Well, despite the fact that it's a grueling 110 degrees outside and kids are still enjoying their summer break, the cover on this issue of CLASSIC TRUCKS says it's December! Among other things, that means we've successfully closed out another year together intact-can you believe it?! To be honest, I can.
I know it wasn't too long ago that the opinions and comments about me (and my future here) were flying back and forth like bees from a hive that'd just been whacked with a baseball bat. Some assumed I'd never make it a year...others just plain doubted me being the editor in the first place. While that first one was something I never questioned from the get-go, I will admit I was skeptical at first about me being on a "truck" magazine, let alone being the editor in charge. I just never considered myself a truck guy per se. But that was then, this is now, and now, with a whopping two and a half years under my belt, I can say without hesitation, "I'm a trucker!"
In reality, I've been a truck guy for years-many more than I even realized until recently. But in the past, to me, a truck guy was someone who was into late-models, especially mini-trucks. Now, though I've owned my share of minis, not a single one was lowered or in any way considered a "mini-truck;" they were just small trucks. In my mind, the late-model truck crowd is not much different than the import crowd, or the Volkswagen crowd, for that matter. That's precisely why I've never viewed magazines like Truckin' or Sport Truck as "competition." Sure, both titles cater to the classic truck sect each issue, but in a very small percentage compared to the rest of their content, which is aimed at the post-classic readers.
However, at the Goodguys Columbus Nats earlier this year, I was confronted with a few different truck owners/builders, each of whom stated they'd been approached by editors of other truck magazines offering them page space within their respective titles. Sometimes it was in either (or both) of the magazines mentioned above; other times it wasn't. It was the solicitations from the others that made me scratch my head and wonder, was there any other direct competition out there? Fortunately (in an unfair sort of way), Custom Classic Trucks isn't really my competition-if we run into a situation where one title has a story or feature the other may want, we have the "logistics" to avoid any type of confrontation. Not so with Truck Builder or Street Trucks-but are they even competition to begin with? Well, along the lines of Truckin' and Sport Truck, Street Trucks is an all-inclusive magazine devoting more of its pages to the late-models than to the classics, so I don't consider them a rival at all. But I still wonder how much readership crossover there is-if there is any at all. And while Truck Builder may have a similar format to CLASSIC TRUCKS, well, since hardly any readers I've asked have even heard of it, I guess that pretty much sums that one up!
Even though a vast number of late-model truck people reading those other mags are heavily into the classics, I truly believe there's a huge difference between them and us. When you get down to the nitty and the gritty, we're more like hot rodders of a different sort. Sure, classic truck folk who restore, not modify, might not fall under that umbrella, but at the same time, they sure can't be lumped in with the late-model crowd, either. But what about the four-wheel-drive classic truck guys, where do they fit in? Not real sure on that one, but I do know that while a number of them participate in events of ours, most tend to stick to their own (at least out West...it may be different regionally). By all accounts, the four-wheelers are classic truck people, too, just with more of a "utilitarian" purpose, I guess.