Trucking Funnies

After meeting with the American Trucking Associations, one of the trucking groups that protested the ad, Monster.com said it would modify it “slightly.”

LAUGH OR GAFFE?

Half of eTrucker.com’s readers have no problem with a Monster.com commercial that shows a driverless 18-wheeler careening through a cornfield, an intersection and a service station before crashing past a trucker in a diner.

“Somewhere a trucking company needs a driver,” says trucking DJ Bill Mack during the ad for the employment website. “Somewhere a driver needs a job.”

“You guys in less then a minute did more damage to truck drivers’ image than anybody has,” wrote Jack Rorer of Jack Rorer Trucking, San Diego, to Monster.com. Others had the attitude of Aaron Barnhart, who reviewed Super Bowl commercials in the Kansas City Star: “The trucking industry threw a hissy fit over this?”

After meeting with the American Trucking Associations, one of the trucking groups that protested the ad, Monster.com said it would modify it “slightly.”



NOW THAT’S A BUMPER

No reason to keep all that streamlining in the front of a rig. So reasons Kenworth, which has worked with Olympia, Wash.-based Aero Works to focus on the back of a dry van.

“They’ve designed a new approach to ‘boat tails’ – a term that refers to a device that evens out airflow behind the trailer,” says Wayne Simons, a Kenworth engineer. “Our testing has shown that their concept boat tail can improve fuel economy by several percent.”

And they probably haven’t even tested the aerodynamic benefits of running at high speed in reverse.



R2D2’S GOT NOTHING ON TROOPERS

Some troopers seem to be as depersonalized as robots. And then there are those rare few who