Slipstream - May 2007

Catch my Draft
by James Shoffit, the Maverick Region President
Alot of people seemed to appreciate the
article I wrote last month and told me
so – thanks for all the kind words, and it
is good to know someone besides Wendy reads
my articles!
Our Concours program is just going like
gangbusters. By the time you get this, we will
have probably already had our May at Mayos
Concours – and as of right now, 23 cars are signed up. That
is just incredible! Now I just hope it didn’t rain us out.
A bit about Slipstream being late – we are in a difficult
position with that. Back a few years ago, Slipstream worked
like this : 1) The editor would finish Slipstream, drive it to
Ussery, they would process it and print it (takes 2-5 days
depending on their workload). 2) The printed copies would
then be brought to my house. 3) Andy Mears would print a set
of labels based on our membership database, subscribers,
advertisers, and sponsors. 4) We would call a group of 5-7
people to come over as quick as they could, and spend an
evening applying labels to all 1200 Slipstreams. We would
then bag them according to zip code, label the bags
appropriately, and put them in my car. 5) Andy would fill out
all the paperwork the post office needed, and often Bob
Knight would have to write a check for postage. 6) The next
morning I would take off from work and drive them over to
the post office in Fort Worth and manually bring the bags
inside to be processed, usually standing in line as one often
does at a post office.
This was a great process as far as expediency is concerned.
They were able to get to you much quicker. The problem is
one of sustainability. When it wasn’t me doing the driving and
delivering and labeling, it would be Tinker or Jan or Wendy or
someone else. Finding volunteers to continually make that
level of sacrifice is challenging to say the least. It is hard
enough to get an Editor, for Pete’s sake! (thanks again, Jan!)
So we decided to hire that process out. Now Slipstream
gets printed and Ussery Printing delivers them to Tri-Win,
who handles all the label creation, labeling, bagging, and
delivering to the Dallas post office (rather than Fort Worth).
So this takes a few days for them to handle that rather than
the usual 24 hours it took us. Add to that the fact that the
Dallas post office seems to be busier, and it sometimes takes a
week or more to get the issue all the way to my house in
Irving.
So what can we do about it ? The first thing we are going
to try is having Tri-Win deliver the Slipstreams to the Fort
Worth post office. It seems like we had much better delivery
times – which could shave a week off of the receipt date –
when we used them. The Fort Worth office could be as busy
as the Dallas office is now, so we don’t know if that will work
or not. All we can do is try.
The second thing we have discussed is moving up the
deadlines and production dates. The problem with this is we
are creating ads for events that are 3 months out, and reporting
on events two months ago. So you would read about the
Holiday Party in the February issue and Mark Gluck would
have to create ads for the May at Mayo’s Concours in March.
Often we don’t work out the details soon enough to be able to
produce ads, and reporting on events that far behind just
doesn’t suit our small-club feel we enjoy so much. If we were
a big corporation, that is probably how it would be done, but
we don’t want to revert to that unless we have to. We have no
paid positions – we are all just volunteers, so have to do what
we can to not run volunteers off.
Of course the PRIMARY reason Slipstream arrives late is
because I am always the last one to turn in my article! I think
Rocky and Keith know what I am talking about!
Come on out and join the fun! See you soon!
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