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Hello Again Everyone, With
a small tear in my eye I am writing my last President’s Notes article. My term began June 1 last year and will
end on May 31. It actually started a month early at the May Traffic Club meeting as Melissa Bedwell could
not attend her last meeting that she would chair. At that meeting (all fired up) I aggressively laid out what I thought
we should try to accomplish in the upcoming year to grow and improve the 101 year old organization. Perhaps my biggest
goal was to be energetic, enthusiastic, and very positive in my belief that the St. Louis Traffic Club was important!!! Since
I am also sentimental, I have been mindful and respectful of the great and long 100 plus year tradition of the St. Louis Traffic
Club. I also felt that we needed to bring the club into a more current era in technology by the development of
a fantastic Website. Perhaps the first thing I addressed was the mailed, and printed newsletter. I felt that with
email it was too costly and basically out of the main stream, so it ended last summer. But thanks to Jim Labit and Todd
TeBrink we have improved our site incredibly which helped replace the printed letter. Our website has been a success,
and for the year 2009 as we had 18,000 plus hits or visits, and I am sure that 2010 will be even bigger. If you haven’t
visited it lately we have added many useful links and regular monthly updates. Industry News, Federal and State transportation
links, a calendar of our future events, and photos from this year’s events can be found there. I am very proud
of what we have accomplished in our improvements—but most importantly, please use and enjoy them! Also, we are
selling advertising for the site and it is cheap, so please take advantage of promoting your company there---18,000 hits last
year! Think-a-bout
it!!!! Another goal was to grow the club’s membership and increase the participation in our
events. Quite honestly that part has been at best a mixed bag of success. To grow our membership and
increase participation we have tried to keep our costs and fees down for our events as well as reducing membership dues to
$25.. A big example of this was last October when we thru a nine hole golf event with a “free happy hour”
afterwards that we used as a membership drive at Crystal Springs Quarry, in Maryland Heights. I would say that it was
a “reasonable success” though the turnout of 100 was less than I expected. I figured with free food and
booze for 3 hours, considering the economy, we might have gotten 3 times that much. But it was very fun though!!!
We are going back to Crystal Springs again this September for a 18 hole event, may be a Happy Hour too, so don’t miss
this one. Now before everyone writes me off (perhaps celebrates my departure) we
have two events this month. One is the National Transportation week that will be held at Afton Trucking on May 10th
and World Trade Night’ on May 13th. The NTW event is run wonderfully each year by Cassie Tracy
and is a tour for a local grade school at Afton—she still needs prizes and gifts so please let us know if you want to
help out. The World Trade Night is a combination event with the World Trade Center and should be a “can’t
miss’ evening for everyone. You can register and pay by going to our site and using PayPal. I would like to say thanks to EVERYONE who made my year a great one but
especially the members of the Traffic Club Board. Your dedication to our club is fantastic! Extra special thanks again
to Jim Labit for his work on the website and the Annual Dinner, Todd TeBrink on the website, PayPal, and photos, Jimmy Smith
for his company, River Roads Sales and Leasing generosity in gift donations and sponsorship, the same goes to Tom Komadina
for DTS’s great support on all of our events and work on the board, Brad Reinhardt for all of the things he does (congrats
also for his Lifetime Achievement Award), Tom Grant from Ace logistics for his help in golf, Lori Schmid for her great help,
Mike Burke for advertising and By-laws, Tim Collins for Christmas Bell ringing, and anyone else I may have missed. So after the next two events this month a truly great president will
take over-Mr. Todd TeBrink, so we are in very good hands!!!! I am positive that he will continue a long line of great presidents
that we have had. Thanks again everyone for letting me serve, it was
a privilege and honor. AL Hursey, over and almost out! Alan Hursey Managing PartnerReTrans St. Louis 618-451-2266 – Office 618-795-3672 – Cell 618-451-2285 - Fax
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