Month: September 2019

Ohio State University’s licensing income from licensing research and staff innovations reached a new record of $8.8 million in 2019, even without the benefit of a one-time stock sale the prior year.
Kevin Taylor, the university’s new commercialization chief, echoed his predecessors in saying that’s not the number he’s focused on – because if he does his job right, the dollars will take care of themselves. Instead Ohio State focuses on leading indicators like the rise in the number of active spinoffs…

via Columbus Business News – Local Columbus News | Business First of Columbus
As OSU tech licensing income climbs, newly hired commercialization chief sees ‘untapped potential’

Email marketing, as you’ll know, is such a big part of modern-day business.

Mistakes and bumps occur frequently – this can be due to not copy checking, missing links, and various other editing bloopers.

Fails are frustrating for both ends of the emails – even if we all appreciate that, as humans, we all make errors sometimes.  

Mistakes and errors are great ways to learn – allowing you to overcome obstacles and create (nearly) perfect emails in the future.  

Below, we’ve listed the top fails that every email marketing company endures – and how they can overcome them.  

Dear First Name  

There’s really nothing quite as personal as receiving an email that says, “Dear </FirstName>.” 

Not only does this tell the user that they’re just a small tool in your marketing machine, but it’s also highly unprofessional.  

Email marketing is supposed to revolve around, making meaningful relationships with customers or clients. Sending out an email like this will push your audience away, making them feel like, well, a name on a list.  

The best way to stop issues like this happening is by sending out test emails. This way you can make sure that your HTML all works fine.  

Also, when you’re asking people to sign up to your mailing list, are you making it essential for them to give their names? Make sure there’s little margin for error or embarrassment. 

Spelling errors 

This is an inevitable part of any company that works with writing copy. Of course, certain typos and grammar mistakes are inescapable, especially if you’re sending out multiple emails a week.  

Double-check over your email copy, and make sure grammar is all up to standard. For example, an email from San Antonio read: 

“Help Kids Enjoy FREE beer” – one little comma changes the entire message that this email is trying to depict. Always check your emails, use tools like Grammarly to make sure you’re sending out an email that won’t become a viral tweet.  

Spell check might not always be your friend, too – autocorrect can make some embarrassing changes, so make sure it’s not changed anything without you noticing.  

Read over your email a few times before sending it out. That’s the key to a faultless campaign.  

If you aren’t ready to hire an in-house team of writers and editors, you can always take advantage of the available services and tools like Trust My Paper, Best Essay.Education, Grammarly, and Hemingway.

Segmenting your audience  

If you have a large mailing list, make sure that you’re segmenting your audience to an impeccable degree.  

You may remember when Amazon sent out a baby registry email to thousands of people with no babies or no babies on the way. That was a big blunder that caused a little bit of laughter.  

However, segmenting your audience wrongly can lead to some disasters. Certain audiences don’t want to receive certain emails, and it may push them to unsubscribe.  

In fact, the National Client Email Report from the DMA in 2015, stated that 77% of email marketing ROI came from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns.  

Make sure that customers or clients are updating their preferences, to stop them from clicking the unsubscribe button.  

The images don’t follow the rules 

Certain emails just don’t look the way you want them to, once you’ve sent them out.  

Various buttons and images will completely go rouge, and make your email look so strange.  

This actually has cataclysmic consequences – if your customer opens up the email, and sees a jumble of images and buttons, they won’t stay on it for long.  

Again, this can be solved with a simple test email being sent out to multiple different browsers and devices. This way, you can ensure that it all works the way you want it to.  

Don’t try to hide the unsubscribe button  

As an email marketing company, the unsubscribe button might feel like your worst enemy – but you should never try to hide the button.  

Every form of an electronic message is required to have an unsubscribe option, and it’s only fair.  

Firstly, you could end up getting in a lot of trouble, which is never desirable and doesn’t reflect well on your company.  

Secondly, if they can’t find your unsubscribe button, they might just choose to report your email for spam. When multiple people do this, it causes real problems.  

Just make sure it’s nice and obvious. If people want to unsubscribe, for whatever reason, they should be able to without any issues.  

