Ashlee & Robert DeeTruckFest 2010 San Mateo Expo Center February 26th, 27th, and 28th
On Friday, February 26th we dropped off our Jeep at TruckFest as a display for our club booth. This was a surprisingly simple task that only required the gas tank of the vehicle be less than ¼ of the way full. We drove the Jeep into the building and parked it on the side out of the way. They still were pretty unorganized at this point and had no idea where our booth would be.
On Saturday, February 27th we went in at 8:30am to help run the booth. We had to set up the table in a spot that the back, where Brent the director, had decided for us at the last minute. Then we had to move our Jeep from the corner they had parked it in to in front of the 4 Wheel Parts truck that we set are booth up in front of. The tables and chairs were self-serve…we just grabbed our own. John Ruiz showed up at around 9:30 with the banner and the flyers…as well as a slide show on his laptop. Bob Bragg showed up a little while later to help with the booth. TruckFest opened at 10 o’clock. We got a fair amount of traffic because even though we were in the back of the building we were right next to Jeff Arabia’a fleet of Overkill vehicles. We had lots of interest in both the club and the safety clinic. We also had a surprising amount of interest in our well-used YJ. We had a few people comment on how they liked to see a Jeep that actually looked like it got used, and were happy that we let their kids climb on it. Ron and Irene came and sat down with us even though they didn’t know we would be there, and helped with the booth a bit. At around 12pm Loro and Richard came to take over the booth after they had done their perusing of TruckFest. Richard brought some photographs of some of his adventures. We then were able to leave the booth to do our shopping and then we took off.
On Sunday, February 28th we went back to pick up our vehicle. They had moved the booth from its location the day before ; so hopefully it got more attention on Sunday. Our Jeep however, was abandoned by itself in front of the 4 Wheel Parts truck. So we rescued it and left truckfest. We recommend that next year more club members decide to bring their vehicles and participate in the event. More preparation would be better to help draw more people’s attention at the event. It might also help if more club board members were to attend (lol). All in all it was a great free way to promote the club and the safety clinic. We highly recommend doing it again next year.