Boydstun Screw Actuators Selling Well

Sources in the industry report that Boydstun is in the process of closing a huge deal that will give a boost to their screw actuator auto transport trailer line. They're already selling around four screw trailers for every hydraulic car hauler!

Must be nice to be a car hauler salesman these days!

My back-of-the-envelope calculation puts the gross of this one deal at over $17 million. I'd take 5% of that any day of the week.

Looks like there's a big deal in the works from Honda in rail auto transport, too. We'll have to see what happens there. If Greenbriar Gunderson gets that deal, then the Portland, Oregon area will get a "two-fer"

(Boydstun Metalworks is located in Portland. I think Gunderson is in Beaverton, which is close by.)

If you can't see the image to the left, go to www.boydstun.com

But don't expect to get your new screw trailer any time soon. I hear Boydstun has a hell of a backlog. From what we're hearing from dealers like Rush, it's the same over atCottrell trailers, though I don't think their screw trailer is anywhere near as popular as Boydstun's. Time will tell I guess.

The big question is what these rigs will be worth at turn-in time, and how many guys will want them. I'm guessing that if they do well, there will be a pretty good market with the medium-sized fleets picking up at the ports. The open design of the screw actuator car hauler lends itself well to that kind of car hauling operator. Not sure how many POV car haulers will be jumping onto the bandwagon.

Auto Transport Trailer Manufacturers and Freightliner Trucks

I might have been hallucinating, but I think I heard someone say the other day that Cottrell Trailers is putting out six or eight trailers a day. I have no idea how much Boydstun is making up there in Portland, but the other day when I was talking to Mark Mecklam, he had about thirty seconds before he had to take another call.

That Cottrell number might not be far off the mark. I was talking to someone at Rush Truck Center the other day and he said he wasn't having trouble getting new Peterbilts, but getting trailers was like pulling teeth.

Haven't talked to Jakes in a while, but if these guys are THIS busy, Jakes Truck Center will be ten times as busy. He was busy when everything was slumping a while back.

I have no corroboration on those numbers from Cottrell Trailers, but if they're true, and if Boydstun is as busy as they seem, I've got to believe it has to do with the 2007 emission standards for commercial trucks.

A reliable source says Freightliner's North Carolina plant is pumping out over 200 tractors a day. 200 Freightliners a day!

Seems as if every fleet in the country decided to upgrade at the same time.

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Telephone Service

Normally, I don't talk about things that aren't related to car hauling equipment or the car hauling business, but I wanted to draw your attention to a new affiliate for Carhauler News: Lingo. This is an amazing company offering VOIP telephone service.

VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol. What this basically means is that you can use your DSL or cable broadband internet service to make phone calls now.

There are several different companies that have really started to pull ahead of the others in VOIP service, to my knowledge, Lingo offers the best service yet, especially compared with adding an additional line through your regular phone company.

Between long distance, local service, fees and taxes, I was easily spending over $120 a month for my second business line. For $20 a month, I now get unlimited local and long distance calls in the US, Canada as well as over a dozen countries in Europe!

Basically, I'm saving about $1,200 a year by using this service. The calls are actually clearer than they were when I had my second business line, plus I get free voice mail, call forwarding, three-way calling, speed dial, call return, caller ID block and a bunch of other features. My phone company made me choose my top three. If I wanted more than that, I had to pay extra. If I wanted to call Canada, I had to pay extra.

What's really funny is my Lingo phone service runs on my DSL which is provided by the local phone company.

An additional source of savings comes from the fact that I don't have to pay a bunch of stupid local, state and federal taxes for the extra phone line.

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Their customer service is also great. After making a change to my office's network configuration, I discovered my VOIP line wasn't working. After trying some basic tricks to get it to come back, I called customer service. After about a five minute hold, a service tech came on the phone. In about fifteen minutes, we had the whole thing sorted out and the VOIP line was working great.

If you want to ask me about the service, you can me on the Carhauler News VOIP phone! Our number is 503-342-2085.