"Tankman," smiling silver giant near Dunkerton, draws visitors far and wide
"We love Tankman!" one visitor writes of huge solar-powered robot with moving arms
DUNKERTON — Sitting in little valley about five miles south of Dunkerton, a 20-foot-tall, 3,800-pound glistening silver giant greets passersby on Iowa Highway 281.
For the past few weeks, he’s held a large jack-o-lantern trick or treat bag, in keeping with the Halloween season.
He might remind you of the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. Or the Iron Giant, the animated 1999 movie. Or maybe Mac, the maintenance man from The Jetsons cartoon show, and their robot maid Rosie’s boyfriend.
But this mechanical product of imagination is the real deal.
He’s Tankman. From a distance, you might think he’s just another one of those huge Halloween inflatable blowups that will be deflated and gone with the November winds for another year.
He’s not. He’s not going anywhere — except straight into the hearts of the growing number of people who visit him. Especially the young, and young at heart.
Tankman’s attracted visitors from 25 states and Washington, D.C. in less than a year.
“I thought the kids would really like it,” said Chuck Rottinghaus, a retired propane hauler and the father of Tankman, which is complete with operating robot arms and swiveling head.
”I have him oriented to face more toward the road, so as the traffic is driving it looks like he’s looking and waving to the traffic,” Rottinghaus said. “It was a fun project.”
He built him with a lot of meticulous TLC over 15 months, before placing the giant sentinel at the entrance to his property just before Thanksgiving last year. Tankman’s made mainly of propane tanks, pipes and even has pressure relief valves for eyes.
“I drove truck for 40 years and I would often see dinosaurs or animals built from farm machinery; structures, sculptures. I thought it was always neat to see stuff like that,” Chuck said. “And I hauled propane; I was associated with the big dealers. So I started to accumulate the tanks for projects. I had these tanks sitting around and one day it hit me: ‘I could build a big robot man out of those tanks!’
“I was driving, and had that running through my mind — the different steps it would take to go about it. And that was the beginning.” He started in August 2022 and finished last November.
“I retired about a year before I started this project,” he added with a smile.
“There wasn’t a model or anything, so he ‘dinkered’ with it,” his wife Rhonda said, adding and modifying as he went along. He wasn’t afraid to start over with one part of the assembly if it didn’t look or work right — aided with some well-placed suggestions and advice by Rhonda.
He acquired the mechanical skills to build Tankman from his years growing up working on the family farm, in addition to his years as a hauler.
“I used the ‘T-LAR’ guidebook, which is ‘That Looks About Right,’ ” he joked.
Next to his large mechanical creation, Rottinghaus put out a display with details about “Tankman,” operating instructions and a mailbox for visitors to leave notes.
The visitors include folks traveling north to The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., 115 miles away. They were looking for a shortcut around Dunkerton’s neighboring larger city of Waterloo and discovered Tankman. He’s accessible via the Dunkerton exit off Highway 20 east of Waterloo.
It’s a welcome respite from whatever might be on their minds of folks headed to Mayo. Chuck said one family who stopped was traveling all the way from Mississippi to Mayo by auto.
And of course, Tankman attracts kids. A lot of kids. Chuck knew that. Rhonda knew that too. That’s part of the reason why she planted flowers around Tankman so the grownups could enjoy the flowers while the kids check out Tankman.
“You see somebody pull up and three little kids get out and go running to the feet” of Tankman, Chuck said. “It is fun to see that.”
“Kids are always tickled to death and go running at it,” Rhonda said.
Among the many notes in the visitors’ log, one young person, or maybe the parent of a young person, simply wrote:
”We love Tankman!”
It’s appropriate Tankman brings that kind of sunshine to travelers young and old, because Tankman’s moving parts are totally powered by the sun. A nearby solar panel charges the batteries that make his arms move and his head swivel.
Rhonda notes Chuck enjoys the older folks that come and stand around checking it out. He likes to talk about how it was built and answer questions; he doesn’t want people to think he’s shooing them away if they see him coming down the road from the house.
”There’s been a lot of times we’d be down there working, landscaping and stuff, and people would stop and we’d visit with them,” Chuck said.
The Rottinghauses deck “Tankman” out in style for different holidays. He held a heart for Valentine’s Day and sported bunny ears for Easter. He held and waved a good sized American flag in one hand for the Fourth of July. And Chuck’s still thinking though ideas for a Christmas light display.
Thanks to an internet-savvy friend of the Rottinghauses, Tankman also has an online following. “If you look on Google Maps, it’s identified as ‘Tankman Statue,’ he said. “I took pictures all through the construction process, and they’re posted there.”
It’s a kick every time he finds a new note or comment in the visitor mailbox.
”I really enjoy seeing where people are from and the comments they leave,” Chuck wrote in an invitation to leave comments in the visitor log mailbox..
A brief video of Tankman in operation is below.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. They are listed below. Clink on the links to check them out, subscribe for free - and, if you believe in the value of quality journalism, support this column and/or any of theirs with a paid subscription .
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That was fun! Someday when we are retired, we can do something like that.