Thanks. I'm normally a very quiet person, so this drama that has unfolded over the past year was never something I bargained for when I bought my Loaded Wichita. What started out as a whimper from one unhappy customer has turned into a roar from a growing band of past customers who thought they were alone in their frustration over the Yoder offset performance.
It seems Yoder is finally taking some action, but for many of us it will be too little too late. In my profession we sometimes refer to the process of "polishing a turd" which describes the ongoing refinement of something that has such a major design flaw that it will never work as intended despite all the efforts to improve it. The only real solution is a re-design. Have you ever heard of that? Well, that is the perfect description for the current Yoder offset design, in my opinion. Everyone seems so impressed with the precision of fit, weld quality, and aesthetic beauty of their smokers they overlook the fact that they don't actually work as good as they look due to a major design flaw. Yoder has polished a turd.
The smoker market is pretty diverse these days, and it's tough to pick one with so many choices and so many custom builders. If only there was a "try before you buy" option so we knew what we were getting when we signed up. I would love to have a Shirley Fabrication smoker, knowing what I know now, but you have to wait a good while to get one of those, and most of their units are overkill for my needs. My fear is I'll eventually know so much about smokers I'll begin looking for used propane tanks so I can build one from scratch! If you want something done right, then do it yourself!