"Gregness" wrote:

Before I get buried for the day,a couple of notes.

A potential sale of the Club's position in CAT stock needs to be thoughtfully considered. Presently, at $60 per share, the dividend yield on this stock is over 5%. We cannot get that in an interest-bearing account right now.



Once we dump the stock we make our loss real and permanent! Until then its just a paper loss... and providing a lot more income than a short bond fund would provide!

Now I can see Im not the only one with common sense I cant believe the knee jerk reaction of people I dont ever deal in shares they arent my cup of tea !!!!!!!!

so the price has dropped woopty bloody doo it really means SFA in the real world unless you need to cash the shares in for something else think about it !!!

Paul

"gauntjoh" wrote:

I have been sitting on the sidelines reading this thread with interest, however, I must set the record straight.
The UK LINK Club does not receive sponsorship from anyone, neither Caterpillar nor their UK dealership Finning.
We survive solely on membership subscriptions and produce a 24 page (16 colour, 8 monochrome) magazine 4 times a year.
The 8 monochrome pages save money and also are great for period B&W pictures. We were able to save a lot of money by tendering the production and printing of the magazine a few years ago which helped our finances. I must also point out that it is a long standing club member who is editor of our magazine.
I do recall a previous ACMOC board investing in Caterpillar shares and making money on them. At the time I was very surprised by this happening without membership approval. That time they were lucky, this time less so. It is a big risk to take with club funds and not one that, as treasurer of The LINK Club I would take on behalf of our members.

Hello John, nice to hear from you, I lent all my Link magazines to "Wombat" our new Director a couple of months ago so can you please tell me on average how much roughly in $US it cost's to print each edition, per copy before mailing costs, I think we all agree the ACMOC magazine continues to improve each edition and has evolved from simply a steak and burger report in Chapter news to some interesting stories though I see usually at least one third or more of the Chapters do not report each magazine, typically around 9 Chapters out of 23, though people are busy and possibly nothing happened at that Chapter the previous 8 weeks.

Looking at the latest Finance Report I see our magazine costs are $74,608 against Membership income of $73,401 so we are still not breaking even but we are getting better, I wonder if there is room in our magazine for more pages of stories or are we maxed out already, because that magazine remains the main link to all our members around the world doesn't it.
Regards
Mike

Hi, Gauntjoh.
I think you have touched on a point that REALLY needs discussing here, that of past ACMOC BoDs making major decisions WITHOUT consulting the members and apparently taking the view that whatever they decide is NONE of the membership's business. Admittedly, our board members, past and present, serve in a volunteer capacity and donate their time and energy free of charge and for that I thank them, BUTTTT they are ELECTED to serve in the best interests of the members and yet, with about a whole THREE notable exceptions - one now sadly passed on, none of the rest appear to be even remotely interested in what the 'rankenfile' members might see as their best interests, not even poking their noses in here to post a comment or ask a question.

I think a little more transparency and 'illumination' from OTHER sitting board members would be much appreciated by all those who 'inhabit' this BB, both the posters and the lurkers. After all. just how long does it take to type a short post here on the BB?

Just my 0.02.

I'm no huge stock market player either, but I do know the worst thing you can do is panic & dump a stock when it heads down...ride it out, it will come back. The whole market is in a downtrend right now, & Cat is no exception. Cat is a solid company, I don't think they are about to go under.
As to the wisdom of investing the club's money in stock, I'll leave that to the accountants & lawyers...

Well your right about part of it except "Accountants" are there to count the beans, they are not normally involved in investment or purchase of anything in a company. Mainly it's a tracking function.

I also recall that "General Motors" was to big to fail but that's exactly what they did leading to a bail out.

Space should be made available in the magazine to describe some of the Board project activities along with some financial notes supporting the Financial Report. The space could come from extending the cycles of Chapter Reports.

Hello Deas and John Gaunt, yes, that is I think a major point, having good lines of communication with all the Directors and all our members, not just one or 2 Directors but at least once a year saying hi here shouldn't be too hard I would of thought, before "Willie" became a Director he was on here regularly speaking his mind but I haven't seen him commenting here in the longest time, and I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting dumping all that Cat stock because that would be stupid, however until I'm convinced these new toys are going to even cover their development and manufacture costs with our new global recession I'd be keeping a very close eye on expenditures, as the time to pull this Tech Library project together was really in 2014 when we now discover there was plenty of cash in the kitty after the insurance payout.

What has seriously worried me is finding out we were not all on the same page as this thread started and evolved back in 2013, go back to page 1 and read from the beginning if you wonder what I'm talking about, as I thought we had the strong support of Garlic Pete and B4D2 to improve our Bulletin Board and tech support back then as part of the planned (and much discussed here) computer upgrades that were budgeted for 2014, but history has proven me wrong, and I hate more than anything having the same conversation twice or three times about the same topic. Discuss, Decide, Delegate, Deliver, Move on to the next issue.

deleted by author

I think you will find the local chapters are quite healthy, with surplus funds even. Not like the parent organization.

Mike,
I have looked over the file arrangements and would like to leave my current list intact. In addition the modified format provided by edb should be incorporated in to a separate section as described. If we were to combine both sections it becomes far to awkward to maneuver through all the material, some being Cat and some being newly generated. I know it seems large but it needs to assimilate a lot of information and still have a logical retrivement process.

The initial sections should be considered General Topics and consist of Operations, Restoration, Purchase, Specifications, Maintenance, Trouble Shooting with some Parts Diagrams and Schematics to support descriptions of operations.

The new separate section referred to as Disassembly & Assembly is to be used for overhaul instructions, parts diagrams, Disassembly & Assembly instructions and anything pertaining to major work on the following elements.

DISASSEMBLY & ASSEMBLY

1. Main Engine
2. Starting Engine
3. Fuel System
4. Electrical and gauges
5. Torque Converter/Torque Divider
6. Transmission/Flywheel/Clutch
7. Steering Clutches/Bevel Gear/Brakes
8. Final Drives
9. Undercarriage
10. Attachments
11. Frame & Sheet Metal
12. Miscellaneous
13. Tools

REPEAT EQUIPMENT PATTERN

1. Track type Tractors & Pipe Layers
2. Motor Graders
3. Loaders
4. Wheel Tractors/Scrapers
5. Industrial & Marine Engines
6. Generator Sets
7. Wheel Tractors
8. Pull Scraper & Rippers
9. Miscellaneous

Thanks Pete, they say every journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step, so there is our first step, I look forward to seeing others input on this topic but obviously we need to hear from the Board to find out if they support this project or not because I can see it involving hundreds of hours of work by volunteers to load the info once the hardware and software is in place.