From the editor: An extra-special edition of Overdrive Radio this week, handing the mic over to our own Long Haul Paul and, setting the scene in story from Large Cars & Guitars last month in Bristol, Tennessee, another of Overdrive's own in regular contributor Bobbi McGee. Hear LHP's take in the podcast, and read on for profiles of three elite truckers by McGee.
The MC was emphatic. “Seven million safe miles doesn’t happen by accident,” Charles Gracey said. “That’s not luck. It’s discipline, sacrifice, grit, and an unwavering commitment to doing the job right when nobody is watching.”
Sirius XM personalties Gracey and Ron “Stray Dog” Witherspoon were there to honor those miles, that grit, that commitment. Three haulers joined them on the stage: Mike “Cow Chip” Brown, “Tennessee Trash” Eddie Parrish and Candy Bass, known as the “Glitter Granny.”
But Gracey wasn’t talking about a collective 7M miles between them. These three have taken it one mile at a time toward a collective 21M.
Singer-songwriter Tony Justice, who organizes and promotes Large Cars & Guitars, called them heroes, legends, inspirations. “These men and women on stage with us now are the very definition of all those things,” he said. “They stand as a testament to what true old-school trucking values were built on.”
Candy Bass
Candy “Glitter Granny” Bass is no passenger princess.
She drove commercially for 51 years. She retired in December of 2025 at 81 years old, after a knee injury.
“I am not really retired,” she said. “I still have my license. I just haven’t figured out if I want to go back yet.”
Candy was not a team driver; she was the one pulling swinging doors open in the rain, cranking landing gear down and still doing it through last year. Candy had a video go viral and a whole new social media generation got to know this legend of the highway. The 2023 Women in Trucking Driver of the Year has been accident free over 7 million miles of safe driving.
“Trucking was my escape to freedom, the freedom of the open road,” she said.
She works tirelessly for others and has given extensively to the trucking community through charitable fund-raising over the years. As an Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association life member and WIT member, she counts the trucking community as family.
“When I signed on, I signed on as a driver, not female or male, just a driver,” she said. That just a driver has now had two truck stops named after her, the old TA in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, which was often referred to as “The Candy Store,” and another now in Wildwood, Florida.
Bass was previously honored with the TA Petro Citizen Driver Award in 2016.
Eddie Parrish
Eddie “Tennessee Trash” Parrish was born in 1951 right into trucking. His father was a truck driver, just like his grandfather.
Eddie showed me a photo of the 1958 B model Mack that was the first rig he ever remembers riding in with his father. Back when his parents got married, his dad was hauling live chickens out of Kentucky into Chicago in an old day cab 1942 International. His parents used the truck as work and transportation, because selling their family car was the only way they could afford to get married back in 1946.
“Trucking is the only thing I know,” he said. “I have driven over 60 years. My first time behind the wheel was at the ripe old age of 13, and my grandfather, who was a team driver, allowed me to chauffeur him around the town of Scottsville, Kentucky, where the local police didn’t mind that I was barely tall enough to look over the steering wheel, just as long as my grandpa was with me.”
Ron Witherspoon was well-acquainted with Eddie (pictured) himself, offering a bit of a testimony from the stage at Large Cars: “I have personally ridden over a million miles team with Tennessee Trash. We’ve been in jail and we have drove through hell, and he is just like a brother to me. One of the good ones.”
It was a “different time back then,” as he put it, though he’s not one to put on nostalgic blinders looking back.
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Eddie credits trucking for helping him work through PTSD after serving in the armed forces, and says he grew to enjoy time alone. “I am thankful to have been onstage with these other drivers, it means a lot to me,” he said.
Mike Brown
Mike “Cow Chip” Brown was born in 1950 and drives professionally to this day.
“I delivered a load to Johnson City, Tennessee, came over to Bristol for the truck show and will leave out to pick up a load in Indianapolis,” he said.
When Tony Justice mentioned that Mike most likely drove along a few miles with his own dad over-the-road, Mike noted he’d “driven on the road with many parents of current drivers today, and I hope to be driving along with their grandkids someday soon.”
Mike Brown, pictured onstage with host Tony Justice, then pointed up. “I can’t get that done, but God can,” he said.
Secret to that obvious success? He offered a variation on what he’d said previously: “I can’t drive a truck, but the Lord can,” he said, “I get paid to see new places and travel our country.”
Brown has been recognized not only for the miles. He’s never had an accident, sure, but also no chargeable claim in all his time spent behind the wheel. Brown’s rated among the elite in long-haul trucking professionals on the road today as a true ambassador.
Charles Gracey closed out the ceremony at Large Cars with this: “Seven million times these guys made the choice to go forward instead of park it and hang up those keys. Each time they had the choice to do it the right way or to cut corners. The people we honored onstage chose to do it the right way. They kept on trucking; they have kept America moving forward.
Pause again and just consider the math of it all -- three drivers, 7 million safe miles, 21M miles between them, equivalent to more than 800 trips around the circumference of the earth.
Most truckers won’t get so far, but I’m betting you’ll admire the dedication.
Here’s hats-off to these three. It was a honor to be in their presence.
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