How many people participate in a Pinewood Derby Nationally

[Humvderby]

I am curious. Does anyone know how many people participate in a Pinewood Derby on a National or Global Basis? Taking all organizations into consideration ie., BSA, Awana, Royal Rangers, Royal Ambassadors, Christian Service Brigade, Klub Car, YMCA, and any other organization I may have left out. Maybe if we new how many car kits were sold that would be a way to estimate. Anyone have any Idea?

[gpraceman]

I am curious. Does anyone know how many people participate in a Pinewood Derby on a National or Global Basis? Taking all organizations into consideration ie., BSA, Awana, Royal Rangers, Royal Ambassadors, Christian Service Brigade, Klub Car, YMCA, and any other organization I may have left out. Maybe if we new how many car kits were sold that would be a way to estimate. Anyone have any Idea?

I think I have heard of the Lutheran Pioneers having a national race. The only other national race that I have heard of is the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby 50th Anniversary race which was last year sometime.

Oops. Maybe you meant overall. According to BSA, there are over 54,000 Cub Scout packs and there are over 9,000 Awana clubs with most of them putting on a race. I'm not sure about other groups, but there are many of them. Some companies also put on races for charity. I have also heard of races in other countries, like Canada, Korea, Austrailia, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, France, Britain and so on.

[Humvderby]

gpraceman,

Correct. I am not speaking of National races. I wondered how many car kits were sold taking into account all organizations. This would give us an idea of how many people participate in Derbies world wide. It would be interesting to know how many people participate in BSA each year. Wow did not know there were that many packs out there. Thanks.

[TDean]

yeah, 54k+ is a lot -- the latest numbers I've seen (dated Dec. 31, 2001!)show 980,555 Cubs + 786,833 Webelos + 276,090 Tiger "Teams" (I assume this means a whole group of Tiger Cubs, rather than individuals -- our Tiger Dens were the largest in the Pack, typically with 10 boys each).

Which brings us to 2,043,478 - 4,528,288 Cubs -- and that's a LOT of PWDs! Not taking into account many boys build multiple cars, Dads and siblings build some for the Open races -- and that's just in the USA!

When you add all the other organizations running derbies (don't forget WIRL) and include international participation -- WOW!

[Stan Pope]

... 276,090 Tiger "Teams" (I assume this means a whole group of Tiger Cubs, rather than individuals -- our Tiger Dens were the largest in the Pack, typically with 10 boys each).

Tigers join Scouting with an adult partner (parent or guardian, typically). They participate in activities together as a team.

[TDean]

Thanks Stan, for the clarification -- but that makes the Tiger Cub number seem awfully small -- in my experience there are often more Tigers than any other age group... but in any case -- it's still a lot of kids!

[Humvderby]

TDean,
I wonder how the 2001 numbers compare to the 2003 numbers? Where did you find that information? I wonder if cubscout enrollment is growing or shrinking? Wow 2 - 4.5 million cub scouts. That is alot of PWD's! A BSA national race would be interesting. With that many cars, I'll bet as the competition was narrowed down you would start ending up with alot of ties.

[Richard]

and probably about 4.49999999999999999999 million disapointed boys.

[TDean]

Derbyman --

I found the Cub Scout information at:
http://www.scouting.org/factsheets/02-502.html

and as Stan pointed out, my estimate for the Tigers was way high -- according to the BSA Annual Reports there were indeed 2,043,478 registered Cub Scouts in 2001. I don't have the numbers for 2002, but it says there were still "over 2 million". I assume it did not change drastically in the last couple years.

Still -- over 2 million Pinewood Derby cars is a LOT (I wonder how many trees that is...).

[Humvderby]

TDean,

Thanks I appreciate the information. I would say with all of the organizations taken into consideration there probably are right around your original estimate of 4 - 5 million PWD cars built and people participating each year. Wow.

[Gavin Chafin]

TDean,
I wonder how the 2001 numbers compare to the 2003 numbers? Where did you find that information? I wonder if cubscout enrollment is growing or shrinking? Wow 2 - 4.5 million cub scouts. That is alot of PWD's! A BSA national race would be interesting. With that many cars, I'll bet as the competition was narrowed down you would start ending up with alot of ties.

Yeah, you might need to have a 70 foot aluminum track

Personally, I'm exhausted after Districts and I look forward to 9 or 10 month of a vacation away from the PWD. It's nice to talk about it, but I don't wanna build the cars year-round.

[RacerRusty]

Wow!!!! If you added up the total distance each car is raced in a year, added them all together, I wonder how many total miles are are run by PWD cars in a year?

[PWD]

I wonder how many miles my boys have raced their cars in testing? We try to keep data on each run buy many don't get recorded. Plus we only started doing this in the last year and a 1/2. We have 338 entries right now.

[RacerRusty]

I wonder how many miles my boys have raced their cars in testing? We try to keep data on each run buy many don't get recorded. Plus we only started doing this in the last year and a 1/2. We have 338 entries right now.

PWD,

How long is your test track?

[PWD]

It can be 42' or 49'. Last two years we tested in 42' configuration.