Trailer Article
The Festival Set-up Folks Need Some Help
By Ron Larson
Set-up Coordinator
We have two issues that have developed as we've grown.
First: To save money on a rental space and moving materials, we purchased a 48-foot moving van trailer. It's been a good idea, has saved a lot of money and has been very handy to keep everything organized at the Festival site.
Now we need a place to park this trailer during the other 51 weeks of the year. Ideally a place closer to the Festival area would be most convenient.
Our friend and supporter Mike VanDamme, who provides the truck to pull this trailer at Festival time, has volunteered to store it at his farm/business in Northland, Mich.
This would be fine except that we store the dance floor in the trailer. Several other nonprofits use our floor for their events, and Northland is just too far away for that purpose. Here's where the second issue comes into play.
Our 48 foot trailer has become too small! It now holds 70 pieces of dance floor ( 6,300 lbs. alone!), all of the main-stage materials, all of the electrical supplies, more than 70 chairs, tables, fencing, fence poles, signs, two refrigerators, the Maypole and I can't even remember what else.
It's time for an addition to our Hiawatha family in the form of another trailer. I envision a sturdy, smaller, flatbed-type trailer that would hold just the dance floor and hardware necessary to set it up.
We've found that, once the main stage is packed away in the rear of the trailer, the only way to get the dance floor out is through the smaller side door. This is real difficult, causing a lot of banging around and damage to floor pieces and hardship for the volunteers doing the work.
If we could acquire a sturdy, low flatbed trailer, we could give more room in our big trailer to the main stage folks and other Festival areas.
Come Festival time, the big trailer could be positioned by the main stage, and the dance floor trailer could be taken to the Second Stage area.
Additionally when another group wishes to rent/use the dance floor, they could just pull the smaller trailer to their location, easy on easy off.
This proposed second trailer needs to carry at least 7,000 lbs., so it would have to be something like an auto hauler, a construction/backhoe trailer or maybe a larger horse/cattle trailer (which would be covered as well).
If we had the small trailer, Mike could store the big one in Northland, and then it should be easier to find a location for just the smaller trailer closer to town.
So, please help get the word out: we need a second trailer and a place to keep both. Being nonprofit, we don't have a lot of money to put into this new trailer, so I hope we can find someone with a kind heart who could either give us a good deal or donate the trailer and claim it as a gift to a nonprofit come tax time.
Thanks for your help!
Please forward any info to Hiawatha (info@hiawathamusic.org or 906-226-8575), and I'll be back in touch with you.