Fonts not displaying correctly 

Email clients are very restrictive when it comes to what they may (or may not) render.  

It’s frustrating because there’s a wide range of beautiful fonts out there, but you can’t use them all with emails. Sometimes, it just isn’t worth the risk too.  

It all depends on the contact’s own device. This means it’s best if you stick to standard web fonts, so you can ensure they’re accessible to everybody.  

If the font you have used isn’t on the recipient’s device, it will fall back to a web standard font anyway. This can cause your design to look strange for some people. You don’t have any control over what this backup version looks like, unfortunately.  

“I strongly recommend that you always play it safe with fonts. The standard web fonts can make great emails, anyway. Don’t be disheartened if some obscure font you really like can’t be integrated or displayed in various email clients.” — Amanda Muller, an email marketing specialist at Grab My Essay.

Ineffective subject lines  

Did you know an average business worker receives and sends upwards of 121 emails every single day? 

There’s very little chance that they will open and read every single one. They will, however, see all the subject lines.  

If you have a cliché or boring subject line, they’ll delete without even opening.  

Writing headlines and subject lines is a tricky art to master. It’s absolutely essential, though. The subject line is the difference between an email that’s engaged with, and one that isn’t.  

Plan your subject lines carefully, and always make sure that you’re targeting the audience that you want to.  

Emojis are a great way to communicate in business, believe it or not. This is especially true if you’re targeting younger generations.  

Remember; what’s the problem you’re trying to solve or the main selling point? 

Offering no value  

On the same note, with so many emails being sent out every single day – you have to provide your audience with value.  

To begin, you have to build a relationship and create a level of trust with your subscribers. This will ensure that they will open your emails. 

For example, if you’re a travel website – make sure that you provide your audience with a mixture of valuable information and promotions. Top 10 travel tips, The best rucksacks for backpackers, and the cheapest hostels in Bali are all great pieces of information, that can all be used as selling points.  

Don’t give too much information, though. People don’t have the time or attention span to read through paragraphs of information. Make it short and sweet – with snappy, appealing links, and headlines. Give the power to the reader.  

Conclusion

With all these common mistakes and fails, it should all be seen as a learning curve.  

There are multiple ways that an email campaign can go wrong – but avoiding these top mistakes will ensure that it happens much less often.  

Failure doesn’t mean that you should give up. It simply means that you should keep climbing and learning. It’s a necessary part of creating the most successful email campaigns.  

What mistakes have you learned from? 

via Noupe
Top Fails That Hit Every Email Marketing Company

I saw Miguel’s post about David Hogg claiming that mass shootings today are somehow related to Wounded Knee and some Harvard level deep thinking like that.

David Hogg is part of the chorus of voices calling for civilian disarmament, which has metastasized thought the Democrats and is now part of every Presidential primary candidate’s platform.

From History.com:

On December 29, the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under Big Foot, a Lakota Sioux chief, near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, although it’s unclear from which side. A brutal massacre followed, in which it’s estimated 150 Indians were killed (some historians put this number at twice as high), nearly half of them women and children. The cavalry lost 25 men.

From the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains published by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln:

While these discussions proceeded in the Lakota camp, a number of Indians began singing Ghost Dance songs, with some rising to throw handfuls of dirt in the air. The troops who surrounded them perceived the singing and dirt throwing as signals to attack, and at this tense moment the fuse was lit. A man named Black Coyote (sometimes called Black Fox) refused to surrender his rifle to a soldier. The two began wrestling over the gun, and in the struggle it discharged. Immediately the nervous troops began firing, while the Miniconjous retrieved their weapons and returned fire.

The military’s rifle fire was complemented with cannon rounds from Hotchkiss guns, whose accuracy and exploding shells were formidable. The outnumbered and outgunned Lakotas fled, and for several hours intermittent gunfire continued, with the military in pursuit. Bodies were found as far away as three miles from the camp. Firing ceased, and by midafternoon the troops had gathered up their dead and wounded, as well as Lakota wounded, and returned to Pine Ridge Agency. The fear of a reprisal attack kept troops and civilians entrenched at the agency until January 3, 1891, when a military-escorted civilian burial party proceeded to the site of the massacre. There they buried 146 Lakotas in a single mass grave. Other dead were accounted for later, bringing the total to more than 250 Lakotas; the Seventh Cavalry lost twenty-five men.

