ex98thdrill

I've towed with a 1/2 ton, 3/4 ton and a one ton and at this point I will never buy another truck that is less than a 3/4 ton. For two reasons: 1. They hold the road a lot better than a 1/2 ton. 2. Currently with the messed up state of New York, if you have a heavy duty 3/4 ton you don't have to plug it into emissions when the truck gets inspected where if you have a 1/2 ton and you have any check engine lights, they can be a pain in the butt come inspection time. If you don't want to buy a brand new truck, my personal recommendations (which many people will differ with me): 1. Buy a used truck from the south where rust isn't an issue. Even if it's a high mileage vehicle, an engine swap in a rust free body will cost you a whole lot less. 2. If you don't haul your car to that many meets, consider hiring someone to haul your car to the meet and back. When a new pickup is going to run you in excess of $70,000, you can hire someone to haul your car to a lot of meets before you'll ever spend $70,000. 3. Don't cut corners on your tow vehicle. If you can't safely tow your vehicle to and from a meet or tour, you stand a chance to lose a whole lot more if you end up wrecking the truck, trailer and your show car going to and/or from a meet. When my dad was alive we used to push the envelope hauling our old fire trucks to a show and pulling it with our 3/4 ton pickup. The GVW was within the limits, but we were within 500 pounds of being over the max GVW. Because of the costs of what new trucks cost, we bought an old ladder truck and converted it into a fire truck hauler. That truck weighs a whole lot less than what it did when it was a ladder truck, it stops better, and when we put the old truck on the back of it, you don't even know it's on there. We built that hauler ourselves for less than $10,000 and couldn't begin to buy a truck and trailer to do the same job for less than $70,000. Am I telling you to buy a ladder truck and do what we did?? NO!! But I will remind you that most Fire Departments have brush trucks and mini pumpers that are on a one ton chassis. You very well might be able to buy one of those for a whole lot less too. Even if you bought a mini pumper, it most likely would be on a 4500 chassis, and you could probably get it cheap enough to where you could take the back end off of the truck, scrap it out, and have enough money to buy a used box to put on the chassis. If you're using a van now, you can easily pick up a used ambulance that will have the suspension and power to tow what you need. There are a lot of van ambulances out there too. Prior to COVID, I know a lot of people who leased trucks and now that their leases are about to expire, the buyout agreement that was on the lease is way less than the truck is worth now. If you know someone who is leasing a pickup that is towards the end of their lease, it might pay you to have them buy out the truck and sell it to you. Again I feel your pain. My 3/4 ton has seen better days so now if I'm taking one of our old cars to a meet, I'm towing with the 1/2 ton. I don't like it, but it isn't enough to make me want to make payments on a new truck. Meantime I'm saving the money to where I hope to buy a new 3/4 ton within the next five years. My 1/2 ton has 28,000 miles on it and has never seen snow, so it should get me by in the meantime. I guess at this point, if I were in your shoes I'd ask yourself, what is the price difference between what you can get the job done versus what will do a better job and not compromise safety?? If the value of losing the car and the trailer is greater than the price difference between trucks I'd go with the heavier truck. In terms of buying an old brush truck or mini pumper from a fire department, consider this. In many cases when a fire department is done with something, the farmers will buy them. It gives them something with a lot of life left in the vehicle with plenty of suspension and power to put them to work for a whole lot less than buying a new truck. If the fire departments weren't selling off their old stuff cheap, the farmers wouldn't be buying them. I am known for showing fire trucks in AACA. Yes I'm in the fire service, but bear in mind that I got into the fire trucks because they were cheap. There isn't a single fire truck in my collection that I ever paid more than $5,000 for. I might've put more money into them once I got them, but there are a lot of people out there who have paid a whole lot more for a vehicle and then restored it.

I've never had the desire to own a brass car, but knowing what it takes to restore a fire truck, I respect the brass cars even more because I understand the difficulty it is finding and/or making the parts to put the cars together to make them run. I've cranked over our '29 Whippet by hand before, but I still wouldn't be able to start a model 'T' let alone what you're working on. God bless you for what you do.

I'm not saying I'd have problems or not, but for the price that this trailer sold for, I'm afraid to take the chance.

