Need Advice How to Move TRK-12 from CA to NC
 

Hello everyone,

Name here is Greg and I recently purchased a nice TRK-12 currently located about 50 miles north of San Diego, CA. The seller is a collector and is offering to help in preparing the set for a safe move. We have a little time to develop a plan and find a good mover to do the job. I need advice whether we should partially disassemble to pack some components individually or carefully stuff it full of moving blankets, etc. The seller told me when he originally purchased it they loaded it in back of a Toyota Tacoma for a 2 hour drive. He said only the picture tube inside had shifted a bit. He suggested: "if the cavity around the tube was stuffed with bubble wrap, it should be good enough. If it goes in a van or small truck, strapped down would be adequate. In a moving truck. It should be crated. I can do either and send you pics when it leaves" he says.

Also, I need advice on how to select a good moving company or individual for something like this. Has anyone here already gone through this?

My plans for the TRK-12 is just to protect it and learn what I can about it and probably become a member of the ETF.

Thanks in advance!
Greg

Attachment 198373

John Estep, a member here, had a British prewar mirror in-lid shipped from UK to Pennsylvania. You might send him a PM or email. He has also moved a TRK12. I personally moved 100 TVs from Virginia to California. I hired loaders and unloaders from Penske truck rental recomended list. I did get some furniture nicks and slight damage on some of the wood consoles. The worst was a bakelite Admiral console where the unloader picked the bakelite console up with one hand on the side and the other hand under the bakelite bottom and the bottom broke out. Also inspecting the floor of the truck he found a bakelite piece to another set and tossed it out to me and I missed. As luck would have it it broke in half. My concern with movers is that they load everything by hand. How heavy is a TRK-12 with a wood crate around it. Would it need a fork lift to get off off the truck? I had a RCA 648PTK (over 200 pounds) which they had difficulty getting off the Penske truck but it wasn't too much a problem when I moved it a second time from Long Beach to a mountain cabin using a truck with a lift gate. There was no damage during transport just during unloading. I had blankets around every console with metal straps (similar to bicycle tie downs) holding them securely to the walls of the truck. The TRK12 has a very expensive and valuable CRT so be careful. If it breaks you may never find another good one? I shipped a couple CRTs using FedEx. They arrived safely but always worried me.

:) You asked for advice , and so here's mine ;

For a set of such value & relative rarity , I'd be booking a plane ticket to cali , and renting a U haul one way and plan to make a fun road trip of it . Some 1960s roundie color gets busted up in shipping ? Yea a huge bummer but not entirely irreplaceable . Your set gets dropped/smashed/lost by a not so dilligent shipping company employee where are ya gonna find another ?

:thmbsp: ROAD TRIP !!!!!! :thmbsp:

Agreed. This is my first full weekend back from a road trip to Alabama (most of the time was at a beach in Florida the trip was extended to include) to pick up an RCA CTC-4. I considered hiring a carrier, but for the money, I could do a better safer job hauling it in my Suburban. Good 21AXP22s are more common than anything prewar, but still rare enough that I'm deficit 2 relative to sets I own that use it...Much of the value of such a set is in the good CRT so if I were to let it get necked by some shipper I'd almost have been as well off setting fire to the money I paid for it instead of buying it. It made it here safe thanks to my effort.

Part of me wonders how safe the CRT really is if shipped installed in a prewar set. I know post WWII RCAs like the 630 shiped with the CRT separate because the CRT mounts were not good enough to protect the CRT from shipping damage....The vertical mount of a TRK12 and IIRC the chassis the CRT neck plugs into (I might be confusing the TRK12 with a different Mirror in lid set on that feature) could both put the CRT at undue risk.

A 12AP4 substitute radar tube on ETF site was listed at $500 when the following article was written. I think I saw an original NOS 12AP4 for sale once at $1500 in Arlington Virginia with first dibs to the purchaser of his TRK12 for $10K.

http://www.earlytelevision.org/12ap4_substitute.html

I would be concerned about the mounting of the CRT; maybe John will come in with some shipping hints. I don't know how well the tube is supported on that model.

Some years ago, I sold an RCA color set to a collector in Illinois. He used a shipper called General Delivery, and they did a fine job. Others have used Craters and Freighters.

Yeah, a plane ticket & rent-a-truck back is sorta a PITA, but for an intact TRK-12 w/a good CRT, I'd have to think about it long & hard. Know any private pilots w/a larger plane, like a Cessna Stationair or something similar ? That might be an option. Another plane might be a Cessna Caravan, it is sorta a flying super-duty pickem up. It has a turboprop motor, a prop version of a jet, they were designed to carry relatively heavy loads economically, & can be flown w/one pilot.

My TRK12 was shipped to me in pieces, so I can't comment on them.

A prewar British set was mentioned. I own that set now. It was simply placed
front down in a van and driven to Hilliard, moved to my SUV where it was front down
on 4" of foam rubber and driven home. I hired movers to carry it up the stairs.
This was done with the top up, slanted at about 45 degrees. It survived just fine.
Which was a bit lucky as a couple of tubes were loose in the bottom and were not
caught by my inspection in Hilliard.

For the TRK12 the British radar CRT is recommended ... it is amazingly bright.

I have safely shipped a heavy radio/TV combo long distance, using the pack/ship company Craters & Freighters, but nothing as valuable as that TRK-12.

I'd vote for the fly-and-drive solution, too, if that's at all possible. When I got my RCA CT-100 TV, my son and I flew to CA, rented a moving truck, and drove it back to WA. That way, if something bad happened, it would only be on me. If you hire a shipper and they destroy something unobtanium, no amount of $$ in compensation will really make you whole.

Just my $0.02.

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
https://antiqueradio.org/index.html

Check the cost of a one way truck out of CA. It’s my understanding that they’re out of sight one way because Californians are using them en mass to relocate.

I think you can rent a one-way SUV from Hertz etc out of California to NC cheaper then a rental moving truck. Hertz has a weekly rate usually charging the same day rate for extra days over the week. I drove a Hetrz SUV from Columbus Airport to ETF convention then to Dulles Airport in Virginia one year. I added TVs to a storage unit full of TVs in Va. You would have to verify the SUV is large enough for the TRK12. I think the rental companies have a mixture of local owned and company owned vehicles. They don't want their local owned vehicles traveling 2000 miles away.

Where did you hear that?

Hertz website just now:

GMC Yukon SUV renting on March 25

From Los Angeles Airport to Raleigh Airport: $290.99/day

From Raleigh Airport to Los Angeles Airport: $494.99/day

To the original post, I have moved several of these prewar sets. I have picked some of them up myself or used a private shipper on others. I have never had a problem with private shippers damaging anything. If it is crated you will need a forklift or if the truck has a tail lift you can wrestle it off.

I would highly recommend not shipping the set with the CRT in place. This is not so much due to the crt mount being weak, rather the ridged nature of the mounts on these set. Most prewar sets support the crt mainly by the neck. If you do leave the crt installed, make very sure the HV power supply and radio power supplies are correctly bolted to the bottom of the case. If they or anything else moves around, you will neck the crt.

Darryl

While I have zero experience with this rare set, I can say in all seriousness that if it were mine I wouldn't carry it across the street with the crt in place. It could be triple boxed with lots of bubble wrap between each layer, then shipped with proper insurance.

Many thanks to all, and please don't stop! I am giving this considerable thought with respect to every suggestion. With all the various high end auction houses selling many rare and valuable things I was hoping a company that specializes in moving rare and valuable antiquities might come up. Flying out and driving back with the TRK is certainly not out of the question considering I will only get one chance with it. Best to all of you wise old owls here!!