WHOA! Wait A Minute! What The?

Since creating this club a major topic of discussion has been the Pacific NorthWest 4 Wheel Drive Association (PNW4WDA). In the early days it seemed the club “needed” to become a member club to be recognized as an “official” 4×4 club. So we worked to meet all their requirements and paid a healthy fee to become part of the membership. I say healthy as we incorporated and passed on the fee to our members in their dues, essentially making each membership a dual membership in both RattleSnake 4x4s & the PNW4WDA.

As I recall it might have taken us until our second year before we actually made it, as the biggest  or least attractive thing was to cost. $40/yr per member/family. Now the club was only asking $25/yr at the time and added $10/yr to support The Blue Ribbon Coalition, so that meant $75/yr for a membership, with nearly 60% going to an organization that to date has yet to really provide any service other than a newsletter, and an alledged discount for parts (that our members get anyway). We have asked (over the years), the PNW4WDA to help us better understand and explain how that 60% was benefitting our members. We most often got something to the effect of “it’s on the (PNW4WDA) website.”

Well, that hasn’t sat well with us for the last 3, 4 maybe 5 years, and has been a constant discussion at meetings and get togethers as is would clearly appear the the PNW4WDA, uses monies collected to further mostly, if not only the interests of one group that being the racing community. West of the Cascades on the wet side of Washington, racing is a big deal, but on the Eastern (dryer) side there is less interest in racing and much more interest in actual 4 wheel drive adventures, whether that be rock crawling, chasing trails to simply explore out public lands or actually overlanding & camping.

Our leadership has in the past brought this to the PNW4WDA’s attention to still not have what we believe to be a valid or sensible (understandable) response.  CRICKETS!!!

So from this day forward RattleSnake 4x4s will no longer be collecting dues for or recommending membership in the PNW4WDA to our members, current year memberships will not berenewed by the club, and allowed to run out, next year’s dues will be adjusted to only $60/yr and will include support for Tread Lightly. 

We know that our sister club The Midnight Mudders have also pulled away from the PNW4WDA, most likely for similar reasons, like us they most likely felt cheated watching the racing scene get trophies and accolades, whilst we just pay up and stay quiet.

Most clubs and organizations are about making things better for their members, and since we as member don’t feel we got our monies worth, we’ll happily step aside and allow those into racing to fund their endeavours and we’ll save our money and support organizations that keep our trails open, in the forefront of discussion across this country.