I don’t often see awe on the face of my friend and ace gearjammer Rufus Sideswipe, but it’s definitely there when he goes to the Mid-America Trucking Show and stares at his reflection on some ultra-shiny piece of chrome. This year, he’s more excited than usual: MATS turns 40, so he’s expecting the show to be way over the top.
In case you’ve never been there, MATS fills the million-square-foot Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center like Dolly Parton fills a dress and overflows into adjacent parking lots. Some 80,000 people crowd in trying their best to see every one of the 1,000 or so exhibitor booths.
Not too shabby for an event that started in 1972 with 83 exhibitors and 4,000 visitors and was tucked away in what was basically a corner of one wing of the Center.
The 1970s were a kind of Golden Age for trucking. Truckers were still heroes and trucking culture took a ramp off the superslab and into the mainstream.
Weirdly, it seems the truckin’ fad kicked off with one of the most negative movies about trucking ever: Steven Spielberg’s scary 1971 “Duel.” I’ve never been able to figure that out. Maybe it’s like today’s vampire craze: Vamps went from dangerous evil undead guys and gals to dangerous evil undead sex symbols.
Whatever – truckers and trucking suddenly became hip. CB radios became the “in” motoring accessory. Hollywood cashed in and fed the fad with more movies like “Smokey and the Bandit,” “Breaker! Breaker!”, “White Line Fever,” “Convoy” and “Every Which Way but Loose” (anyone out there ever name a pet “Clyde”?).
The music industry kept pace, particularly the country-and-western side, which had always been the rig-wranglers’ jukebox favorite. Dave Dudley’s 1963 song, “Six Days on the Road,” had about a million covers. Woodrow Wilson “Red” Sovine was already an established hit-maker and songwriter – “16 Tons” and “Phantom 309” – when he penned “Teddy Bear” in the mid-1970s. Songs from the truckin’ movies crossed over into mainstream pop.
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