Car Show Check-In: How to Run a Fast Gate on Show Day

Strip it down. At the check-in table, you need to do three things per car:

Your check-in list needs to be fast. A volunteer who has to flip through 20 pages of a printed spreadsheet to find someone named Rodriguez is not going to hit your two-minute target.

Alphabetical by last name, with large font. Sounds obvious. I've seen check-in lists sorted by registration number, by class, by vehicle year. Those lists are for the organiser's reference. The check-in list is sorted by the thing the volunteer will know: the person's last name.

Searchable digital list is better. A tablet or laptop with a searchable spreadsheet cuts lookup time dramatically. Even a basic Ctrl+F on a spreadsheet beats flipping through paper. Purpose-built check-in software that lets you type a name or scan a QR code is better still.

Always have a printed backup. Wifi goes down. Tablets die. Somebody spills coffee. Print your list the night before the show, bring it to the gate in a clipboard, and know where it is.

The dash card — the window placard every car displays — is the connective tissue of your show. It's how judges find the car number. It's how People's Choice voters identify cars. It's how your parking team knows which section a car goes to.

For a well-run show, dash cards should be ready before the first car pulls through the gate. Pre-printing them is ideal — print them three or four days before, sort them alphabetically, pack them in the box you bring to check-in. When a registrant arrives, you pull their card, hand it to them, done.

Some shows print on the morning of. That works if you have a fast printer and someone dedicated to nothing but printing from 5am onwards. I did this for years. I don't recommend it. Too many things can go wrong with the printer at 6am.

One check-in lane for a 200-plus car show is a mistake. Run a minimum of two. Three is better. Each lane needs:

• One person on the list/tablet
• One person handing out dash cards
• Ideally one person directing cars to the next stage

You can combine the second and third roles if you're short on volunteers, but you cannot combine the first role with either of the others. The person finding the name needs to be focused on finding the name.

Position your lanes so incoming cars can queue without blocking the entrance road. If cars are stacking up on a public street, you have a layout problem and possibly a safety problem.

No-shows run 10 to 15 percent. Budget for them in your parking layout. If you're expecting 300 cars, plan 270 spots but have a plan for 300 — usually a flex section you can open if turnout exceeds projection.

Walk-ins — people who didn't pre-register — need their own process that doesn't touch your main check-in lane. I station a volunteer about 50 feet before the main check-in with a simple sign: "Pre-registered here, first-time registration over there." Walk-ins go to a side table, fill out a form, pay in cash or tap a card reader, get a walk-in class placard, and get directed to the walk-in section.

The cleanest check-in process I've seen in recent years involves a QR code on the dash card that gets emailed to the entrant before the show. They pull up the email, the volunteer scans the QR, the system marks them checked in and shows their class and parking section. Done in under 30 seconds.

This requires entrants to have their phone handy and a scanning app on your check-in device. For any show over 150 cars, the time savings on the day are substantial.

You still need the paper backup. Always.