Dalco was the company who was marketing the thing years ago when it made a video on how to use it. Don't know if they are still involved or not???

Dalco was the 1st place I checked because I had seen it on their website a few years ago. Not there now and I did not call them so don't know if they still carry or not.

For those of us who work on chain crews, it could put half of us out of jobs, that's why I think it never caught on ;)

Another reason is that apparently the guy who operates the thing has to be pretty bright and fairly agile/athletic which definitely cuts out over 1/2 of all existing chain crew guys from consideration.

1/3 = 1/2?
 

It uses one person instead of three (although it is much easier with two!). Either way, it's not half a chain crew. Considering your 3 R's line at the end of each post, it's obvious "rithmatic" wasn't your strong suit.

How does it put 3 guys into 1. Isn't there still a downsbox?? I guess I'm gonna have to read over exactly what the dicker stick entails again.

According to this, it allowed for one guy to be used instead of two.

http://home.cogeco.ca/~hfoa/dicker%20rod.htm

That's it
 

Okay, so my R's are off late at night too.

That is correct. The mechanics took some getting used to. The easiest way to do it was to have the guy holding the stick also hold the down box on first down while the down box guy set the marker, much like setting the clip. However, once the down box guy returned, the stick would then go 10 yards to the line to gain so the offense would know where they needed to get to for a first down. And if you were using arrows to lay on the field, it got even more complex with just 2 guys total. In our trials, it really made more sense to still have 3 on the chain crew. The advantage to using it was for easier measurements. But you did lose your "tape" at the midpoint of the chain. In theory, you could move the stick back 5 yards and have a short measurement, but in reality, that was just another added step that took more time.