From the email blurb I just received a new auto carrier with 6 Ford trucks. It looks nice and the trucks are scale. The car is 14-3/4" longs too so not a bad deal. The odd part is this :
"Constructed primarily of wood, this innovative flatcar is the first construction of its kind."
Has anyone seen one of these?
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i have to say Menards owns the colorful autocarrier market!
The “wood” is MDF. Menards has been using this material for most of its O and HO buildings for some time. It eliminates the need for molds and tooling costs since the fiber board is handcrafted into shape.
These already sold out yesterday. Just a friendly update.
sold out! you are one of the lucky ones.
mine arrived today; One of the panel trucks was NOT screwed down. Opened the box the panel truck fell to the floor scratching it.
two of the side mirrors of two panel truck broken off, luckily in the box with the two screws that were supposed to lock down the moving truck.
end MDF frame broken off likely from the moving truck.
of the five panel trucks secured; on top level two are scratched. The top panel trucks are screwed down tightly squashing the rubber wheels. No way to loosed the screws.
the MDF bilevel frame is not secured to the wheel truck frame.
your lucky they were sold out. hope others have better luck.
if you take out the lower level trucks you can access the top level ones to loosen the screws. You need a really short screwdriver of course. Harbor Freight sells them for practically nothing. I have some I’ve had for decades for working behind the dashboard of old cars.
My experience was with the original Menards auto carrier with the modern Buicks but I assume they’re still made the same way. Sorry about the loose car and breakage. That’s China for ya. You can always return it and it will probably end up in a mystery box for someone.
One of our club members ordered a couple of the 4 packs for our club then we share them out at the club. The one I got was with the Dodge pickups. The middle bottom truck had come loose in transit, top of this roof was badly scratched up, it had knocked bumper off one of the other tied down trucks behind. It broke some wood on the side. The end had the top side bars bent in at the end I guess poor packaging design. The tops of the 3 top trucks had buffing marks on the tops of the roofs as they had rubbed against the plastic packaging. If they had used tissue between the roofs and plastic lid this would not have happened. I was able to glue back together and paint black the wood trim that had been damaged and screwed down the loose truck, you do not see the scratched up roof much as it is hidden a bit on bottom level of the auto rack. On running the train I found that there were 2 wobbly wheels so the auto rack wobbles a bit down the track. It still looks great on the tracks and does work ok. Will see if any others that the club got had issues. Still a good price and very nice vehicles.
It's a shame when good products are ruined by bad packaging. We read about it all the time with Lionel too, so not just a menards problem.
These carriers are real delicate and fragile. They would look great.
The MDF superstructure is way too fragile for the packaging.
The vehicles could be packaged so as not to be easily scratched.
These are simple fixes.
Simple fixes,
But not for $50.
the cost to package better and make a metal or plastic superstructure, as well as, separately package the vehicles, clearly increases the cost of the car.
So the trade-off is cheap but broken and scratched or
expensive and sturdy.
@Mark Holmgren 110217 posted:That’s China for ya.
Mark,
This is absolute baloney.
Who's responsible here? It's the firm that placed the order with China, for failing to hold its Chinese supplier(s) to high standards, and then accepting the result.
In this case Menards. In other cases Lionel, MTH, Atlas, <fill-in-the-blank>, etc.
Along with receiving the cost benefits of moving production to a lower cost country comes the responsibility for ensuring that the same, or better, quality comes back in return.
If you have to fly there twice a month and chew them out to get it, But you do it. And here's the irony of the situation -- it may cost you an arm and a leg to do so, but you just do it.
Because it's the right thing to do.
Mike
ok so I just received another one of these with ford pickup trucks.
NO ISSUES.
So I guess the other one is just a one-off.
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