ext month marks the fifth anniversary of Classic Truck Performance and In The Garage Media (I’ll leave the celebratory speech till the June issue!), and while it’s no surprise to me that we’ve made it this far, every year that passes I like to reach out to you, our readers, and see how we’re doing—as a magazine, as an online entity, and from a social media standpoint. It is, after all, your magazine … I’m just here to make everyone happy!

The Print Magazine

For as long as I can recall—or the past five years, whichever’s longer—I’ve tried to create a nice mix of features, tech, and events: heavy on the features and tech, light on the events (with the timeliness benefits of social media, which I’ll get to in a second, oftentimes most shows are old news by the time they hit print—however, the ones featured are surely worth the wait!). Personally, I usually get out to at least a half-dozen of the bigger (non-local) shows, such as Dino’s, Triple Crown, and so on, while my gracious freelancers provide coverage on the ones I can’t/don’t make it to. Being as we’re a “truck” magazine, it makes it easy to focus on the shows we cover, but this year we’ll be including some Goodguys events from across the nation for the first time since we started. If you happen to feel we’re missing out on any larger truck-only events, let me know!

Feature-wise, once again, I do my best to mix it up between the high-end builds and above-average daily drivers and whatever may be in-between—but still, some will always complain there’s not enough of one or the other or whatever their particular flavor may be. Understandable. Despite what I said in my opening paragraph, I fully realize that it’s impossible to please every single reader, every single issue! Unlike other magazines on the ’stands these days, CTP actually has some competition, so of course I do go out of my way to produce the best monthly product that I can possibly make (which without my amazing freelancers, my managing editor, and my art director, would not be possible). Nevertheless, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the variety of trucks we feature—keeping in mind that we have no plans to deviate from our “domestic 1/2-ton” nature!

Tech-wise, that’s one area that constantly needs feedback, as I feel they serve as the best inspiration to keep your truck projects moving along, if not inspire new builds and/or spark the desire to refresh old ones. That said, the hobby isn’t what it was 10-20 years ago … we don’t have the same number of resources to work with and rely on, there are far less shops in business, and the number of people out there still building or working on their own trucks has reduced … so while the well for finding good tech is nowhere near running dry, it is quite a bit more limited nowadays. Still, I want to know what types of things you’d like to see that we don’t currently focus on—or, different applications or perspectives of things we have been focusing on.

We have 12 issues to produce each and every year. With roughly 65 pages of edit per issue, that’s 780 pages, give or take, for me/us to fill with exciting truck content on an annual basis. That’s a lot of work on our end, but it also means plenty of bang for your buck—especially when you subscribe!

Online/Social/YouTube

If you haven’t visited our In The Garage Media site (inthegaragemedia.com), you definitely don’t know what you’re missing! On top of all the great CTP content, there you’ll also find everything All Chevy Performance and Modern Rodding related—in other words, if it has anything to do with an engine and four wheels wrapped in a muscle car, hot rod, or classic truck, you’ll find it there. One of the great benefits of Web sites is the ability to publish content as it happens (or very shortly thereafter), much like social media only in longer format, obviously. For those curious who won the coveted Truck of the Year or World’s Most Beautiful Truck the day it won, log onto our site or Instagram/Facebook (@classic_truck_performance) and you’ll find out! But we have room for more … much, much more. Again, that’s where your feedback comes in. Our YouTube channel’s been gaining quite a bit of steam with some of our more recent install videos (and that one “little” piece we did on our trip to Taiwan last year!), and that momentum will continue to grow throughout 2025 and beyond.

Without your support—on all platforms—we would not have made it five years, let alone through the pandemic to begin with! So for that, I say, THANK YOU! We’re gonna keep this ride going full throttle till the gas runs out … literally!