Profile: The East Coast Truckers Magazine
The East Coast Truckers conversion to a fully registered charity in the year 2000 was a major step forward and one that has proven to be beneficial not only to our members but also to our benefactors. Nevertheless because of the former clubs constitution regards membership (members had to be HGV licence holders) we still had a large audience that we could tap if we could find the right format. I thought of the scheme where we could introduce a different kind of membership Rod Green who was the chairman named my scheme the Friends of the East Coast Truckers Charity. It was agreed that a biannual magazine would be part of the new membership, and so it was. The new magazine would be called the ECTC Thymes, it was to be produced and edited by Peter Longman. The magazine was a partial success and from day one was covering its costs, just. After two years the magazine was taken over and edited by Ivan Hardy, pictured left, Ivan and the trustees decide to produce the magazine just once a year and Ivan renamed the magazine the East Coast Truckers Magazine. Ivan has quadrupled the print run of the magazine and also quadrupled the pages of the magazine, at the time of writing the magazine doubles in size every year in both print run and content. Ivan is ably assisted by Mike Read who not only writes many of the articles found within the pages but also checks the written content for mistakes and possible grey areas regards legal obligations. The magazine is totally self funding and most print runs now return a small profit and that is after the proceeds have financed the other publication that Ivan and Mike produce which is the East Coast Truckers Charity Monthly news letter. Again this has quadrupled in print run and content and is distributed wide and far. At the time of writing the Annual Magazine is edited and produced entirely by Ivan and Mike with many of the members contributing articles regards functions and events that they the members have run and organised. Ivan also canvasses for prospective advertisers and is always looking for new leads.
Once Ivan and Mike are satisfied that they have enough material they then set about building the magazine ready for printing. Ivan works with a very sophisticated piece of soft ware which allows him to save the magazine money by making sure that the Commercial Print Company only have to insert Ivan’s CD Rom into their printing equipment. As for the member’s monthly magazine, Ivan and Mike for the first few years of its conception printed it on a home use printer or should I say several as they used to wear a printer out every few months. Ivan then had the idea of leasing a used professional commercial printer; he had worked out that the amount of magazines being printed would make the leasing of such a good piece of equipment a viable option in the long run, although it will be sometime before the same set of criteria can be applied to the annual magazine. Finally when the monthly magazine has been printed it has to be stapled and ready for the hundreds of people who look forward to receiving and reading such a good publication, to complete this task Ivan and Mike call upon some of our older retired members, one afternoon they converge on Ivan’s house and set about the final task of putting it all together. If you would like a copy of all the members monthly magazine just go to the relevant page where you can down load virtually every magazine produced. This option is not available on the annual magazine at this moment but who knows may be in the future we can offer that option.
The EAST COAST TRUCKERS MAGAZINE has been a roaring success and that is all down to the hard work and dedication of its very small production team. It is something all of our members are immensely proud of and many much larger charities envy. We may be a minnow in the world of charity but our ideas are as big as our hearts, and you can rest assured the we the EAST COAST TRUCKERS CHARITY Will always DRIVE YOUR CHARITY HOME. |