Yes it is.

Yeah for many years gas in Pennsylvania was higher than New York, now it's the other way around.

I'm not. The issue is that you have people who complain that don't know the other side of things and I'm not just talking about club members. I've chaired a national meet before so I know the deal. If the complainers got off their butts and chaired a national meet, they would understand things a lot better. If you or anyone else who is complaining chaired a meet, you'd quickly find out that although the theory may seem good, it isn't as easy to implement when the shoe is on the other foot and you're in charge. You'd also quickly find out how hard the National Directors and the staff at AACA Headquarters works to keep everything together for everyone.

AMEN to that.... It wasn't until I chaired a national meet before I was ever able to comprehend what goes into putting on a meet, and to what the National Directors and staff at AACA Headquarters do to keep the club running. Most of those folks not only put in a lot of time and work, most of them are stretched thin enough to where they don't have the time to enjoy their own cars (which is why we're all here). In terms of the Hershey Region, after my own experience, how and why they do what they do, and to do it every year for the last 67 years just blows my mind. It isn't an easy thing, then you add a new building and the loss of Chris makes it that much harder too. As many of you know, Twenty years ago I missed Hershey because I was deployed to the middle east. The very last commander that I ever worked for was a West Point graduate. He was tough, but he was fair. Anytime one of my soldiers had an issue I would go to him and one of the things that he used to tell me is "Sergeant, don't come to me with a problem unless you have a solution." Sometimes he agreed with me, sometimes he disagreed with me, and sometimes we didn't see eye to eye, but at the end of the day, the mutual respect was still there, which still remains to this day. In simpler terms, it is far easier to find fault and criticize, but it is much harder to find a solution to the problem. I think for all of the things that get thrown their way, both the Hershey Region and the staff at AACA Headquarters do a good job of finding problems and finding solutions that try to resolve the problems. Will they catch every issue?? No, but in most cases, for every problem that gets resolved, a lot of times two more problems will surface. Thank you Hershey Region and the AACA staff for what you do and continue to do.

Nope I respect that. It's a case of where I ordered a brand new Featherlite, it wasn't cheap and I'm just trying to protect my investment. Had it not been for the owner of the company telling me that, I would've bought the cheaper E-track system and taken a chance of having a chemical reaction that could cause corrosion. The new trailer is supposed to come off the Assembly line the end of this week. I ordered it in July, 2021, it was supposed to be done in August and it still isn't done yet. I'm not upset about it because I'd rather have it built right than to have it early and have problems. I'm hoping this will be the last car trailer I'll ever buy.

......and Wayne Carini

From a liability standpoint, I'm sure HERCO is charging a fair amount because you know if someone eats at one of those trucks and gets sick, you know the person who gets sick will go after HERCO too. I'm not saying I agree with the high price, but from a liability standpoint, I think I can see why things are done the way they are.

Yup I'm in the same boat as you are and you're going to have complainers no matter what happens. Another pet peeve has been the idiots that will come in and say that the flea market should be arranged so that all of vendors should be grouped based on what they sell (Ford, GM, Mopar, etc.) Then you have the morons who think AACA should step in and do something about the hotels who are "price gouging" on their room rates when truth be told, both the Hershey Region and AACA have as much ability to control hotel room rates as the complainers can control the rain. The funny thing is that the Hershey region is stretched so thin that they don't have the staff to enforce the people who run through the flea market with unregistered scooters and golf carts. If that was enforced like it should, there'd be a lot of people crying foul about that. Six years ago I was hurt in a really bad accident, I did the Hershey Flea Market on crutches and had some clown on a scooter run over my foot and keep going. I was already hurt pretty bad to begin with and this moron didn't do me any favors. On Thursday I saw a guy in the red field take a golf cart, run over a bunch of a vendor's items and kept going. Never stopped, never apologized, never said nothing just caused damaged and ignored it all. Personally, I think the majority of the AACA members are good people. I am thoroughly convinced that the majority of the people who cause problems at Hershey don't even belong to AACA. Usually when you go to any AACA meet other than Hershey, the problems are minimal.

