The Kalmar Ottawa manufacturer in Ottawa, Kansas, held a unique auction with its dealers this year, in advance of October, breast cancer awareness month. It offered up two breast cancer awareness-themed Kalmar Ottawa yard spotters.
Diversified transportation company TCI, headquartered in California, was the winning bidder on the off-highway version of the pair of tractors, shown here.
Here’s how the auction worked: Kalmar covered its own costs, and dealers’ bid amount minus the OEM’s cost in each unit determined the donation amount to a particular foundation, in TCI’s case the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which focuses efforts on research and awareness. “Many dealers bid on the yard tractor,” said John Sappington, TCI Vice President of Sales & Marketing. “Based on what we paid, we gave the Komen foundation a $21,000-plus donation.”
TCI team members posing with their oversize check.
An on-highway version of the Kalmar Ottawa yard tractor went to New Jersey-based Avenel Truck & Equipment, yielding a $28K-plus donation to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.These companies join an untold number of Overdrive readers who’ve devised awareness efforts ranging from specially themed trucks, raffles, auctions, convoys and more (including a 2020 Pride & Polish competition winner) in the service of awareness of and research into a cure for the most common of cancers. I’ve selected a few below for further reading, as though the Breast Cancer Awareness Month of October is past, it’s never a bad time for awareness, or giving back.
