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Convoys of beer fermentation tanks barged on the Rappahannock River to a King George farm and then trucked Chuck Sword of Sword Precision Scale Models |
By RUSTY DENNEN
It was a convoy of epic proportions: Giant Coors beer tanks strapped to huge rigs crawled through the Fredericksburg area for over a month earlier this year, snarling traffic and drawing hundreds of spectators in the wee hours of the morning.
Now, just in time for the holidays, a tractor-trailer and tank are being immortalized in miniature by an Ohio company that specializes in unusual scale-model collectibles.
"The collectors that buy this stuff are fascinated by the equipment enough to want toy models sitting on their shelves," said Chuck Sword, president of Sword Precision Scale Models.
Sword has produced exact 50-to-1 scale replicas of a Peterbilt 379 tractor, a Nelson nine-axle trailer, and one of the Coors fermenting tanks.
The shipments of the tanks--70 feet long, 20 feet in diameter and weighing 78,000 pounds each--began on the night of March 5 from a staging area at Farley Vale Farm in King George County.
Until mid-April, two convoys a week headed west on State Route 3, into Fredericksburg, then Spotsylvania and Culpeper, on to U.S. 29 to Ruckersville, over the Blue Ridge on U.S. 33, to Elkton in the Shenandoah Valley. Coors plans to open its first East Coast brewery there next year.
Manufactured in Germany, the tanks were shipped to Hampton Roads last fall and barged up the Rappahannock River. Resembling rockets, they were lined up end-to-end off State Route 3.
The convoys quickly became a spectator sport along the more than 100-mile route. Entire families stood at intersections in the middle of the night to see them.
Sword found out about the Coors convoys through a client and figured that there might be enough interest among collectors to make some models.
He flew in to get pictures to go with dimensions and other specifications gleaned from Coors and the trucking companies, which have licensed the products.
"We came over the hill" in King George, "and, sure enough, it looked like the aliens had landed" where the tanks were lined up nose to tail. Several of the loaded rigs were ready go.
At first, Sword was going to reproduce only the tractor and trailer.
"Then I started thinking that if we made the trailer, we should make the tank, too."
Producing a model is an involved process that can take six to 12 months, depending upon the piece of equipment, he said. Production engineers use a combination of manufacturer's specifications and hundreds of images to create a copy true to the most minute detail.
The die-cast models are manufactured in China.
These are not like Matchbox models of yore: They're much larger. For example, the tractor and trailer are 4 feet long. The fermenting tank is about 18 inches long and 5 inches in diameter.
The company produces a line of model trucks, cranes, earth movers and other heavy equipment.
"I think it's pretty neat," said Dan Clark, manager of heavy hauling projects for Lockwood Brothers Inc. of Hampton, which oversaw the Coors tank shipments. "Obviously, if they took that much time and effort to put it together, the project had more of an industry impact than I'd realized."
Sword, 43, a former software engineer, bought the company nine years ago after seeing his son Zachary's intense interest in toy construction equipment.
"Customer interest is important, and you have to know what people are looking for," he said. "It's a bit of a risk." Tooling fees for some projects can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Only a handful of companies in the United States produce the specialized models.
"We've got about 15,000 [customers] in our database," he said. Most are collectors, but buyers include small hobby shops, construction dealerships, Internet-based retailers.
"I think this is the first time that a relatively affordable heavy-haul truck with an American tractor will be available," Sword said of the Coors convoy models.
The Peterbilt and Nelson trailer have a price tag of $429.95; the Coors tank, $79.95. Sword is taking orders now. The tanks are in stock, the truck and trailer will be available early next year.
To reach RUSTY DENNEN:
Email: rdennen@freelancestar.com
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Gotta have one? Sword Precision Scale Models swordmodels.com/ |
