Need Everyone's Input

[Rzeppa]

I've yet to see anyone from the head office at ANY of the TLCA events I have attended over the last 10 years from New England to Tellico to Attica.

Hi Nick,

Believe it or not there are members of the board of directors at EVERY TLCA sanctioned event. Maybe you didn't cross paths, maybe they didn't shout it from the rooftops.

No TLCA swag at the raffles. No extra Toyota Trails to hand out to folks. No flyers, nothing.

Actually, we did send out 2 foot x 6 foot banners to every TLCA event last year that didn't already have one. And we sent boxes of Toyota Trails and TLCA stickers.

We have sent tons of raffle swag in years past to every sanctioned event. We didn't this past year because (1) we were running low on most everything, but we still sent some anyway and (2) we were in a giant belt-tightening mode due to the great recession. We're coming out of that now, and will be sending something special to every sanctioned event this year. We had a motion which passed at our last meeting at the end of March.

Notice I wrote "sanctioned event". Not all open events will get the goodies.

Thank you for being a TLCA member, and hopefully you will have noticed the extra value for membership we have added over the past year, and will continue to, going forward.

 

[Rzeppa]

where does the money go, that TLCA gets???

The P&L statements are fully disclosed to every BOD member, and available upon request to any current TLCA member. Contact your chapter delegate or Individual Rep if you are not in a chapter. We used to publish it in Toyota Trails. Very few were all that interested and the space has been replaced with articles.

Short answer, most of it goes to publishing, printing and mailing Toyota Trails. All of us on the Board of Directors are unpaid volunteers.

 

[Rzeppa]

They couldn't provide the exposure that a couple of threads on Mud could do and there is no insurance issues at the private parks.

And I have four Toyota 4x4s. None of which have a parking brake that would hold them in second gear since none of them are manuals. TLCAs safety requirements are a perfect example of how out of touch they are.

The safety chair at each event is responsible for evaluating the safety of each rig. Some years ago at Cruise Moab when 80s became more prevalent, we adopted a modification to the rule where the driver puts their auto tranny rig in gear and guns it to (I forget which RPM) and the emergency brake has to hold. Perfectly legal under the bylaws and SOPs, and most importantly, helps keep people safe at events.

 

[Gumby]

Then post that s*** on your damn site so it doesn't look like you live in the stone age.

My pig, 45 and cummins all pull pretty way differently at a given RPM, but I guess you gotta do something.

 

[Rzeppa]

Then post that s*** on your damn site so it doesn't look like you live in the stone age.

Hi Gumby,

What's your name? Mine's Jeff and I live in Kittredge Colorado, USA. Pleased to meet you!

I don't know how long you've been a TLCA member, whether you are one, how many events you've attended, or whether you are in a chapter. But you write that you have a Cummins, and that suggests you probably have a big ol' Dodge pickup. Let me ask you, how much room does it take that thing to turn around or stop? I would guess it's not a sports car, right?

Kind of like TLCA. We've got 40-50 diverse individuals on our board of directors and each and every one has their opinion, plus we expect that they represent the views of their constituents - if they are a chapter delegate, that would be their chapter member. For the Individual Representatives, that would be every TLCA member who isn't in a chapter. There are couple of us who are elected and vote on these things, but the bottom line is changing rules and bylaws usually runs into a lot of opinions.

We had a simple SOP change proposal at our last meeting. It looked like it was all tied up nice and ready for a vote, when some folks wanted to make a whole bunch more changes. We ended up having to table to motion. Just because I'm the President doesn't mean I can make people agree on things. But I am sure as heck not going to force stuff down people's throats when they don't feel they've had enough time to make a good decision.

The auto tranny thing is a good point and wasn't even part of the discussion, but what I was illustrating was getting the roomful of cats rounded up isn't as easy as sitting down at a keyboard and typing in expletives.

FWIW, we do our darned best to represent all our members interests and desires for what they want from TLCA. We offer a good value for member's hard-earned dues, and are always work to continue to improve member's value. We continue to make progress, and continue to have a full plate of stuff that needs done.

FWIW, as President, I don't even get to vote, except to break a tie.

Happy cruisin'!

 

[Gumby]

Nice to try to kill with kindness, Jeff, but the bottom line is that Cruisers have been exclusively autos in the US for almost 20 years. Many of us run autos in cruisers that never came with them because they are arguably far superior for wheeling than manuals.

However, in 20 years of nothing but auto cruisers even being available, TLCA can't change it's rules to accommodate them.

That's some hard core stagnation right there.

Todd Ballard
TLCA 5658 - but I can't for the life of me tell you why.

 

[Rzeppa]

Nice to try to kill with kindness, Jeff, but the bottom line is that Cruisers have been exclusively autos in the US for almost 20 years. Many of us run autos in cruisers that never came with them because they are arguably far superior for wheeling than manuals.

However, in 20 years of nothing but auto cruisers even being available, TLCA can't change it's rules to accommodate them.

That's some hard core stagnation right there.

Todd Ballard
TLCA 5658 - but I can't for the life of me tell you why.

Hi Todd!

Long time eh? I recognize your name from the LCML back in the day. Trying to remember where you're from - IL or somewhere in the midwest IIRC?

Anyhoo, we have a bazillion things on our plate, and updating the safety inspection requirements is certainly one of them. As I wrote above, we had an SOP revision on safety inspection requirements on the floor at our meeting a few weeks ago, and what should have been a straightforward motion/second/vote devolved into a drawn out discussion so we tabled it for this month's meeting. We will be sure to include the auto tranny e-brake into the revision, and thank you for reminding me. This has come up a couple times in the past, and if we're going to devote a meeting agenda item to it we ought to include that detail.

I will be presiding over the meeting for the second year in a row from camp at Cruise Moab. Last year we had about 7-8 board members live and in person at the event attend the call!