Rockville Centre pilot gives military Humvee a new life

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Rockville Centre resident Jay Brown is restoring a military Humvee, which have become available for public use in recent years.
Rockville Centre resident Jay Brown is restoring a military Humvee, which have become available for public use in recent years.
Ben Strack/Herald

When Rockville Centre resident Jay Brown realized his hobby of assembling and flying radio-controlled jets was keeping him away from his family for too long, he decided to take on a new project that he could do in the driveway.

“I’ve always been interested in Humvees,” Brown, 46, said, “so when the military started selling them, it was always in the back of my mind.”

High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, widely known as Humvees, are trucks and utility vehicles that were primarily used by the United States Military. They were first used in combat during the U.S.’s invasion of Panama in 1989 and saw widespread use two years later to traverse desert terrain in the Gulf War.

In December 2014, the Department of Defense began auctioning off about 4,000 Humvees to the public for off-road use only. Starting bids were set at $10,000. Brown wanted “a new toy,” and began bidding on Humvees on GovPlanet.com, an online auction website that features equipment and surplus inventory for local, state and federal agencies. Unable to win a bid, he instead bought one earlier this year from a man in New Jersey who wished only to be referred to as George.

George said he waited for the prices of Humvees to drop before buying about 30 vehicles in several different online auctions last summer. A 60-year-old used car salesman, he has sold about 20 of them, he said, and keeps the other 10 on his 10-acre property in Jackson, N.J. “I like the smell and the color of them,” George said. “…I don’t even like driving them. I just like the way they look.”

The hobby is not cheap. Though Brown bought his vehicle from George through Craigslist for a little more than $10,000, he had spent about $26,000 in total with the additional equipment and parts needed to make it look authentic and had more to do. “When you start getting all the pieces for it … so I can build it into what I want it to be,” Brown noted, “that’s when it starts adding up really fast.”

George lauded Brown’s effort and attention to detail in restoring the truck correctly and guessed that the truck he is building would be worth between $70,000 and $80,000 when complete.

Various parts and pieces of equipment to be added to Brown’s Humvee, including an ECV hood and a screen similar to one that would display the tracking of friendly and enemy vehicles on the battlefield, sit in various rooms around his Maple Avenue home.

“I don’t really know how to assemble this,” he admitted, pointing to one of the parts on the floor. “I’m just trying to put it all together and figure things out.”

Brown said he tried to joint he military when he was 19, but decided not to when he found out that he would not be guaranteed a pilot position. He currently works as a reserve captain for JetBlue, and said he has ample off-time to tinker with the vehicle.

Some have asked Brown to showcase the Humvee in local parades, but he wants to complete the project first. He said he expects to have the Humvee fully restored by the end of the summer, but in the meantime will sometimes drive the road-licensed vehicle around the village.

“If he wants to march with us, he’s welcome to do so,” said Frank Colon, commander of Rockville Centre’s American Legion Post 303, which is right down the street from Brown’s house. “It’s a tribute to the men and women who served our country to show those vehicles and what they’re like.”