The line of wholesale buyers stretched outside the doors of the Ontario (California) Convention Center on Saturday morning as wholesalers lined up to enter TransAmerican's Truck Fest, held June 9-10. Inside the Convention Center Exhibit Hall, more than 50 vendors had set up booths and displays, including trailers from Fabtech, B.F. Goodrich, Pro Comp, and others, to showcase their latest and greatest off-road truck products to the trade.
TransAmerican was prepared to handle product sales to the trade with computer terminals and sales personnel at the ready. Manufacturers made special offers and buyers received great deals on the products they needed. Product demonstrations made the point.
Joe Bowman, marketing director at Accessories Marketing, Inc., demonstrated Slime's (the green goo that goes into tires) ability to seal punctures. Bowman hammered home the point by driving an ice pick into a large off-road tire and a smaller trailer tire and showing with just a rotation of the tire that Slime had sealed the puncture.
At another end of the exhibit hall, K&N's Bob Donovan demonstrated the air filter company's advantage over its competitors by blowing air through its line of filters and measuring the amount of airflow.
On the back-wall display, K&N had a fixture with a ping-pong ball floating on air. By covering the inlet with a brand-new paper filter, buyers could easily see just how much airflow was restricted (the ping-pong ball sank to the bottom of the tube).
This year, the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) was in attendance recruiting members from the wholesale off-road community. Working the SEMA booth were Tim Johnson, Gina Ledesma, Will Woods, Alan Dicker, and Cindy Booher. We even spotted SEMA's own Tom Myroniak roaming around the convention center wearing a distinctive red and black SEMA shirt.
Among the vendors with booths onsite were Banks Engineering, Mastercraft, Warn, Pro Comp, and many others.
Our own parent company Advanstar Communications teamed up with SEMA to co-sponsor the Saturday evening banquet.
On Sunday, the event changed from wholesale to retail as the public invaded the Convention Center Exhibit Hall where they could score some great bargains on off-road equipment. This event was clearly designed as a double sales event; sell wholesale on Saturday and sell retail on Sunday.