So the Wounded Knee Massacre was the result of the US Government engaging in civilian disarmament.

This horrible massacre, which is a stain on the history of the United States, was the 1890’s equivalent of what David Hogg has been demanding for over a year and the Democrats are campaigning on.

By Hogg’s current standard, the 7th Calvary are the heroes, taking the rapid-fire, high capacity magazine rifles away from civilians.

This just goes to prove that any disarmament program will be a blood bath, as all it takes for the shooting to start is for one man to refuse to give up his rifle and get into a tussle over it.  The idea that several million Americans could be disarmed peacefully is ludicrous if the US Calvary couldn’t peacefully disarm a few hundred Indians.

Maybe it’s because I didn’t go Harvard like David Hogg, but I just can’t follow the logic here.

via
A little history for David Hogg and the Democrats on Wounded Knee

via Recoil
KelTec Releases a New .22LR Option: The P17 Pistol

While the software revolution started out slowly, over the past few years it’s exploded and the fastest-growing segment to-date has been the shift towards software as a service or SaaS.

SaaS has dramatically lowered the intrinsic total cost of ownership for adopting software, solved scaling challenges and taken away the burden of issues with local hardware. In short, it has allowed a business to focus primarily on just that — its business — while simultaneously reducing the burden of IT operations.

Today, SaaS adoption is increasingly ubiquitous. According to IDG’s 2018 Cloud Computing Survey, 73% of organizations have at least one application or a portion of their computing infrastructure already in the cloud. While this software explosion has created a whole range of downstream impacts, it has also caused software developers to become more and more valuable.

The increasing value of developers has meant that, like traditional SaaS buyers before them, they also better intuit the value of their time and increasingly prefer businesses that can help alleviate the hassles of procurement, integration, management, and operations. Developer needs to address those hassles are specialized.

They are looking to deeply integrate products into their own applications and to do so, they need access to an Application Programming Interface, or API. Best practices for API onboarding include technical documentation, examples, and sandbox environments to test.

APIs tend to also offer metered billing upfront. For these and other reasons, APIs are a distinct subset of SaaS.

For fast-moving developers building on a global-scale, APIs are no longer a stop-gap to the future—they’re a critical part of their strategy. Why would you dedicate precious resources to recreating something in-house that’s done better elsewhere when you can instead focus your efforts on creating a differentiated product?

Thanks to this mindset shift, APIs are on track to create another SaaS-sized impact across all industries and at a much faster pace. By exposing often complex services as simplified code, API-first products are far more extensible, easier for customers to integrate into, and have the ability to foster a greater community around potential use cases.

Graphics courtesy of Accel

Billion-dollar businesses building APIs

Whether you realize it or not, chances are that your favorite consumer and enterprise apps—Uber, Airbnb, PayPal, and countless more—have a number of third-party APIs and developer services running in the background. Just like most modern enterprises have invested in SaaS technologies for all the above reasons, many of today’s multi-billion dollar companies have built their businesses on the backs of these scalable developer services that let them abstract everything from SMS and email to payments, location-based data, search and more.

Simultaneously, the entrepreneurs behind these API-first companies like Twilio, Segment, Scale and many others are building sustainable, independent—and big—businesses.

Valued today at over $22 billion, Stripe is the biggest independent API-first company. Stripe took off because of its initial laser-focus on the developer experience setting up and taking payments. It was even initially known as /dev/payments!

Stripe spent extra time building the right, idiomatic SDKs for each language platform and beautiful documentation. But it wasn’t just those things, they rebuilt an entire business process around being API-first.

Companies using Stripe didn’t need to fill out a PDF and set up a separate merchant account before getting started. Once sign-up was complete, users could immediately test the API with a sandbox and integrate it directly into their application. Even pricing was different.

