Land Speed Racing For A Living

[Gu11ett]

My wife gets meals, motel rooms, lots of sun, free ride to and from Bonneville. In return she gives a heck of a lot of support, time, effort and understanding. Does that count as a full-time crew person? There are also untold number of people that pitch in when asked or begged.

[Fordrat31]

My crew get to work nights and weekends for free, and then help pay for gas and motels. I pay for their 2 club banquet tickets and usually take them to the Montego Bay buffet.

Haha atleast you take them to the good buffet!!

[dw230]

The cars and bikes aside, there is one paid person for the SCTA-BNI. That is JoAnn Carlson in the office. The other administration people give of their time and passion to support the sport. This includes traveling to meetings, paying for their own dinner at said meetings, caging copy paper and computer time at work(did I just say that) and any number of things in preparation of running the El Mirage and Bonneville events.

At the salt the support crew, officials and volunteers, will get a daily per diem to help(important word) pay for lodging and food. The rest is on their own dime.

Personally, I spend a minimum of 3 hrs. per day on LSR stuff. This includes email questions, web stuff and work for the Bonneville 200 MPH club. I help on the cars of the White Goose Bar team which is a 60 mile one way drive for a work day.

DW

[F104A]

The British, Noble, Green, Ayers seem to do alright............Ed

[4-barrel Mike]

Yeah, but they're almost government employees, aren't they?   

Mike

[salt]

My 'crew chief' officially works at my (classic car resto and sales) shop but spends the majority of his hours on the race car . . . sometimes 30 hours straight before a race  . . . as someone said above, he's  very 'dedicated' and I am lucky to have him!
Willi

[sabat]

Thanks for your effort Dan Warner.

I think it's possible to offset costs, and doing things yourself helps, but i like the fact that very few can do it for money. Keeps the mindset pure

[Hooley]

One of my crew was asked how his trip to Bonneville was and His answer was " That's the hardest I ever worked for a FREE T shirt."

The Hotels and Motels in Wendover do try to make all theirs in one week. That might come close.

              Hooley

[LSR Mike]

The ECTA may qualify as a part time job...

[Buickguy3]

  Does working full time for Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to pay off the past year's Land Racing Expenses qualify as a "Full time job"? 
     Doug 

[Milwaukee Midget]

Like music for me, I do LSR to keep my mind off of work.  When the music business got to the point where it became work, that's when I started throttling back.

LSR and WORK?  Come on, guys, don't ruin this one for me, too . . .

[hotrod]

I do the photography I do, simply for the fun of occasionally getting a really special shot that no one else has.

It just gives me a reason to go out there every year and do something totally different than my day to day job.

One of owners on one of the stream liner teams made a comment last year when I was showing him some pictures and asking if he wanted to buy a print.
He said "Why is everyone else making money doing this except us?"

I did not have the heart to tell him I lose a couple thousand dollars a year traveling out there to shoot the pictures just for the fun of it.
When you count the equipment costs for several thousand dollars worth of cameras and lenses, software and computer costs, the travel costs and the hours of time invested in editing the images, the true cost of the photos you see the serious photographers shoot is several times the token cost they ask in return for a print.

No one I know is doing this to "make money", if you are lucky you can recoup a small fraction of the costs but it is no where near a profit making enterprise.

Larry

[Dakzila]

Hmm I see what you guys mean about there not being a specific land speed racing company. What about the guys on some of the larger teams? Are any of them full time paid staff?

I have to believe that the team that backs Speed Demon would have a few paid members, maybe I'm wrong though.

I won't answer for Ron but I'm pretty sure the Speed Demon team members are all volunteers (VERY HARD WORKING VOLUNTEERS!).

Buzz

[Fordrat31]

Well it is kinda nice to see that for the most part everyone building, designing, and driving is on a volunteer basis. I guess that means you can't really "buy" speed, you have to make it your friend, then convince it to volunteer on your team! 

[dw230]

"speed, you have to make it your friend, then convince it to volunteer on your team!"

Thats a good line, you should make it your signature.

DW