Past Chatter

Well, not exactly, but what might be the next best thing is the story of 43-year-old tow driver Ollie Ray Whitworth of Fort Worth, Texas, and his 18-year-old son, Ollie Ray Jr., who were directed out of their two truck at gunpoint in the yard of Abandoned Vehicle Enforcement, 6831 Old Randol Mill Road in Fort Worth during a robbery ...

"I don't wear a cape, I don't have a mask. I can't leap tall buildings in a single bound. I'm no hero." Such were the words of Pennsylvania-based trucker George Lantzy in a March 18 broadcast segment from ABC 7 news in Arlington, Va. (video is embedded below). He was responding to reports hailing him as a hero for ...

Seems no one can get enough of the truckers who run the ice road to diamond mines in far northern Canada. If you hadn't gotten enough of the ice road truckers via the History Channel's TV show, check out the video below, which ran on NBC's Today program this morning. Follow this link if the video doesn't load.br frame src=">http://www.msnbc.msn.comd/22425001/vp/29911988#29911988"> ...

Allen Smith, webmaster of the TruthAboutTrucking.com site/blog and author of the e-book of the same name, has introduced the Trucker app for the iPhone, now available in a ">Lite" version via Truckerapp.com and the Apple online store. The app combines social and business functions, including a Twitter button, mileage and routing applications, a special trucking Youtube channel and more. Widely ...

Contrary to the dire warnings of a widely circulated e-mail, says the Michigan Department of Transportation, there is no 31-day speeding-ticket bonanza in the offing on the Great Lakes State's highways. The e-mail is a version of a sort of serial hoax foisted upon truckers and other citizens as early as 2005, according to Snopes.com. Follow that link and you'll ...

Draeger Oil Co. fuel hauler Bob Stickney of Antigo, Wis., was featured in the "Day in the Life" series of reports on local WSAW news channel 7. Right with him throughout the story, in which reporter Liz Hayes got the opportunity to ride along in his daycab, was his dog Willow, a bernice mountain dog puppy. "Pretty much sleeps all ...

On authority of the Associated Press, turkeys have turned into trucker chasers. See this report in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune about a recent incident in Jackson, Mich., in which a trucker falls just short of chicken-dancing away from three uncommonly aggressive birds outside the Tri-County International Trucks dealership and service location. As the AP reports, ">Tri-County International Trucks employee ...

Brad Templeton, founder of Internet publishing pioneers ClariNet Communications Corp., recently posted to his blog about research geared toward quantifying the mpg of all sorts of transport activity -- not just those requiring diesel or gas engines. Yes, we're talking about walking, riding bicycles, running, etc. The post -- "Holy cow: Walking consumes more gasoline than driving!" -- elucidates the ...

I'll be away from the computer today, folks, gone to NYC to (hopefully) claim an award with Truckers News editor Randy Grider in the Neal Awards best special issue category -- our "green issue" is one of three finalists. Wish us luck, eh?Since we're talking about green trucking... As part of the package of stories we planned and published for ...

This message incoming from owner-operator Zak Hargraves, who I talked to about the problem of roads in America on the occasion of Overdrive's 2008 Worst Roads survey and attendant story (out this past January), which begs the quesiton: did we miss it?">The worst road in the U.S.?" Hargraves asks. "For sure it is I-78 in New Jersey, mile marker 1 ...

Independent owner-operator Jorge Orozco Sanchez of Firestone, Colo. (pictured with his wife in a Denver Post file photo), was featured Saturday in the Post in a story about nominations for this year's Goodyear Highway Hero award, to be awarded at MATS Thursday. The Post wrote about Sanchez in October last year, when he rescued four-year-old Peyton Nicklas and her one-year-old ...

The March edition of tech magazine Wired featured this photoshop creation by Daniel Salo -- the first in the magazine's long-running ">Found" series, in which Wired editors presented their ">best guess at what lies over the horizon," since they turned the concept over to enterprising readers (follow this link for several of the other design ideas). This artifact from the ...

The day prior to the Thursday funeral of Jason Rivenburg, the Schoharie County, New York, trucker felled last week by a bullet in an apparent robbery while he was parked off I-26 in South Carolina, a sizable convoy of trucks was escorted by police around the New York state capitol building in Albany. The convoy rolled, according to Albany's Capital ...

Grammy-winner Marcy Marxer wrote her 1997 “Ballet Dancing Truck Driver” song as part of an educational package encouraging children to develop worldviews devoid of stereotypes. Elementary school teachers have sung the ballad at education conferences with sing-around-the-campfire enthusiasm. But a steel-toed boot-wearin’ honky-tonk-blues-loving lumper of the Red Smith era might switch radio stations before he hears all nine verses and ...

Such were the words of HBO's Eastbound and Down comedy series' cocreator Danny McBride when asked about the show title's connection to the recently deceased singer in an interview with Ign.com. About Kenny Powers (played by McBride), an out-of-work MLB relief pitcher who becomes his hometown high school's PE teacher, Eastbound and Down is set in Shelby County, N.C., due ...

After one Romanian trucker defied logic when he shot a video of himself dancing (quite excitedly and nimbly) about his cab while barreling down a Dutch highway, then sending the video out to media, apparently, and prompting a police search for him, London's Mirror newspaper solicited other ">dancing trucker" videos, some of which are now online here in a ">Top ...

It's no laughing matter when a truck tips onto its side, but since two February accidents in Utah saw the rigs' drivers walk away uninjured, we couldn't help but note the timing of the accidents -- within hours and miles of each other around Salt Lake City -- and the definite harmony of their spilled cargos. As reported by the ...

Such was the estimation of Jerry Spires of Spires Trucking in Miramar in South Florida, when he was called on by Associated Press reporter Scott Sonner to comment on a Golden Eagle that crashed through the windshield of one of his trucks. Piloted by Matthew Roberto Gonzalez of Opa Locka, Fla., the rig was rolling down I-80 in Nevada, ">about ...

Trucker Jeff Clark sent in a note to Overdrive and Truckers News' offices objecting to what he called National Public Radio's Here amp; Now program host Robin Young's ">unabashed usage of the term scary trucks"> in a segment Wednesday discussing expansion of rail infrastructure capacity. Young was interviewing Philip Longman, senior fellow of the New America Foundation, who repeatedly profferred ...

p align="left"/ppNew Zealand postgraduate student in Antarctic geology Kurt Joy took this pic while on location on the frozen continent. It pretty much sums up life for the researchers there, he says: ">I spent a month down there working on the glaciers about 300 km south from McMurdo Station. P bottles in Antarctica are a way of life in the ...

Vanessa Leigh Hoffman (pictured, below) began her new book, Rear View Mirror, in the cab of her fiance Joe Cicciaro's 1988 Peterbilt. On runs with tomatoes originating near Cicciaro and Hoffman's home in St. Pete Beach, Fla., to Texas, where Cicciaro loaded beef in his 53' spread-axle reefer to take back east, Hoffman encountered several situations that inspired her fictional ...

Owners of the Tiger Truck Stop in Gross Tete, La., have won their battle at least temporarily to keep their tiger on the premises. Since we blogged about the case in January, Iberville Parish councilmembers voted 11-1, FoxNews.com reported, to allow truck stop owner Michael Sandlin to qualify for ">a permit from the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries that will ...