Stripe chose to simplify pricing dramatically by starting with a single, simple price for all cards and not breaking out cards by type even though the costs for AmEx cards versus Visa can differ. Stripe also did away with a monthly minimum fee that competitors had.

Many competitors used the monthly minimum to offset the high cost of support for new customers who weren’t necessarily processing payments yet. Stripe flipped that on its head. Developers integrate Stripe earlier than they integrated payments before, and while it costs Stripe a lot in setup and support costs, it pays off in brand and loyalty.

Checkr is another excellent example of an API-first company vastly simplifying a massive yet slow-moving industry. Very little had changed over the last few decades in how businesses ran background checks on their employees and contractors, involving manual paperwork and the help of 3rd party services that spent days verifying an individual.

Checkr’s API gives companies immediate access to a variety of disparate verification sources and allows these companies to plug Checkr into their existing on-boarding and HR workflows. It’s used today by more than 10,000 businesses including Uber, Instacart, Zenefits and more.

Like Checkr and Stripe, Plaid provides a similar value prop to applications in need of banking data and connections, abstracting away banking relationships and complexities brought upon by a lack of tech in a category dominated by hundred-year-old banks. Plaid has shown an incredible ramp these past three years, from closing a $12 million Series A in 2015 to reaching a valuation over $2.5 billion this year.

Today the company is fueling an entire generation of financial applications, all on the back of their well-built API.

Graphics courtesy of Accel

Then and now

Accel’s first API investment was in Braintree, a mobile and web payment systems for e-commerce companies, in 2011. Braintree eventually sold to, and became an integral part of, PayPal as it spun out from eBay and grew to be worth more than $100 billion. Unsurprisingly, it was shortly thereafter that our team decided to it was time to go big on the category. By the end of 2014 we had led the Series As in Segment and Checkr and followed those investments with our first APX conference in 2015.

Plaid, Segment, Auth0, and Checkr had only raised Seed or Series A financings! And we are even more excited and bullish on the space. To convey just how much API-first businesses have grown in such a short period of time, we thought it would be useful perspective to share some metrics over the past five years, which we’ve broken out in the two visuals included above in this article.

While SaaS may have pioneered the idea that the best way to do business isn’t to actually build everything in-house, today we’re seeing APIs amplify this theme. At Accel, we firmly believe that APIs are the next big SaaS wave — having as much if not more impact as its predecessor thanks to developers at today’s fastest-growing startups and their preference for API-first products. We’ve actively continued to invest in the space (in companies like, Scale, mentioned above).

And much like how a robust ecosystem developed around SaaS, we believe that one will continue to develop around APIs. Given the amount of progress that has happened in just a few short years, Accel is hosting our second APX conference to once again bring together this remarkable community and continue to facilitate discussion and innovation.

Graphics courtesy of Accel

via TechCrunch
APIs are the next big SaaS wave

Melissa Bailey joined Ohio State University’s optometry faculty in 2006, catching the entrepreneurial bug amid the school’s first efforts to amp up commercialization of research.
She spun out her first company, a mobile app to measure vision, in 2014 – a long licensing process "from scratch," the associate professor said. It also was tough to find internal funding to develop the product. Her second spinout in 2017 was bifocal soft contact lenses. OSU’s licensing process was streamlined and she…

via Columbus Business News – Local Columbus News | Business First of Columbus
Ohio universities take ‘big leap’ on tech commercialization with new ‘IP Promise’

hackingbear writes: A team of researchers at China’s Zhejiang University were able to create a gel that makes tooth enamel repair itself, they wrote in the science journal Science Advances, a development that could spell the end of fillings as an (unreliable) method to repair cavities which are one of the most prevalent chronic diseases in humans. The gel succeeded in making the enamel repair itself within only 48 hours. Though it now only manages to generate a layer of about 3 micrometres — about 400 times thinner than undamaged enamel, the researcher says the gel could be repeatedly applied to build up this repair layer. The team is now testing the gel in mice and hopes to later test it in people.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

via Slashdot
Chinese Scientists Regrow Tooth Enamel In 48 Hours With Phosphate Gel

