MATS and April tomfoolery

At the end of this week, we wrap up our Pork Chop Diaries for 2011. But I want to tell you a couple more stories that we’ll be talking about for a while.

As you know, April 1 is a day where the prankster streak in some folks takes over normal sensibilities and they’ll do anything to pull off a really grand joke. This year, that day fell on the Friday of the Mid-America Trucking Show.

While I’d say that the prize for best April fools joke goes to Shell Rotella for the “ten million mile” truck press conference – one of the greatest fake press conferences ever – there were a few others that get the nod.

One that deserves mention is Evan Lockridge’s breaking news on cross border trucking. Broadcasting The Lockridge Report live from MATS, Evan announced that he and Mark Reddig, host of Land Line Now, had been working the phones most of the day to confirm what would be an official announcement from the White House. It was supposedly a press conference that would feature President Obama, DOT Secretary LaHood and the Canadian Prime Minister.

So Evan has everyone’s attention, right? He goes on to interview Mark and together, the satellite scalliwags reveal that they’ve learned that the Obama administration will not go ahead with the long haul cross border program with Mexico but that Canada would be “moving forward.” Evan and Mark tell Sirius XM listeners that the solution would involve building a giant bridge that would directly link Mexico with Canada – called the Fly-Over Bridge. They went so far as to describe the bridge and say that billionaire Matty Moroun (the guy that owns the Ambassador Bridge) would build it and that U.S. Rep. John Boehner wanted to call it the “Richard Nixon” Memorial Bridge.

It was a good ruse and it surely had some folks going.

I’ll have to share one more good bit of tomfoolery that involves Land Line Senior Editor Jami Jones, who came back from MATS with her share of swag and T-shirts given to her by various exhibitors. The day after she got home, she grabbed a black T-shirt out of her suitcase – all others being in the laundry. Pulling on shorts and slipping into the shirt, she was off to pick up the dog and do some other running around town. It was a great day and no jacket was needed. Her two teenage sons accompanied her, trailing behind. Jami didn’t get tipped off that something might be amiss until she got home and the boys said “do you REALLY not know what it says on the back of that T-shirt?”

It was one given to her by Mac Dump trailers. On the back it said “I love a good dump.”