Help Needed: Autoblog.com Driven To Work Article

Hey All,

I'm the Senior Editor for Autoblog.com, an automotive news and reviews site:

www.autoblog.com

http://www.autoblog.com/bloggers/seyth-miersma/

Last year I kicked off a series about working vehicles, and the people that drive them, called Driven To Work. Since the very idea of the series was born, I've known that I wanted to do an installment featuring some kind of "Big Rig" and driver. The problem, such as it is, is narrowing down the focus in terms of vehicle, cargo, location, company, and/or individual driver. As you all no doubt know, there's a lot of variety in the industry.

Stories about truckers and trucks are fairly common, so I'd really like to be able to focus on someone that drives either a unique kind of rig, or hauls some very unique cargo.

So here's my question for the community: where should I start? Locations can really be anywhere in the U.S. – though I'm based in Michigan so closer to home would always be some help. What's the most interesting, or most dangerous, or most prestigious, etc., job you've either heard of or have had? I'd love ideas or contact information for any and all of them, if you're willing to help a writer out.

Thanks in advance for your help, and for indulging the slightly non-standard post in your very active forums.

-Seyth seyth.miersma@autoblog.com

Here's an interesting one we were just talking about:

A unique trucking opportunity

I think one of the coolest driving jobs is the driver who gets to haul the Christmas Tree to Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. I have no idea how they choose the driver each year, but that's a really special gig right there.

Brett,

Both cool ideas! The Christmas tree might be too time sensitive for me to wait on, but I like where your head's at.

-S

To me, the most interesting "hauls" are the way-oversized ones . . . a fairly common one is the vertical shafts and the propellers for the large windmills you see in the Mid-west/Texas areas . . . most unique I ever saw was a stainless steel pressure vessel headed for a refinery . . . the trailer took up TWO LANES at a time it was so wide and the trailer itself was a marvel of engineering . . . I have no idea how it was driven as it was on the frontage road outside the Sapp Bros truck stop in Cheyenne, WY when I saw it . . . that type of load would be most interesting to me . . .

Jopa

Touring season (concert) is about to begin. I am currently waiting for a tour assignment. Until then, we do production (one off) runs and regular truckload. This flavor of trucking is definitely interesting and challenging (zero fail rate)

Touring season (concert) is about to begin. I am currently waiting for a tour assignment. Until then, we do production (one off) runs and regular truckload. This flavor of trucking is definitely interesting and challenging (zero fail rate)

Interesting. When does touring season tend to start, Rolling Thunder? Sorry, I'm going to ask a couple of questions that have obvious answers to you:

What's a production or one off run? What's regular truckload? Why does this kind of job have a zero fail rate? Do you mean that, basically, if you miss a deadline the concert/band/etc is screwed?

Thanks!

-Seyth

Touring season (concert) is about to begin. I am currently waiting for a tour assignment. Until then, we do production (one off) runs and regular truckload. This flavor of trucking is definitely interesting and challenging (zero fail rate)

Interesting. When does touring season tend to start, Rolling Thunder? Sorry, I'm going to ask a couple of questions that have obvious answers to you:

What's a production or one off run? What's regular truckload? Why does this kind of job have a zero fail rate? Do you mean that, basically, if you miss a deadline the concert/band/etc is screwed?

Thanks!

-Seyth

Tours start at different times after the holidays, usually beginning early spring.

A production run (one off) is taking production gear to a venue for a single production (think award show, or a single music event where the artists share a stage and only do a partial set list). We will carry what they will need for that show then take it back to the facility as opposed to a proper tour where there are several trucks with everything needed from start to finish driving all over the continent.

Regular truckload is (for me) running mostly East of the Mississippi, Iowa, Texas and Oklahoma picking up and delivering various loads of dry goods. I guess it is considered regular trucking.

Zero fail is exactly what you said. There is no limit to what will be done to get the gear where it needs to be on time. I have been flown to Miami and Denver in order to jump onto a tour to team drive because a date has changed last minute, for example.

Hope this helps.

Hey RT, are you still runing for Averitt? I've been reading as much as I can find about them lately and have seen enough that I think I would definitely short list them for further consideration when looking for another company to work for.

Hey RT, are you still runing for Averitt? I've been reading as much as I can find about them lately and have seen enough that I think I would definitely short list them for further consideration when looking for another company to work for.

Yessir

Hey RT, are you still runing for Averitt? I've been reading as much as I can find about them lately and have seen enough that I think I would definitely short list them for further consideration when looking for another company to work for.

Yessir

Thank you

Is nice to be able to have contact where people are coming from when speaking of runs and experiences out there.