I have five spaces. On that space was two trailers, two vehicles and a large tent. Both myself and the guy who sets up with me both come in with trailers and we drive in because we don't stay at the same place. I'm not about to park a zip code away to get into my spots every day because there are days when I take stuff out and bring stuff in. The same can be said for the trailers we use to haul stuff in and out.

I ordered a new trailer in July of last year and with COVID, it's currently being built. I tried to order my trailer with the e-track and the salesman talked me into going with the airline track. Reason being is because I ordered an aluminum trailer. If you're ordering an aluminum trailer, you'll want the airline track because the E-track is of a different material which will cause a reaction (corrosion) between dissimilar metals. I don't know what you have for a trailer, but thought I'd bring this to your attention. For what trailers cost today, I'd hate to see anyone buy something that would shorten the life of their trailer.

Our first year in AACA we missed the deadline and never let it happen again. Ever since then, registering for Hershey has become a 4th of July tradition. By signing up on the 4th of July and mailing it out, we've never missed one since. If you're working on a vehicle and you're not sure it'll be done in time for Hershey, enter two vehicles so if something happens, you'll still have a car in the meet. Of all the meets we've been to, the nicest dash plaque you'll ever get in most cases is the Hershey dash plaque.

For more information to your questions you can also buy a copy of the AACA Judging Guidelines. If you're a member of AACA you can come to one of our meets and attend a judging school and get one of those books for free. I've had vehicles judged in marque clubs and I've had vehicles judged in AACA. Truth be told I see advantages and disadvantages in both systems, but more often than not, if you can get through the marque club's judging, in most cases, you can walk through AACA. Generally speaking, tires, light bulbs and grease fittings will cost you a lot points. If you have an older car, bolts with grade marks and spark plugs that don't have the black base will also put a hurting on you. On an older car you also want to make sure that you don't have any plastic wire or plastic wire connections on your wiring harness. You can lose a ton of points by everything that I've mentioned for a car that could be otherwise perfect. In several of the marque clubs you'll know your exact score and you can dispute points deductions. In AACA they won't divulge your exact score, you can't dispute the points deductions but they're more lenient and they only have 10 minutes to judge your vehicle. When Early Ford V8 Club spent two hours and I got a score of 995 out of 1,000 points, I could've disputed their deductions, but in either case it was still a win and the judges worked hard to get the 5 points they took from me. When I got to VIrginia Beach in May, the judges had 10 minutes to judge the truck, I knew it was correct, it was clean and I wasn't worried about it. When we rolled out of Virginia Beach, the truck had won its' award.

I'd like to thank the Tidewater Region for hosting a great meet. I know several of your members have gone on to serve AACA on the National Level, but then to turn around and put on a great meet is just icing on the cake. Between the people who have served on the national level and the way you've hosted national events, the members of the Tidewater Region are among a handful of regions who continue to show how committed they are to promoting both the hobby and AACA. A special shout out goes to Bill Treadwell. Bill was wonderful in terms of working with me to help me get in and get my rig parked. Without him I could've faced some serious problems. The facilities were great, but with the fuel prices, I'm not sure if I'd be able to do another one that far away from home until things change. Unfortunately that isn't anyone's fault from anyone from within AACA. In all the meets we've been to, we've seldom ever shelled out more than a $1,000 to get to a meet, show a car and get back home. In this case, it cost me $1,000 just in fuel to get to the meet and that didn't include the other expenses as well as getnting back home. Please understand that this is nothing against you or anyone involved with the Tidewater Region, but this meet brought a lot of concerns to me. With our membership aging, fuel prices escalating and many people living on fixed incomes, I am concerned what it's going to do to the health and well being of AACA. What makes things even harder, with these rising prices, it also makes things harder to attract the younger members that AACA desperately needs right now. The only mistake that was made, only affected me, but we worked through it (the long wheel base of the fire truck made it tough to get in and get parked).

I'd recommend Rhode Island Wire as well. They've done all of our wiring harnesses. The good part about them too is that if you run into a problem installing it you can call them up and they'll help you out too. I'm not saying there isn't anyone out there who is priced better, I'm not saying that there isn't anyone out there who doesn't do as good of a job, but I can tell you firsthand that they put out a good product and if you have trouble putting them in, you can call them up and they'll help you out. In the days where a lot of companies like to take your money and walk away, that is huge for me....

