Many older readers can recall the original mid-1970s airing of the “Movin’ On” TV serial. For two years, team drivers Sonny Pruitt (actor Claude Akins) and Will Chandler (actor Frank Converse) traversed the country in their green Kenworth, stumbling into other people’s problems and helping solve them.
If you’re used to streaming video in your downtime, you’ve now got the opportunity to watch all 44 episodes of “Movin’ On.” They’re available on Hulu, Yahoo View, or PROClassicTV, says Mark Rathaus, who’s been working with the show’s creators, Barry Weitz and Philip D’Antoni.
“We have remastered the old shows and they are once again available for viewing in the highest quality possible,” Rathaus says. Also, “We manage a Facebook page with nearly 3,000 followers and we have a website, movinontvshow.com, chock-full of photos and anecdotes written by Barry Weitz about the stars, trucks, and stories when ‘Movin’ On’ was in production. We even have an associate in North Carolina who has opened a Movin’ On Museum to display his enormous memorabilia collection.”
The museum is in the Wake Forest, N.C., area near Falls Lake State Park. It is open Monday-Saturday, by appointment only. To arrange a visit, call 919-282-2372 or write [email protected].
There’s also a blog about the show, which was part of the 1970s trucker craze of trucker movies, CB lingo and trucker caps. The series aired from 1974-1976.
Many fans of the series credit their love of trucking to watching Sonny and Will have adventures around the country while team-driving their Kenworth.
“’Movin’ On’ ran two seasons on NBC after a successful airing of ‘In Tandem,’ a Movie Of The Week and the pilot for the series,” Rathaus says. After learning the series had never made it to syndication, he says, “I tracked down the original film materials to a vault in Kansas and had them delivered to me in Los Angeles.” After being remastered, the renewed episodes began appearing on cable TV in 2011.
