It wasn’t long before GEARS evolved into a full-fledged, full-color magazine. Gone was the low-cost newsprint, replaced by high-quality, coated stock, with a classy, carefully-designed cover. But not only the appearance changed. It quickly became evident that four issues a year just weren’t enough: Within a short period of time, GEARS graduated to six, then nine issues.

Today’s GEARS includes regular features, guest technical articles, business management articles, and general information. We’ve even started including consumer-interest features, to make GEARS something your customers can read while they’re waiting.

The look, feel, and content have all improved over the years. And this issue, January 2002, marks one of our most dramatic changes. Gone are the familiar, oversized pages: The GEARS that you’ve loved for the past nine years is now a standard-sized magazine.

While the larger format worked great for printing oil and wire schematics, it was almost impossible to store for future reference. So, all too often, technicians had no way of finding a specific article, once the transmission or problem they’d read about found its way into their shop. To address this, and at the request of an overwhelming majority of ATRA members, we’ve switched from the tabloid size to the more familiar, easier-to-store, magazine size.

Gone are the days of keeping your old GEARS magazines piled up in a corner of the shop, because they just won’t fit anywhere else. The new GEARS magazine will still be chock full of your favorite articles, editorials, industry news, product announcements, and advertisements. But now you’ll be able to slip it onto your bookshelves, or place it prominently on the front of your magazine rack.