Tag: Nashville: Page 4

Channel 19

Farm to market in style — Bill Blankenship’s 1978 W900A

Bill Blankenship, who with his son, Jerry, runs the McMinnville-based Blankenship Farms & Nursery business, found this member of the 1978 class of Kenworth’s long-running W900 model eight years ago, buying it to haul the products of his business. Today, after a long restore-and-rebuild process, he hauls trees to customers week-in, week-out — “32 trips […]

June 17, 2012

Channel 19

Get the Xtra Lease size/weight guide in free download

I first came across Xtra Lease’s wonderfully comprehensive annual size and weight guide back in late 2010, when covering the grand opening of the company’s new Nashville terminal location, following the flooding that made its old location on the banks of the Cumberland River a wreck. The guide is a great resource, not only for […]

April 4, 2012

Channel 19

ATHS Music City Chapter kicks off the new year

Thanks to Rhonda Reagan (pictured) for the invite to the American Truck Historical Society Music City Chapter’s year-beginning meeting and auction this past Saturday, Jan. 14. Held at an elementary school in Lebanon, Tenn., the event drew a crowd near 100 strong, made up of members and their families as well as representatives from other […]

January 17, 2012

Channel 19

A turn in the road for owner-operator R.C. Barnes

Since I shared his “Old Glory” video here on the blog, I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about the man behind the vid: R.C. Barnes ultimately might have more experience behind the wheel of a trucking business than any other hauler on the highway today. “I’ve heard there’s two guys out here who are […]

December 18, 2011

Channel 19

Cumberland Collective: Road music to keep an ear out for

I had the rare opportunity to pay witness to a recording session Wednesday night in Nashville at Blackbird Studios — a group called the Cumberland Collective (a couple of members of which I’m familiar with via the folks-in-their-30s-with-kids-needing-an-occasional-babysitter circuit) had opened up the doors on the 45-track studio to turn the 10-hour session into something […]

December 3, 2011

Channel 19

Scenes of Chrome & Class

That’s David Holbrook’s 1986 Peterbilt 359, winner of both Working Bobtail and People’s Choice awards in the second annual Chrome & Class Truck Show, held at the Rush Truck Center location in Smyrna, Tenn., on I-24 just southeast of Nashville. It was a much expanded show this year, with near double the number of entered […]

October 26, 2011

Channel 19

Memphis expo and Nashville show this weekend

Outreach, education in Memphis I had the good fortune of meeting Niki Brown and her husband, independent owner-operator Steve Nelson, this past weekend at the Truck Driver Social Media Convention (if you missed my reporting from the event, find two stories here and here) in Tunica, Miss., due south of their Memphis home base. They’re […]

October 19, 2011

Channel 19

Charlie Daniels: “We’re coming to rock ’em” at Charlotte show

Charlie Daniels has been at making music for a half-century and then some, and he’s still going strong. He turns 75 next month, and earlier this year he released a new track in “Let ‘Em Win or Bring ‘Em Home,” a meditation on American service members and their families giving all for love of country. […]

September 16, 2011

Channel 19

Overdrive’s Lucinda Coulter on Big Al’s show this week

Tune into Big Al Weekley’s Dipatch Me Home Radio streaming broadcast this week for an interview with Overdrive Managing Editor Lucinda Coulter about the magazine’s 50th anniversary special coverage and her place in it. A prime place it is. Coulter headed up our Overdrive Retro website for more than a year preceding the anniversary issue, […]

September 13, 2011

Channel 19

New speed governor: Public art on the roadways

No, it’s not a joke the Kansas DOT is playing on truckers and motorists — nor any kind of sophisticated speed trap. Click through the thumbnail of the picture at right here for a story from the Olathe News on the Kansas City Star’s website about Gastinger Walker Harden architect Joel Marquardt’s Art-n-R-Park public art project/series, […]

June 24, 2011

Channel 19

Tools for trucking career, issues advocacy at social media meeting

Making the wider world work to your particular advantage, whatever you choose that to mean, has always been the goal of the more ambitious among us — in today’s world, the tools toward making that a reality are multiplicitous and downright confusing in the pace at which the written and unwritten rules for their use […]

March 28, 2011

Channel 19

Happiness; UK producers seek ‘World’s Toughest Trucker’

Happiness There’s no other way to describe this picture, eh? It’s Virginia Kirk, general manager of the TA C-store and fuel islands in Nashville, Tenn., during the location’s grand reopening last week. It’s “awesome” to be back up and running, she told me Friday after being closed for nine months. Kirk’s addition of the “Welcome to […]

March 8, 2011