Link

Beyond the Brick shares a noisy, yet hypnotic look inside one of the production lines at LEGO’s Kladno, Czech Republic, as a nearly endless stream of freshly-molded minifig parts roll out of sifting machines to be stamped with graphics to give them their identities. We love the part at the end showcasing all the designs.

via The Awesomer
LEGO Minifig Printing Factory

United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- In the past months, I have emphasized that it is not enough to fight hard for our Second Amendment rights, Second Amendment supporters need to fight smart, too. In today’s very hostile media climate, the approach we use in defending our rights will define how we come across to our fellow Americans. It might sound repetitive, but as we saw with the Ask Amy column which became a fiasco thanks to responses from some that were ill-thought out (at best), it is necessary.

Loyal Ammoland readers are very passionate about their Second Amendment rights. This is a good thing. When Beto O’Rourke and Eric Swalwell talk about mandatory buybacks of modern multi-purpose semi-automatic firearms, they seek to perpetrate an injustice in the form of punishing millions of Americans who did nothing wrong by infringing on their rights.

They are in the wrong, along with Everytown for Gun Safety, Michael Bloomberg, March for Our Lives, the Brady Campaign, and other anti-Second Amendment groups and politicians.

Those who have stood against the injustices that those groups seek to inflict on law-abiding Americans, like the NRA, and other pro-Second Amendment groups, are in the right by defending the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

But while we know the facts and the truth about the purpose of the Second Amendment’s protection of our natural rights, far too many Americans don’t. How we talk about Second Amendment issues could determine if these Americans eventually see things our way or if they instead choose to go along with the likes of Beto O’Rourke, Eric Swalwell, Cory Booker, and Dianne Feinstein.

The fury we all feel about the intended infliction of injustice is a righteous anger. However, if we let that anger control us, we risk doing more harm than good. So, I’d like you to put yourself in the position of a suburban parent. They don’t own guns, they work, they take their kids to school and soccer games, and their knowledge of Second Amendment issues is often what is in the local paper and the news. You’re a neighbor they’ve been on friendly terms with, and maybe they’ve seen you wearing a NRA hat or noticed something that reveals your Second Amendment support. I’ll post two responses to a possible question or statement they might ask or make. Then ask yourself which one would be more likely to convince you to support the Second Amendment.

“That school shooting was horrible, why did it happen?”

1. “People – real, live, allegedly lucid people – actually believe that this ‘shooting’ was real? Wow. That is difficult to believe. Just watch a single one of the interviews of the crisis actors involved and tell me with a straight face that the person has just witnessed about a dozen people being gunned down.”
2. “I think wild guesses about what caused this won’t do anybody any good. It’s better to wait for the facts to find out what happened in this case. Right now, I’m just keeping the victims in my prayers.”

“Some Congressman wants to ban assault rifles and require people to turn them in. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

1. “From my cold dead hands.”
2. “What he is proposing is the infliction of a massive injustice on millions of Americans who had nothing to do with this or any other shooting by infringing on their rights. Justice Department statistics show that rifles of all types are used in murders less often than clubs, bare hands, or knives.”

“What is so bad about a red flag law?”

1. “This American ain’t surrendering anything!”
2. “The problem is that many of the proposals have serious problems, including a lack of due process and the failure to require those who are subjected to extreme risk orders to receive mental health treatment. In addition, civil commitment is another legal option on the books for individuals who are a threat to themselves or others. Sadly, those currently in office are unable or unwilling to use that option as well. But they are almost immediately demanding new laws in the wake of these tragedies.”

“But how can we address gun violence?”

1. “Could you please kindly pull your head out of your butt, STFU and go away…. pretty please?”
2. “There are solutions. We could enforce existing laws on the books to put away people with criminal records that illegally possess firearms. We can use harsh sentences for those who misuse guns in the course of committing crimes. We also support better policing. All too often, these tragedies can be prevented with tools that are available, but which those currently in office are unable or unwilling to use. Yet they are always demanding new laws on guns that target law-abiding citizens.”

“Why do you oppose universal background checks?”

