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I agree. I said that they should own the trucks. If they own the trucks then they are just paying a dude to drive them cross country which still isn't insignificant in terms of gas but shouldn't be ground breaking either.

It's not worth owning trucks to haul something to four events a year. The maintenance would probably exceed the rental cost. Having trucks sitting in the yard for 48 weeks of a year is a way to lose money.

A couple more notes and comments:

As noted, there is definitely a lot of GT-related prep labor that wasn't counted, and that probably offsets any overestimate for the onsite labor.

Truck rental / shipping was already covered per Don Mondo's $5k estimate / quote.

Venue price is the big question, whether it can be rented for as little as $10k for a full weekend, or if we're looking at $15k or $20k. (yikes!)

"Free" stuff for volunteers and prizes are probably a relatively small amount. I would uise GW's distribution "cost", before retail markup, so we're probably talking well under $1k for any prizes short of a Reaver Titan or 2500-pt army.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
Truck rental / shipping was already covered per Don Mondo's $5k estimate / quote.

This is another number that looks suspiciously high.

I just walked over and asked one of our Transportation/Traffic personnel what our most expensive carrier runs per day, and including fuel, it's about $2.98 per mile for a semi trailer that can carry 42,000 pounds (standard 18 wheeler rig you often pass on the highways). To get him to park at an event all weekend will cost roughly $150-$300/day that he's not driving, depending on seasonality (but most GTs seem to be held during shipping off-season hours).

So even if you've got an event location 250 miles from the nearest Distribution Center (250 miles will get you from New York, NY to Boston, MA by the way) and pay the driver to sit on his rear for 2 days, literal transportation should run $1800 or less per 42,000 pound lots traveling 500 miles round trip.

And this estimate is based off of our most expensive brokerage carrier and assumes 2 days of downtime at an added $150 premium/day. If GW uses its own transportation and can utilize the driver as a menial laborer, you could literally cut this cost in half.

Baltimore to Seattle is 2,800 miles. Even if it's $2 per mile, that's $5,600. Now, that's the extreme case. And a case which could suggest GW should buy a second set of tables and terrain for the left coast (and maybe they have it, but they didn't several years ago).

I think the GTs are, at best, a 'break even' scenario. If they made money, GW would be expanding them, and not halting them.

Now, maybe they're not 'profitable' in the 'GW corporate accounting system', and it wouldn't be the first time that a big company's internal money-tracking system says something is a loser even when people recognize it's not right. But, that's their internal problem. If some Indy GTs sprout up to fill the void, I think that's a good thing.

I ran a GT last year. The cost to each player was 35 dollars which included a hot lunch on both days. You can run a GT for low cost if you are resourceful.

G