Boileau Communications Management LLC

Planning The Mega-Event

The great football coach Vince Lombardi used to hate the passing game. In his mind there were only three things that could happen on a passing play and two of them were bad. I have to admit that event planning sometimes feels the same way.

We’re well under way now in planning the Fifth Annual Labor Day Truck Parade and Ice Cream Social for West Michigan Works. If you live in West Michigan and are planning to be around Holland on Labor Day, you should plan to come downtown for this event. It’s not like any parade you’ve ever seen. There are trucks from about 50 area companies that line up in Zeeland for a parade through its downtown on the way to downtown Holland, where it rolls along Main Street to end up at the Civic Center.

It’s an amazing sight. End to end, the trucks stretch for about a mile. They’re all polished and blasting those big air horns like crazy. It’s a unique way to celebrate the employers and the employees in our community who work together to make us successful. It’s also a big logistical challenge.

Think about it. Fifty trucks and fifty drivers, two municipalities, three police departments, guest speakers, hot dog give-aways, ice-cream give-aways, radio communications, sound…you get the idea. I would have to guess that, short of a National Guard convoy, it has to be one of the biggest coordinated, simultaneous movements of equipment that takes place anywhere in the state. And then there are the thousand or so spectators who come down to enjoy the show.

There is a great team of coordinators and volunteers who somehow manage to pull it all together, though each year I’m amazed. Some things invariably go wrong, but most things usually go right. The result is an annual tradition that the community has come to count on, and to enjoy. It will be especially important this year, because people need to see that we still have successful companies in our community that we can count on to help us recover and grow.

Even though things can go wrong, it is an incredibly good feeling when they go right. Lombardi probably knew that; he just didn’t want to admit it.