Dos Equis Add Campaign

EI was approached by a marketing company representing Dos Equis. They had a pretty tall order. To go along with "The Worlds Most Interesting Man" add campaign Dos Equis needed trucks in major cities for Cinco De Mayo celebrations. The premise was simple, the worlds most interesting man was returning from his jungle expedition where he happened to discover the lost civilization. As any good explorer would do he brought back evidence in the form of 3 Mayan Princesses....Ok enough of the campaign. EI was tasked with handling the vehicles for San Francisco, Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles, Ft. Lauderdale, San Antonio, Phoenix, and New York. We used 4 of our own vehicles t handle the West Coast and Phoenix, then got on the phone and started calling customers to coordinate rentals for the other 4 cities.

With 3 weeks to coordinate, EI cranked it up and went to work. Coordination, driver training, contracts, insurance....pretty much a marathon. To tell you how Just in Time it was Brian Mason (EI Engineer) used his own custom 712DK for the Phoenix promo vehicle. The wrap was completed at EI in Vallejo, 30 minutes later Brian was on the road driving to Phoenix to deliver. Brian drove all night, arrived in Phoenix with two hours to spare and the truck made it's opening night debut.



We had a lot of fun with this campaign. Learned a number of valuable lessons as well. #1 - Marketing teams do not understand the unique characteristics of these vehicles. Try explaining to 3 "Mayan Princesses" they will be traveling in a soft top Pinzgauer for 200+ miles in an evening with multiple stops, in poor weather, on the freeway.....yep you get the picture! #2 - A vinyl wrap on a poor paint job works very good at removing the paint. #3 - Marketing companies pay well for promotional vehicles. Don't undersell yourself!

The next time the phone rings make sure you answer as EI might just be asking if you want to rent your vehicle for a promo!

Forced Child Labor - Teach'em early!

At EI we are constantly "kitting" items and preparing them for sale. Carb kits, ignition conversions, fuel pump kits, etc. When we get behind, we have to enlist the help of family. My boys probably the only 4 year old to know the difference between a Zenith 32 and Zenith 36 Carb kit! My girl has found that "packaging" in the shipping area can create it's own fun. She really likes the peanut dispenser. Coming from a bigger family I have quite a few nieces and nephews that enjoy "working" at EI. So the next time you wonder about your parts keep in mind they are assembled with love in the good old US of A!

Spare Parts Aquisitions and their Stories

Over the years EI has purchased a number of large lots of Unimog Spare Parts. Each one has a story and over the next couple of months I am going to do a writeup/travelogue with pictures. If there is any doubt as to our commitment to the long haul in Unimog spares come give us a visit, we can use the help!

• 2001 - Swiss Military Depot outside Lucern, Switzerland. This one has a funny story in regards to communication and sarcasm between cultures. In this case it saved me 80,000 Swiss Francs! Someday I'll take the time to write it up.

• 2006 - Sabiex International Belgium - Sabiex had made it a habit to purchase all of the German, French, Belgian, and Swiss parts lots that they could get a hold of to aid there refurbishment of 404's for African militaries. When the governmental 404 refurb market had passed, they sold us their 3000+ tons of remaining stocks. 6 Months of logistics, and thousands of man hours got this into our warehouses.

• 2010 - French Surplus Dealer calls it quits. 500 Tons, NOS parts.

• 2010 - Mexican Military calls it quits and surpluses remaining parts stocks. - 30 Tons

• 2010 - Belgian Surplus - Still squeezing out some of their parts stocks - Of Note, NOS Cabs, that we had thought were gone for good.

• 2010 - Swiss Military Spares found in America! Purchased from the Swiss Military in 2000 and warehoused in Colorado, this was a nice batch of 40 tons.

So the quest continues. Hoping that 2011 will give us some time to sort out the 2010 purchases.

January in Denver - Yummy

Being a CA guy with an aversion to the cold, it takes a lot to get me to Colorado in January. However, if you waive 40 tons of NOS Unimog parts in front of my nose......you get my attention. Brian and I headed to Colorado last week to coordinate the move of a batch of Swiss Military spares.....primarily 404 and 2010 Mog parts. We flew in on a Thursday, loaded 2 x 53' trailers on Friday and Monday and flew home Monday night. Parts arrived in Vallejo 48 hours later. Now the fun begins.......


Arrival in Vallejo......it will take us a couple of days to get things coordinated so we can move around the shop and yard.



Ooooohhhh....Aaahhhhhh, mint chip NEW, not even rebuilds!

Some People Buy Shoes......

My addiction is for hard iron........ We couldn't pass these up.

Watch closely Pinzgauer Fans.......Looks like we are going to get some screen time! EI was pleased to be able to work with the studio on this project. After the release of the film we should have some excellent new designs available to the general public.

EI Sponsored Buggy Wins Calrocs Pro Mod Class

IT was an Awesome season for Craig Thompson,/Red Dragon and the #37 buggy. When all of the dust cleared, all the scores were tallied, they won the Pro Mod Class hands down. Pretty nice to see a buggy running Unimog Portals with 1950's technology take the win. Congratualtions to the #37 crew.

Figured it was time for a bit of an update. Our portal axle'd rock crawler is doing very well this season. We have had the opportunity to catch a couple of the competitions in person and are currently working on getting some of the video into the system. Craig Thompson's update is below:

"Saturday we were in 8^th place out of 10 because we had the worst day of my whole career (as you saw, we didn’t finish any courses). Sunday was a whole different story, we finished with the best score on Sunday and finished a course that nobody else did (A2 – with a score of 12). The next best score on that course was a 39. We also had the best score of the day on A1 – not a bad day! We finished the shootout and ended up in 5^th place.

We have another comp up at Donner July 10^th for the 3^rd CalRocs event. We are sitting in second place in the overall standings for Calrocs so this is an important event for us. We need to finish 2 spots ahead of the first place team in order to make up the ground and be in contention for the Championship. I am pretty sure that we can do it, we just need to have 8 good scores instead of the 6 or 7 that we normally have.

We have 3 more comps and then the Nationals. Nationals have been moved to SLC on the same dates. This will be Man Made courses which I like a lot – fair for everybody! We are now over half way through the season and so far our results are 3rd, 10th, 3rd, 3rd, and 5^th. Hopefully we can make it past that 3rd barrier this time around and stay up there till the end of the season. It has been a respectable season – tougher than we had hoped!"

Keep up the good work Craig and the PTM Crew. We are rooting for you guys. If you have never been to a competitve rock crawling event, you are missing out. Talk about a spectator sport! Not to worry about our rollovers....We asked Craig to position the buggy so that we could get a picture of our logo upside down. He was kind enough to oblige! :)