Being that this is probably the best open discussion we've had about the club and the knowledge that many members don't use the BB, how about publishing a condensed version of this discussion in the magazine so that others that don't use the BB can see our plight.Might lead to some more good suggestions.

I now know a lot of the major antique Cat collectors in Oz, ie 50 or more machines in their collections, and most of them do not use a computer, while the vast majority of of the "smaller" collectors, like 30-50 machines, read this Forum regularly, but have never once posted a Thread or replied to a Post, they all rely on the magazine as their link to ACMOC, and I think the USA might be the same.
regards
Mike

THEIR ARE ENOUGH OF US THAT HAVE ALL MOST EVERY BOOK MADE FOR CAT STUFF HOW ABOUT THINKING ABOUT PUTTING THEM ON CD THE MEMBERS PUT THEIR BOOKS ON LOAN FOR THE PHOTO SHOOT THEN ARE SENT BACK THEN YOU CAN SELL THE CD,s AND MAKE AS MANY AS NEEDED AS THE REQUEST COME IN ALL WOULD HAVE TO BE PAYED FOR FIRST LIKE THE NORM HAS THAT BEEN GIVEN ANY ?????

Getting back to the molds and patterns for cat parts, I think it would be good to either give or sell the stuff to a vender that is already making parts for cat machines and make these parts avaiable again.Maybe that would generate more people to be come interested in restoring a machine and jpining the club. No one making these parts is a loss to all club members ,my 2cents Ron Meeder

Sorry guys, I had to stop for a day to do payroll or all my co-workers would not have been very happy with me.

Mike Meyer, Jason Payne and Ianoz, one of my biggest concerns as we think about these reproduction parts is to avoid competing with those good Club members and hobby supporters who have spent their own money and invested their own time to supply our needs. John Hahn is probably the first and foremost example. He has been a valued contributor to the Club and the hobby for a long time. He has set the standard for seats, not just for Cats but for just about anything needing upholstery. The last thing I want to see us do is try to compete with him, diluting his business and, I'm sure, not meeting his standards.

There are many others, including George Rankin, Rosewood, Scott and others who are working to fill our needs. We are lucky in that the patterns George Logue donated to us are mostly for manifolds and other parts that are not being produced by others. There is some overlap, and I think we plan to make those we are able to do, but we will not undercut the existing marketplace.

We don't have the tooling or capacity to make any sheet metal parts. George's family did donate some remaining inventory of those types of things, which we recently sold through the magazine to members, but we can't make any more of that with our existing resources.

Ianoz, you are correct that we are licensed to sell the models to others and we typically have. Because of our financial position, we have pulled in our horns a bit on advertising outside of our own magazine and also attending trade shows for models. We are now re-entering those markets and making more effort to find untilled soil where model interested people have not yet heard of our models.

Several of you have mentioned raising the price of the models. As several have said, I don't think that is a viable option. As I mentioned before, because of the collector and dealer base we do have, lowering the price of existing models is also not a very viable option. We are working very hard to ensure that when we do introduce the next model, it is at an attractive retail price point. That is really the key to continued viability for this part of our business. Adjusting our licensing to allow larger volumes of production than 2,500 would be helpful in this arena, but there are other ways to get those costs down.

old-iron-habit - I'll expand a bit on what Erik has said. It is free to register for this forum. The only reason we require registration at all is to prevent the automated gibberish posting from Thailand and the like. Non-registered people can read everything, but can't see pictures. Registered people can see everything we all see. There is no requirement to be an ACMOC member or have contributed a dime to anything to see all that is available within the forum.

We as a Board have recognized the strong value to the content here and have kicked back and forth the merits of asking for a registration fee or Club membership to have full access. I have always been a strong advocate for keeping the forum just as it is. Like many of you, this forum is why I am a member of the Club. I have met many people from all over the world, received invaluable advice and help and had many experiences I wouldn't otherwise without this forum. I think it is critical to keep this as our electronic doorstep, where kids of all ages can stumble upon us, observe quietly for a while and eventually get hooked. If we start locking away some of this interesting stuff, we risk failing to set the hook on some of those future members.

That doesn't mean we don't create a paid area where more valuable content is available. The thought of a repository of electronic versions of the manuals and technical information is very interesting to me. I think we can find the right balance, but I hold this discussion board as pretty sacred and necessary to be seen by the entire world, not just those who are willing to pay.

Old Magnet, yours is a very good point about the value of this discussion for all Club members. Hopefully we can make some space in the magazine to reproduce this thread for consideration and contributions from our non-bulletin board user members.

Thank you all for the thoughtful and positive contributions. This discussion has been similar to those I have enjoyed within the Committees as I've worked on the business of the Club. Many ideas I hadn't thought of and new perspectives on some I had thought of have been offered here. I don't doubt that our Club and our bulletin board will be better for this type of interaction.

Pete.

My turn for my 2 cents....As a model dealer for 30 plus years, most asked about CAT now is the 15 which SpecCast has already photographed, and
may be a little less to make than the big ones, and maybe some modification can do others close to it. The D2 was the biggest hit you ever produced with its many variations!!

deleted by author

I subscribe to several tractor and old car magazines and I'd say the ACMOC magazine is pretty typical of them all except for one factor. There is little or no technical articles or material of use to operators and restorers. Even spec sheets have not recently been published. Yes, it is a quality publication but there needs to be more usable content. The old "Service Bulletins" would be a good place to start. At least they would be worth saving if they had some valuable information, otherwise they just collect dust or get tossed when done reading.

