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Old 02-21-2013, 08:27 PM   #151 (permalink)
stillsearching
EcoModding Apprentice
 
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Minnesota
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shepherd777 View Post
I just like to build them. Not drive them for weeks at a time.

Thanks for the tip! I have never heard of that "trade dress protection". I will have to research that.
The beauty of trade dress protection is that it sorta-almost can be applied retroactively as well - meaning what you already have done should still be eligible. You just have to make a very similar shape in the future OR keep that shape alive, ie put out something onto the market soon afterwards, which keeps that shape. Basically once you have invested money into "establishing" a shape, which is meant to be associated with your business, as far as I understand you can then apply to have it officially registered. As long as nobody contests it in the year or two after (and if nobody else made a truck shaped quite like this, they wouldn't) it should be yours.

You can send donations for this consultation to blah blah blah. ^_^


Have you considered making something like an actual commercial sale of truck front and sides possibly something alterable to work on multiple trucks? I dont have alot of faith in my own building abilities but I can bolt things together. I would love something like this, provided it weren't excessively expensive. As it is i'm wanting to at some point acquire a class 6-8 truck primarily for moving my own stuff... hearing nutso quotes by truckers who want like $3500 to move an empty semi trailer 300 miles (one guy offered for $750, but even at that, if I have ten or so I want eventually moved, and I see running working semis literally in the few thousand dollar range at times on craigslist, it gets me thinking...) as I have a need for alot of storage, and where they are available for cheap is not where I need the storage, I figure i'd rather buy something, haul it myself going way slow (would love to hear a 40mph mpg quote from the truck - as i'd drive 40 if it helped, more time than money) then resell the truck and such afterwards. Yet 5mpg averages on older trucks and deadheading still would eat up most of the cost.

Mostly I either see old flatnose semis for the cheapest (wonder whether starting there would make the aero harder or easier), or I see things like airbraked school busses for tolerable prices, which I figure could probably have the shell removed and a fifth wheel put on the frame rails to move my trailers, though i'm not sure if i'd encounter length limit problems starting there... I literally only need to move empty trailers around for cheap at tare weight, if the aero load can be reduced by these methods the lower power of some class 6/7 trucks becomes irrelevant. Possibly even a gasoline truck becomes more feasible. (my main fear with big diesels is reliability/getting such a rig stranded halfway to somewhere, a single tow charge would kill everything, yet a gas schoolbus i can replace the engine with a replacement longblock for $1100 most of the time... long as it has a big fifth wheel and air brake support)

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