My hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota has a population of about 160,000 people. We have a large cement contractor known as Concrete Materials. All their cement trucks are typically painted yellow with red and blue markings on the cabs. But the truck that I had seen yesterday had recently been re-painted and it’s drum or cylinder was painted to resemble a Vikings football!
While I don’t care for the sport of football, it would be nice if we, our local club, the Sioux Valley Model Engineers Society could get Concrete Materials to do up one of their trucks to promote our hobby.
B.T.W., Concrete Materials owns a shortline railroad, the Ellis & Eastern Railroad, which hauls all the raw materials which go into the manufacturing of concrete.
A local distributor of Propane around here has painted one of their delivery trucks pink, in honor of breast cancer research. They brag about their support of breast cancer research and their donations to research and urge others to support also. Their total annual contributions to breast cancer research? A whole $1,000.00 per year. Yes, just 1K per year. IT probably cost them that much or more to have the truck painted pink.
Oh, and they don’t own a railroad for transport of propane as far as I know.
{apparently the censors have censored the word " b r e a s t" out of my post as a “bad thing”, but left the word cancer alone.}
I think you’re being overly cynical. About the contributions to breast cancer research, not about the censorship – that’s a legitimate gripe (although it appears to have either been restored or didn’t really get censored).
The whole point of the breast cancer campaign is to raise awareness, which is admirably accomplished by the painted truck and the chest thumping ad campaign. The idea is not to get the Warren Buffets and Bill Gates’s of the world to contribute millions, but for a whole lot of people to contribute a little each.
Both I and the 6 women of my personal acquaintance who are breast cancer survivors are exceedingly greatful for the $1000 that company contributes annually, and appreciate their additional efforts to get others to chip in.
1} Perhaps a bit cynical, but The point is they boast of making “major contributions” to b r e a s t cancer research. I would not consider $1,000 per year to be a “major contribution”. It’s not like they donate a portion of their sales of each gallon or pound of propane over the course of the year to research, like many corporations donate a portion of every sale to research. It may be more than the average joe contributes, but for a corporation…small peanuts.
2} I am sure you and many others are, indeed, greatful.
3} I make a contribution every year when they send me those little address labels with a request for a donation.
4} My father’s mother died of b r e a s t cancer so it has directly touched my life. She died 2 1/2 months before I was born so I never knew my grandmother.
5} Since my father’s father died of prostate cancer, and my father has already had his cancer-ridden prostate removed, and I now have prostate issues…have you made a contribution to “prostate cancer research”? We men would appreciate it just as much.
A concrete company up north in VT has a pink truck too. They also do one up with thousands of lights at Christmea.
I agree with CTVRR that awareness is as important as reasearch. Finding things early make them much easier to treat whether breast csncer or something else.
Yes, perhaps a bit of a hijack, and I freely admit that I have seen none of their advertising or other self-promotion, so I really can’t comment on how obnoxiious it is. But yes, in point of fact, I do consider $1000 to be a major contribution in the light of how the campaign is organized It’s a metric butt ton more than I give annually. Never mind the untold thousands of dollars of value in free advertising gained by their pink propane truck generates.
In point of fact, vendors of petroleum products don’t make very much profit on each individual sale; they’re forced to make it up in volume. Plus, most of them are small, mom and pop businesses (all the ones in my local area are), who don’t make all that much in profit anyway. What’s his do
About 15 years ago (maybe more) I saw a cement mixer with “SAY NO TO DRUGS” on the barrel. Walthers had just come out with theys resin Mack heavy cement mixer, so I painted and decalled the drum to match what I saw.
Regardless of what is said, a logo, or something promoting health or a local non-profit does get a look when painted on a mixer drum.
Getting part way back to the original point, have any of us decorated a car for a charity, or to acknowledge a local business?
Some years ago, while employed by a major toy retailer, I salvaged a train set box from the dumpster. It had gotten seriosly crunched - the only salvage was the power pack, some damaged sectional track and a Geoffery box car. I changed the horn hook couplers, replacing them with some rust-painted Kadee K couplers old enough to run for the Senate. Then I gave it a light weathering job, mounted it on a length of Atlas flex on a nicely-stained piece of 2x4 with a sloped face on one side, and presented it to my store director for Christmas.
He had no problem with letting me keep the power pack Later he authorized me to claim some heavy styrene from outdated displays and about a mile of leftover 4-conductor comm cable.
We recently built a new house (with a basement, YEAH), and every cement truck that showed up had some non-profit or charity’s logo on the drum. I think it is an industry wide thing. They are to be commended for the practice.
A few years ago Athearn produced the Wisconsin &Southern’s pink cancer awareness car that I thought was kind of cool. Some of the proceeds went to help in the fight against cancer. I bought a couple of them for that reason. I’ll bring one to run once in awhile at the shows I attend with my club’s layout and that boxcar is probably one of the most photographed cars at the show. It really does make people think and we always get a few stories from cancer survivors that see it. Surprisingly it makes them smile. I’m glad company’s do stuff like that.
Also, in line of awarenss and such, Hubert’s released a model (is that the only one they did? They seemed to have come and gone PDQ) of Williamette & Pacific’s Dare Car. Kinda a neat model.
And as for personal projects, the following is a photshop of a project I have painted, and am working on lettering. And adding the bell.
