I went up to Clinton, Iowa last week to pick up my new Phowler 2066 Xtreme. My hat is off to Bubba, Paul, Susan, Bob, and the rest of the crew at Phowler. These good folks know the meaning of customer service, and they definitely know how to build a solid boat.

The boat was awesome! Big, and stable, with clean welds, and all the stuff where I wanted it. The level 1 modified Prodrive 36 was loud and powerful. Coming from a pure outboard background, I was amazed by the torque of this motor.

Bubba spent the day with my boys and me. We got a factory tour, a Phowler fabrication and construction briefing, a mudmotor lesson, a sea trial on the Mississippi (complete with grounding the boat and letting the Prodrive dig it out!), then Bubba fitted our new Phowler to our trailer, and installed all of the storage boxes to our specifications.

It was well worth my time for the 32 hour round trip drive to go meet the crew at Phowler, and definitely worth my money to purchase one of their boats. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me. Better yet, if you are in the market, you owe it to yourself to go to the factory, meet these folks, and see their product first hand.

P.S.
Unfortunately, my one hour demo ride on the Mississippi was my only experience on my new Phowler. Forty five minutes from the factory, my rig was rear-ended and totaled. My thanks to Bubba for all of his help and consolation, and for staying at the factory and letting us return the crunched boat, motor, and trailer, so we would not have to drag it back to Virginia!

I’ve got another rig, just like the last one, on order with Phowler.

another photo of Bubba and my boys with the new rig

dude! that sucks!!! nice barge though!

Wow what a horrible road trip. I have never heard of any one being so happy that there brand new rig got totaled. I think your glass must be half full

Elmer: I'm not happy. The thread is about how pleased I was with the rig and the service, not how sick and fuuking furious I am about my loss! My glass is dead assed empty right now, but it does not diminish the experience I had right up to the point where I experienced the loss.

If you want to hear about terrified children and sore necks, depression and rage, insurance customer service reps, agents, adjusters, sheriffs deputies, state police reports, lawyers, and wrecker services. That will be another post. When it is over, and if I got the energy to relive it, I'll bore you guys with it.

As I said, I'm not happy, but I am grateful. Grateful that I can afford to start over and not have to wait for the insurance company's money, grateful that the boat got hit and not my truck (otherwise my boys and me would still be in some hospital in Illinois), grateful that the folks at Phowler are kind enough to help me out in any way they can.

Whoa wasn't trying to ruffle your feathers. Was rather impressed with what I thought was a very positive attitude dispite what was a very horrible situation. I hope it all works out good for you and hopefully you enjoy the he!! out of the new ride.

Sorry, emoticons bring out the worst in me!

Glad to hear that you and your boys are OK,the boat can be replaced.

Good post about your positive dealings with Phowler

Im glad to hear Phowler is so good to work with. They are the closest mud boat manufactures to my house and Its nice to know they make a quility boat and have great custome service. Sorry about your rig

Glad to hear all are ok, items can be replaced, not people. But now it is going to be hard to sleep after getting a taste of what you will get. Got a little teaser of your new rig, now it's day by day waiting for that call that says
"it's ready" Good luck and glad all are ok.

Glad you all are ok. I'm fortunate enough to live within about 5 minutes of the phowler dealer and about 2 minutes from that ramp you used. I haven't been able to purchase a phowler to this point, but soon, very soon I would like to have one.

Daaaaa'm That sucks bad.... Sorry to hear that for ya..... Any pics of the boat after the fact??

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes.

I appreciate your interest. The "after the fact" photos show how incredibly tough the boat and motor were. I'll post them in another thread later.