Everybody loves to touch trucks
Published 11:26 pm Monday, September 10, 2007
Question: Which Marysville event that’s not a festival has drawn an estimated 45,000 people over the past 10 years?
Answer: It’s Touch a Truck, in which kids — and adults — are given a chance to climb into, sit in, run their hands over and just be in the presence of fire trucks, garbage trucks, police cars, street sweepers, dump trucks and more.
More than 6,000 people came to the 10th annual event on Saturday to see 32 police, fire, municipal and other official-type vehicles — all in three hours.
“It was the best one we’ve ever had,” said Tara Mizell, parks and recreation services manager for the city of Marysville. “The weather was perfect.”
Mizell started the event in Marysville in 1998 after attending a parks-and-recreation class in California where officials from Massachusetts raved about the success of a similar event there. In Marysville, it’s grown steadily ever since.
While the event is primarily aimed at children, adults enjoy it just as much and account for about half of those who attend.
“I think there’s a secret group of people known as dads who enjoy it just as much as the kids,” she said. “And moms enjoy it, too.”
Here’s some inside information on Touch a Truck:
Average attendance: About 4,500; up to 6,000 on sunny days.
Most popular vehicle: The garbage truck, “because the kids see it come to their house,” Mizell said. Next come police cars, fire engines and Community Transit buses (whose wheels, of course, go round and round.)
Oldest rig: 1953 GMC utility truck, used in 1953 by crews keeping the city’s water and sewer pipes working.
Most unusual display: A sewer inspection camera, which attaches to different trucks or trailers. The camera is sent through sewers and pictures tell crews about the pipelines’ condition.
Most expensive: A shiny new Community Transit articulated bus, which cost $473,509; a 2005 Freightliner vactor truck, which carries up to 1,500 gallons of water to pressure-wash sewer lines and catch basins, $294,000; a 2008 International dump truck, which carries loads of up to 66,000 pounds, $200,000.
Organizers: city of Marysville, Marysville Fire District, Community Transit, Snohomish County Search and Rescue, Marysville Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, and Marysville PTSA.
— Bill Sheets, Herald writer