1. “Get your skull out of your backside and start standing firm on the constitution and the Second Amendment as written.”
2. “Because background checks have not worked to prevent crime. Justice Department studies show that criminals acquire their guns illegally, usually through straw purchases, theft, or the black market. And mass shooters often pass background checks. Furthermore, in the past, anti-Second Amendment groups opposed instant background checks in favor of waiting periods.”

“So why do you oppose a license and registration for guns when we need a license to drive a car?”

1. “Every one of these schemes are just a way to infringe and violate the Second Amendment rights of citizens.”
2. “Licensing and registration schemes only would apply to law-abiding citizens. Courts have ruled that those prohibited from owning guns cannot be required to register guns, because it would violate their right against self-incrimination. In any case, criminals break the law to acquire their guns, usually through theft, straw purchases, or on the black market. Furthermore, some of the initial licensing laws, like New York’s Sullivan Act, were intended to deny Irish and Italian immigrants the right to have handguns for personal protection. Furthermore, many groups seeking gun control want registration in order to facilitate confiscation – which would be a massive injustice against millions of law-abiding Americans who have committed no crime.”

Again, I would encourage loyal Ammoland readers to compare these responses, placing themselves in the position of a fellow American who is on the fence, or leaning toward backing anti-Second Amendment legislation. Ask yourself, “Which response is more likely to make me more willing back the Second Amendment, or at least be willing to hear more?” Once you have come up with the answer, act accordingly.

About Harold Hutchison

Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.

The post A Comparison of Techniques in Defending the Second Amendment appeared first on AmmoLand.com.

via AmmoLand.com
A Comparison of Techniques in Defending the Second Amendment

The M998 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle—or Humvee for short—first saw service with the U.S. military in 1984. In the intervening years, AM General produced 281,000 of these remarkable little trucks. Versatile, agile, powerful and tough, the Humvee transported a generation of soldiers on their various tactical missions around the globe. I was one of them.

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After some 33 years of hard service, the Humvee’s manifold strengths and scant weaknesses became apparent. The M998 was originally designed as a broad-application utility vehicle intended to support a military engaged in fighting World War III on the verdant plains of Western Europe. That the Humvee rendered such fine service when pressed into ambulance, ammo carrier, guided missile platform and armored gun-truck roles speaks to the remarkable versatility of the design.

Today’s asymmetrical battlefield, with its copious ambushes, IEDs and suicide bombers, was not the environment for which the Humvee was imagined. Nowadays, our troops downrange need something more mine resistant and better able to cope with the ubiquitous small arms and RPG attacks that define modern war. As a result, Uncle Sam is replacing Humvees in certain applications with the new Joint Tactical Light Vehicle (JTLV). While the Humvee will still be used in non-combat military roles for the foreseeable future, the advent of the JTLV offers a unique opportunity for American military vehicle enthusiasts. There are some pitfalls to consider, but if you have ever wanted your own Humvee, this is your chance.

Military Humvee: Where To Start

Ironplanet.com is a typical place to start. Its stock rotates daily, and its Humvees are sold via online auction. There are several other auction sites as well. Google is your buddy. The Humvees are being released directly from military installations all over the country. Each entry describes the vehicle’s location, odometer reading and other particulars. Auction prices typically run from $6,000 to 12,000 depending upon the state of the truck.

There are some basic questions answered for each particular entry, including ease of starting, effectiveness of the parking brake and condition of things like the seats, mirrors, gauges and lights. You’ll find detailed photographs. Some Humvee listings include the results of their most recent oil analysis. Certain sites offer video walkarounds as well. They really do a good job of offering a detailed remote description. The overall ambience is not unlike that of CarMax. Once you find the vehicle you want and win the auction, the real fun begins.

The vehicle transfers on a Form SF97 rather than a conventional title. A Humvee in this condition is not legal on public roads. This means you will have to make a road trip with a trailer to fetch your prize. There are fairly tight time limits involved, so plan your purchase when you have a little time.

Red Tape

These Humvees are sold as off-road vehicles only. This means they lack VINs and license plates. While this may be adequate for certain well-heeled folks with land or the occasional hunting club, the rest of us want a truck we can drive around town. Here your adventure takes on the complexion of your home state.