I think what surprised me was to find out that Philly is more expensive than Hershey. That I never would've imagined. Truth be told, I think if you move the meeting, I don't think the attendance is going to fluctuate that much. I imagine if you move the meeting south, the people that live in the south that don't go to the meeting now, won't go to the Annual Meeting if you move it to the south. No matter what, I am in favor of what's best for the staff at AACA Headquarters. They're the ones who have to ship the trophies, merchandise, plan the seminars, make arrangements for the board meetings, coordinate all of that, leave their families and then have to take everything back to Hershey and put it away when the meeting is over. As for the rest of us, it's easy for us when all we have to do is pay the registration fee, walk in and sit down. The good thing about Philly is with the train, the subway, the airport, etc. it's very easy to get around in Philly once you're there. In a lot of places you'd need a rental car if you're flying in.

Truth be told if the meeting goes back to Philly or it stays in Gettysburg, I like them both and I'll be there either way

Now that I didn't know. My thoughts are that it costs the club a lot of time and money to ship everything and everyone to the annual meeting and back, so if you could do it closer to Hershey for the same price or less, it would allow the staff to stay home with their families, showcase the new headquarters and allow the national board to do their meetings away from everyone else without being interrupted. From a sentimental standpoint it would mean the year would start and end in Hershey

There are people who love Philly, there are people who love Gettysburg, and there are people who want it someplace else, I think Philly and Gettysburg are both good. What one venue lacks, the other one has, so I'll go to either one. Another venue to think of is the Hershey Lodge right in Hershey. AACA is Hershey, Hershey is AACA so why not bring the national award winners from out west to Hershey. What better way to sell the organization than to have the Annual Meeting right in AACA's hometown?? We know the place is big enough, we've had more than our share of banquets there, we know the staff at Hershey Lodge, they know AACA, the staff at AACA doesn't have to move things as far and they can still stay home at night with their families. Bear in mind that I'm not asking for it to be moved there, but I'm putting it out there to give people something to think about. From Hershey, if someone still wants to go to Philly or Gettysburg, in a matter of a couple hours in either direction, people can still do both. I'll most likely go as long as it is a reasonable distance for me. Of course mother nature may set the tone from time to time I think at this point my concern is the staff from AACA headquarters. They do an awful lot, so depending on where the Annual Meeting gets moved to, will dictate what they have to do to get things done. We also have to honor and respect the wishes of Mike Jones and his crew who have made the arrangements for the annual meeting every year, for several years. I don't see anyone breaking the door down asking to take the Annual Meeting over, but I would be dead set against stepping on the toes to those that have been involved with this event for many, many years. To be honest with you, I think I'd rather see the club go in the direction for what's best for the staff at AACA headquarters. They do a lot for everyone on a daily basis. The farther you take the Annual Meeting away from where it's at now, the harder you're going to make it on the staff and their families. Whether we stay in Philly, keep it in Gettysburg, went to the Hershey Lodge in Hershey, or went someplace else, no matter where it gets moved to, it's going to be better for someone and it's going to be worse for someone else. I know if it got moved to California, I wouldn't go, but if it got moved to California, maybe there's be more participation from the membership out west. This is not something that has a simple solution, but I'm sure our national directors will do what's best for the membership. No matter what gets decided, someone isn't going to like it. As in the case of our cars, we all have different tastes, so there is no perfect solution for everyone.

That's what I'm thinking, but before I shell out the dough on a new pickup, I'm going to let the dust settle to see which direction everything is going to go. I spent a lot of the money I had set aside for a new truck to get a new car trailer. I ordered the trailer last July, it was supposed to be delivered this August, as of two weeks ago it got pushed out to September, so I'm hoping to have it in time for Hershey this year.

I always enjoy judging the race cars.

No that is not the firehouse, that is my barn. That barn is heated with geo-thermal so my only operating costs are the electric to circulate and heat the water. I put in solar panels, so it costs me nothing to heat it because there's no electric bill.

Room is reserved, registration is in the mail