They Make Adult Toys for Playing in the Sand

Craig Hanloh grinned as he strapped himself tightly into the squat, knobby-wheeled Suzuki quad runner. He revved the engine, zipped down a back street and flipped the craft in a perfect somersault.

“We’ve done a motorized rocking horse, too,” he said as he climbed out of the contraption. “We took it up and down Myrtle (Avenue). People thought we were crazy.”

But these toys, stage props designed for the zany comedian Gallagher, are mere side projects for Hanloh’s Sandrail Manufacturing Co.

His specialty is custom-built “sandrails”--dune buggies without fiberglass covering their tubular frames of stainless steel.

“Expensive toys for adults,” Hanloh calls them.

Hanloh says his business on Railroad Avenue grosses $450,000 a year, turning out about 180 sandrail frames and 20 complete vehicles annually. Ten people staff the 7,700-square-foot workshop.

Another San Gabriel Valley firm, Fun Runner in Rosemead, also makes custom sandrails, but sells mainly frames and parts. “We generally don’t do the whole thing,” said co-owner Linda Tebo.

Bob Ham, executive director of the 5,000-member California Off-Road Vehicle Assn., said there are 10 to 20 sandrail manufacturers in the state.

A current assignment at Hanloh’s workshop is a $40,000 all-aluminum sandrail for George Schultz, a customer from Thousand Oaks. The car, which will whip over the dunes at 102 m.p.h., boasts a gleaming DeLorean motor made of aluminum and steel, instead of the cast iron used in most engines.

“Aluminum is lighter, and if it’s lighter it’s faster,” Schultz, the Carson city engineer, said gleefully. “It goes from zero to 100 m.p.h. in 3.30 seconds!”

The vehicle, which Schultz has dubbed the Dune DeLorean, has a transmission worth $5,000.

“A lot of (the price) goes for appearance,” said Hanloh, adding that patrons frequently bring in their own designs for the firm to construct. Sandrails are priced from $6,000 up, depending on customers’ selection of fancy touches--from chromed shift boxes to fiberglass seats with velour covers.

Hanloh, 30, who purchased the business with his wife, Leigh Anne, in 1985, says most of his customers are from Southern California. But a visiting sheik from the United Arab Emirates once ordered 21 cars for his desert playground, Hanloh said.

The young sheik flew the Hanlohs to Abu Dhabi to teach him to operate the buggy, Hanloh said, proudly producing photographs of Arabs crowding around his creation. He added that he is working on establishing a partnership with the sheik to market the product in the Middle East.

In California, sand dragging enthusiasts may legally operate the vehicles in remote areas designated by state and federal authorities. Two popular sites are the sands of Glamis, 233 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and Dumont Sand Dunes, 130 miles west of Las Vegas.

Sandrails are not considered “street legal” under the California Vehicle Code.

“Heck, no,” California Highway Patrol Officer Trany Morton said. “They’re going to have to have windshields, wipers, a series of things.”

And Monrovia Police Capt. Dennis Jacks was less than amused when told about Hanloh’s recent stunt on city streets.

“Have you heard of reckless driving?” he said. “If it was not licensed, it was illegal to even be on the street.”

Hanloh said he does not usually operate his creations on city streets. On sand, however, they are safe and fun for licensed drivers, he said.

Ham, of the Off-Road Vehicle Assn., said he has not heard of many accidents involving sandrails.

Ben Koski, an area manager of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees a number of sand dragging sites, including Glamis, said the sandrail “is the most stable of vehicles that they drive out in the dunes.”

In fact, Koski said, his office plans to accept a donation of a “rescue buggy” sandrail from Hanloh to help pick up casualties of accidents on the sand.

He said sandrail mishaps are “few and far between.”

But they do happen.

George Fedderke, 44, a foundry superintendent from Hacienda Heights, recently returned to Sandrail with an order for a second car after he wrecked his first in a race at 85 m.p.h. on the dunes of Glamis.

“It’s fun to be competitive as far as the looks and the speed,” said Fedderke, whose first sandrail cost him more than $20,000. “You have a vision in your mind and he (Hanloh) puts it into tubing. I go in with a lot of crazy ideas.”