There are some states where you just cannot get these vehicles titled. To compare my home state of Mississippi to California or New Jersey, for instance, is like comparing Mayberry to Mars. In some states, emission controls and general draconian government crap conspire to make it all but impossible to own surplus military vehicles. If you live in one of these wretched locales, my advice would be to move.

By contrast, down here in the Deep South, we take our small government seriously. The titling process is laborious, but it can be done. You may have to take your truck to an inspection site so Highway Patrol inspectors can give it a once-over. I asked the nice Southern lady on the phone if I could drive the vehicle there or trailer it. She counseled that, so long as I explained to any law enforcement officers that I was driving it to get an official inspection, I should be good. I do so love the Deep South.

Title & Insurance

Once it gets a clean bill, you can apply for a title using the vehicle’s military serial number. Expect this to be onerous and complicated but doable. A local buddy bought eight of these things as an investment. Now, nine months later, two of them are still awaiting titles.

If all that seems too big a hassle, just pull up eBay and type in “military Humvees for sale.” You can find plenty of trucks with clean titles, but you pay a bit of a premium to have someone else manage the titling headaches. Be sure to check with your local tag folks to make sure the title will transfer to your state before you put money down.

I have used USAA for all my insurance needs since the moment I first donned a military uniform. I have nothing but good things to say about their customer service. However, after an hour on the phone, we determined that they simply could not insure a military-surplus vehicle. Not to fret, however; they transferred me to a contracted subsidiary. I ended up landing state minimum insurance on my Humvee registered as a farm truck through another car insurance company for next to nothing.

You do shoulder some liability with these vehicles. They are typically old, and you have no way of verifying their maintenance histories. Just remember that somebody has to pay for all those attorney billboards lining every major thoroughfare in America. Don’t let it be you.

Personal Wheels

My truck is 25 years old and reads just over 10,000 miles on the odometer. Keep in mind that military miles are not the same as civilian miles. The high-mileage, ragged-out vehicles we used when I was a soldier sometimes didn’t have more than 25,000 miles on them. My truck may indeed sport 110,000 miles, or it might have languished behind a National Guard armory someplace, essentially undriven for the past 25 years. I have no way of knowing. The chassis looks like it was stored outdoors for the past quarter-century, which it was, while the vehicle itself is mechanically tight and reliable.

The body on a military Humvee is made from riveted sheet aluminum, so it is all but impervious to corrosion. The steel bits will have varying degrees of rust, but that is addressed easily enough. The neatest thing about my Humvee, however, is that it is designed from the outset to be easily maintained. Even the bolts are designed so you can get at most of them with either standard or metric wrenches. I dedicated a couple of hard days to exploring and tweaking my truck and got almost everything of significance addressed. Quality desert tan Rust-Oleum spray paint doesn’t match perfectly, but it is a military vehicle, so that really doesn’t matter.

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Military Humvee Final Touches

The military Humvee does not have ignition keys. Instead, there is a retractable cable underneath the dash that affixes around the steering wheel with a padlock. However, lots of folks sell aftermarket keyed ignition switches for $65 to $80. Installation requires that you open up the hole in the dash with a step drill bit, but this isn’t tough to do.

I sanded out the ugly spots and touched everything up with spray paint. My daughter and I crafted some stencils to customize the fenders, and I applied the unit designation of my first combat unit. I built up a pair of seat bottoms for the rear seats myself.

My tricked-out Humvee turns heads no matter where I go, and it’s simply great fun to drive. The 6.2-liter diesel engine should last a lifetime, and the truck has plenty of space and power for around-the-farm utility tasks. If you have ever considered a military vehicle of your own, now is the time. Useful, versatile and cool, a GI-surplus Humvee is, for the time being, within financial reach of the common man.

This article is from the August-September 2019 issue of Personal Defense World magazine. Grab your copy at OutdoorGroupStore.com. For digital editions, visit Amazon.

The post The DIY Guide on How to Buy Your Own Military Humvee appeared first on Personal Defense World.

via Personal Defense World
The DIY Guide on How to Buy Your Own Military Humvee