Channel 19

Bear Untitled 11A bear gets a good buzz on

Responding to a report of someone being attacked by bees, North Carolina Wake County Sheriff’s Deputy Brandon Jenkins was himself trapped in his cruiser for close to 15 hours in August. According to CNN, Jenkins found a disabled tractor-trailer with a truckload of honeybees, many of which had escaped the trailer and now swarmed on Jenkins’ Dodge. Bee experts from North Carolina State University were summoned to rid the cruiser of the insects. After a long history of being disturbed by bears, it must have been a sweet moment for those bees to take revenge on one.



 

ShoulderShe’s bolder with her shoulder

When Ellen Voie launched Women in Trucking three years ago, she boasted she’d be so happy when membership reached 1,000 that she’d get a WIT logo tattoo. At the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas, she followed through before listeners of the Sirius XM Freewheelin’ radio show’s remote broadcast. The logo was inked on the back of her right shoulder by Monster Tattoo (www.monsterink.net) artists. Joining her in the chair were member and driver Sherri Franko and three others. Search “Ellen Voie, tattoo,”



More ‘dummies’ in D.C.

Dummies Untitled 1The Smithsonian in July took delivery of “Vince and Larry” crash-test dummy costumes and related auto safety items donated by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Their public service announcements from the 1980s included one in which Larry convinces Vince to get out of bed in time for a crash test by noting Barbara Mandrell was saved by a seatbelt. Today 72 percent of commercial drivers use seatbelts. Now that’s smart.


Green ThumbReefer verdict: Not guilty

Self-described “liberal curmudgeon” and historian Stephen Budiansky, writing in the New York Times in August, challenged the “local food movement” for claiming that long-distance transportation of food is always wasteful. “The statistics … are always selective, usually misleading and often bogus,” he writes. For example, he notes a tractor-trailer accounts for only 300 of the 5,000 “energy calories” used to grow and transport a head of lettuce: “Shipping a head of lettuce across the country actually adds next to nothing to the total energy bill.”

 

 

Politics Untitled 1Trucking politics on new CD

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Truckers heard an online radio debut of “When the Big Rigs Don’t Roll,” a trucking-themed album by singer-songwriters David Ayers and Barry Allen (AllenAyersProductions.com). As the title suggests, the disc’s 10 songs are aimed at the politically conscious. The title track, for instance, was penned in 2008 as diesel prices spiked and truck convoys began rolling toward Washington, D.C. “Say a Prayer for Jason” is about Jason Rivenburg, the hauler gunned down while parked in an abandoned grocery lot and whose death has inspired legislation named after him. Roll on, Ayers and Allen!


For your daily dose of trucking humor, oddities and coverage in the media, visit: OverdriveOnline.com/channel19.

 

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