The Chapters have almost doubled over the past 4 years from 11 to the soon to be #20
The Chapters are the ones taking machines to shows and letting kids see them in action and talking face to face with people interested in anything Caterpillar.
The Chapters are where people form bonds with others with the same interest.
The Chapters are the future of this club because most of member recruitment comes from the chapters

So... if we do not have chapter reports then there is no connection between chapters.
A major goal that ACMOC wants to achieve is better communication between chapters and members.
That is why we have a new chapter policy, also the reason we have so many different ways to become a member.

After looking at all the magazines from the xerox copy news letter that started this all to what we have today i would say we have come a long way.
If you want something different in the magazine then please make suggestions like: reprint past articles about the "nuts and bolts" of caterpillars or ?????

So what do you want the "real magazine" contents to be?

Phil - You always have some good thoughts and comments, which take the discussion into an area where it hasn't touched yet.

You quoted Erik's statement that there has been some thought about scaling back the magazine. That statement is true. You seem to agree with the second part of Erik's statement and my follow up comments that the outcome of the thought put into that idea is that the magazine has a great deal of value to most of the members and it would be a mistake to scale it back. I'm glad that we're on the same page about that, and I don't think you will see any scaling back in the foreseeable future.

Where you and I part ways is the perspective on the Chapters. I characterized the economic condition of our models program to Old Magnet earlier as at a midpoint of a change in direction, kind of like turning a battleship. Where we are with the Chapters is similar.

We have looked hard at the Club's perspective on its relationship with the Chapters and how our members could best be served. From my perspective, the old view of Chapters by Club administrations was pretty similar to yours "I don't give a (s__t) hoot about . . ." them. We blessed their name when they formed, made sure that the five people requesting formation were paid up members and gave them a $300.00 banner. That was the sum total of our support and efforts towards Chapters. (Comments here may not reflect the position of ACMOC, its Board or management. I'm speaking from a personal perspective here.)

Our Board looked at the realities of what the Club provided to its members on a day to day, month to month and year to year basis. The significant values we identified were: 1. A monthly magazine. 2. A website with bulletin board and online store. 3. Some Club and Caterpillar logo merchandise. 4. An annual show which was held in a different region of the country in conjunction with an existing show. That was about it.

Notice I didn't mention production of models. There is overlap between the models customers and our member base, but I think our member base is mostly guys like me who own or want a real tractor, to repair or restore it and to share it with others at shows.

The above four items are pretty much the sum total of the benefits our Club used to offer. As I participated in the discussion about our strategies, I kept this list in mind, along with the perspective about who I think our core members are (tractor owners). From my perspective, the Club didn't do much for the tractor owners. The magazine is good, could be better and we keep working on it. The website is great, and I think the future of our outreach to members. The logo merchandise is O. K., although I don't buy much of it. The annual show was not very useful to me. The only one I'd attended was 2004 because it happened to be at the Tulare show that I go to every year. Not much value added to me as a tractor owner, restorer or shower by my membership in the Club.

From this perspective, we looked at the realities of what the current eleven Chapters were accomplishing. They were people near each other, so they could afford to visit each other, get together around their tractors, talk, get to know each other and have fun on a regular basis. We realized that the Chapters really needed to be the heart of the Club. There were things we as a Club could do to move the Chapters to the forefront in our relationship with the members, while maintaining the four core things we already produce.

Erik was among those who took the lead in being creative about communicating with the Chapters, starting to try to spark interest and provide suggestions for activities. We developed a much stronger, more robust policy for our interaction with the Chapters. We changed our structure, completing our designation as a public charity, which was helpful to us, but allowed us to better support the Chapters as well. We've developed policies which allow us to assist Chapters directly with formation, compliance, insurance and many other areas. Erik's Committee has worked hard to nearly double the number of Chapters out there.

There will always be members like you who choose not to participate in a Chapter or don't have one nearby. That is fine and not only has your service from the Club not been diminished by the focus on Chapters, but your Club has become stronger because of that focus.

All of this, however, does not change overnight. We've seen the benefit already of the change in focus by the increase in Chapter count, and in Chapter activity. There hasn't been enough time to evaluate the effect of this change on membership numbers. Those newly formed and the existing rejuvenated Chapters won't turn up with fifty new members upon formation, they need time to do their work, create fun events and attract new members and convince expiring members to renew. I believe you will see a renewed growth in membership numbers because of this change in perspective, but the battleship has only turned halfway at this point.

You mention the 14 new members mentioned in the magazine. This isn't the whole picture. We only acknowledge true new members by name. What you don't see is the expired members who have rejoined, which has had a significant uptick in the last two years, or the renewal percentages, which reflect member retention and also has had a significant uptick over the past two years. You are right, there is a certain attrition because of non-renewals, death, etc.

We aren't gaining members like wildfire, but we are between 2,800 and 2,900 right now. This number reflects a stabilization of membership numbers, reversing a significant decline which began in 2008 and finally leveled off a couple of years ago. A lot of the reaction in membership numbers is economic and outside our control. I am confident, however, that the number stabilized and has begun to climb earlier than it would have if we weren't doing what we have been with the Chapter policy.

Your suggestion about the patterns, to give, license or sell them to someone like Rosewood, is one of the options on the table and is being researched and considered. I would have to say that approach is not among the front runners as far as our current assessment of best value for the members, but it is in the mix.

Old Magnet - Yours is another very good suggestion. I also have always felt that we should work to include more, or at least some, technical or historical information in the magazine. Some of the members of our Committees are connected to Caterpillar and have access to some of the archive information, like service bulletins and other technical information. Maybe we can develop a regular column, like the Ask the Experts, which reproduces one of these threads, where we just publish selected service bulletins or excerpts from technical documents which we think would be useful or interesting to our members.

Thanks for the continued discussion and input, and the chance to talk about some other facets of our operations.

Pete.