My name is Sgt. Jack C. Keeler. I am a Marine currently serving on a unit deployment to Iraq. I have been a subscriber for many years. Until just recently I drove an '84 Blazer K-5. I loved that old piece of junk. It was all stock except for the 6-inch lift and 35-inch BFGoodrich MTs. Just before deploying to Iraq a friend and I went fishing and the truck didn't make it out. We decided to drive it around the Amphibious Assault Vehicle licensing course and found a hole that was bigger than the truck. There are some pretty big holes there. I am a crew leader with MWSS-372. My guys and I are Bulk Fuel Specialists, which means we refuel aircraft. In the Hot Pits we do that with the engines running and the rotors turning. Thanks for all of the support you guys are giving the troops over here. Seeing Marines, Sailors, Soldiers, and Airmen on your pages really boosts morale. Thanks for always putting out a magazine that is worth reading.
Good SUV news: They say statistics can be interpreted to prove just about anything. Well, the folks at the SUV Owners of America want the NHTSA to take a second look at its 2004 motor vehicle fatality statistics. Initially the government agency said SUV occupant fatalities rose 5.6 percent in 2004. But, countered the SUVOA, since SUV registrations were up 11 percent, the fatality rate actually dropped. "Without the context of exposure, the sheer number of fatalities is nearly meaningless," said SUVOA President Barry McCahill. "It's like saying a football team scored 14 points, which would be potent, pedestrian, or pathetic depending on whether the 'exposure' period was a quarter, a game, or season."
And the bad: The end of "employee pricing" coupled with high gas prices and the catastrophic hurricane season put fullsize SUV sales right in the toilet. According to industry reports, sales of the big utility vehicles fell 48 percent in September when compared with the same month in 2004. Taking a year-to-date look improved the picture somewhat, with January-through-September sales off a more modest 15 percent.
One SUV not feeling the slump was Hummer's new H3, which is solidly on GM's sales target. The General hoped to sell 25,000 between its May launch and the end of the year and through September had moved a tick over 18,000.
Fullsize pickup truck sales also managed to grow slightly during the SUV slump, with sales up some 4 percent for the first nine months of the year.
The Los Angeles Times recently reported that an audit in San Diego county turned up misuses of OHV fees by the California Department of Parks and Recreation. Money collected from OHV parks in the Southern California desert was reportedly spent on projects that did not directly benefit the riding/driving areas, such as funding state parks that are not OHV recreation areas. The report also criticized the Department for failing to properly plan for more off-road vehicle parks, given the tremendous growth in OHV users over the last decade. In response, a spokesman from the Parks Department noted that the state is considering opening two new OHV parks, near Bakersfield and Riverside.
In better news from the Golden State, SEMA reports that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) announced new land management plans for four Southern California national forests that will open up more back-country trails to OHVs. The management plans for the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres, and San Bernardino national forests allocate an additional 87,000 acres of land that the agency will recommend for wilderness protection, which is less than the 96,000 acres originally proposed. If approved by Congress, that would increase the total wilderness area within the four forests to nearly 1.2 million acres, more than one-third of the parks' combined 3.5 million acres. The new plans provide OHVs with greater access to roadless areas, allowing motorized recreation on approximately 25 percent of these inventoried areas, but only on designated roads and trails. In its comments to USFS, SEMA noted that most of this acreage already had some form of OHV use. The new plans also address so-called "user-created" trails and will, where appropriate, add these routes to the system. USFS officials noted that details regarding specific trail systems will come at a later date.
SEMA is also very involved in an overhaul of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which could have an effect on the amount of back-country land available for OHV use. A key piece of the proposal would replace existing "critical habitat" requirements, one of the more contentious areas of the existing law and a frequent source of lawsuits, with "recovery habitats." These recovery habitats would have fewer legal restrictions and be linked into the species recovery planning process. The bill also calls for the use of the best available scientific data in determining species status. Other features of the bill include: increasing the role of state and local governments in decision making; providing incentives to and protecting the rights of private property owners; and increasing the openness and accountability of the agencies involved in the designation process. The ESA has been making its way through the House of Representatives, but a Senate version reportedly won't be introduced until some time in 2006.