,” said Shawn Gorman, the chair of L.L. Bean’s board.

Gorman’s great-grandfather, Leon Leonwood Bean, began selling that one product in 1912. As the story goes, Bean was tired of coming home from hunting trips with cold, wet feet. Rubber boots didn’t fit well. Leather boots didn’t stay dry. So he combined a rubber bottom with a leather upper and created the Maine Hunting Shoe. From there, an apparel and outdoors brand grew.

At a time when many U.S. apparel companies, including L.L. Bean, make many of their products at low cost in foreign countries, the Maine Hunting Shoe is still being produced domestically at a factory in Brunswick, Maine. The Bean boot’s distinct brown color and design have remained basically unchanged over more than a century. The Bootmobile, as a result, requires few double takes — though it often prompts them.

It was brutally hot and humid by the time the vehicle pulled up to Revere Beach around noon. L.L. Bean keeps a “summer shack” there — a kiosk with free chairs and umbrellas for beachgoers to use.

Flanders drove right up onto the sidewalk and parked beside the shack. Then she went around and opened the heel of the boot, inside of which was a trunk-like compartment containing a box. It held giveaways like duck-boot key chains, branded handkerchiefs, sunglasses and stickers that say, “I spotted the Bootmobile.”

Unfortunately, there weren’t many people around.

“You really have to be prepared for anything,” Flanders said. “That should be No. 1 on the job description — flexibility.”

Flanders gave merchandise to a few people, including a family vacationing from Virginia, before deciding to leave the beach and try an ice cream shop 10 miles up the road in Peabody, Massachusetts.

“We have a term in the Bootmobile — ‘Let’s spool,’” she said. “It’s like, ‘Let’s roll.’”

The ice cream shop was even more desolate than the beach — not a single car in the lot, other than the Bootmobile. Time for Plan C.

Someone at L.L. Bean had mentioned to Flanders that the coastal city of Newburyport, Massachusetts, might be good for a stop. So off she went.

In downtown Newburyport, Flanders drove back and forth along the busy, pedestrian-filled streets looking for somewhere to park.

“If anything, we’re getting great impressions,” she said — marketing speak for gawking passersby.

Eventually, a prime spot opened up and Flanders parked the Bootmobile expertly.

“I’m going to pop open the back, make a quick announcement and go haywire,” she said. Minutes later, she was standing beside the Bootmobile yelling, “Do you guys want some free L.L. Bean swag? Come on over!”

It was like throwing chum to sharks. A crowd gathered. People yelled to their family members and friends. Two workers from a restaurant across the street dashed over.

At last, after a day of slim crowds, the Bootmobile was delivering surprise and delight.

One woman, walking away clutching a bandanna and lip balm, remarked to no one in particular: “That’s the job I want. I want to drive the boot.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .