An artistic take on giving back: Hand-sketched customer truck renderings

Regular Overdrive readers may recall this story about Rock Hill, S.C.-based Express Truck Tax and the company’s early-April efforts to show support for truckers hauling in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic by delivering free meals at rest areas along I-77 due south of Charlotte. For a couple weeks now they’ve been doing something a little different with something of a similar intent when it comes to appreciation.

Company director Charles Hardy sent along this artist’s rendering of a customer’s rig, part of an ongoing effort to do two such portraits a week for individual truck-owner customers by Express content writers (and obviously artistically talented folks) Caleb Flachman and Gabrielle Girard.

Drawing of the front of a semi-truck with American flags on sticks on either side of the bumperFor the opportunity to get this sort of treatment for your unit, you need only to reply to this week’s post about the giveaway on Express Truck Tax’s Facebook page with a photo of your truck. Winners each week are announced on Friday.

This past week’s examples, shared yesterday at the company’s Facebook page, also show the sort of framing treatment they’re giving each produced sketch.

Two framed truck sketches for Express Truck TaxAmong owners’ trucks featured thus far: Edie Giacomo, Fulana De Tal, Jimmy Javino Donoso Lua and Rhonda McDowel. Express will be conducting the program through the end of August.

Speaking of filing Heavy Vehicle Use Tax, it’s high season for it this month, and Hardy wrote me Monday to make note of a guarantee Express is giving owner-operators who use their e-file services (at a cost of as little as around $10 a truck for filing, not of course including the tax payment, $550 per truck for most). The company is offering a filing-success-or-your-money-back guarantee to filers that use Express.

As was in the news this week, OOIDA has urged Congress to grant truck owners a year off from paying the tax, due at the end of this month for most long-active truckers; given ongoing negotiations on Capitol Hill continue around yet another stimulus/relief bill, there’s a possibility the idea takes hold, but I wouldn’t count on it until there’s final word. Read more about the association’s efforts via the following link:

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