DID YOU HEAR PETERBILT, KENWORTH, AND FREIGHTLINER ARE CREATING A TRUCK TOGETHER?
The new truck will be called peter worth shakin.
Uh, oh, we’re getting close here to adult humor.
The best truck humor may be jokes you probably won’t hear.
The reason is that they are often found on double 8-track tapes.
This goes back a ways, 50 years or so when Sony’s Walkman gave everyone the chance to take their music with them. That led to other companies offering portable music to be carried around anywhere.
In those early days, the big rig trucker may have been regarded as an American folk hero during the 1970s. That was when the song “Convoy” hit the top of the charts.
Truckers were rule-breaking models. They flouted authority in the song and the movies. And throughout popular culture.
The enemy was the highway patrol and the government.
Even Clint Eastwood, famous at that time as a cowboy (“The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”) made “Hero” movies about truckers (“Every Which Way But Loose”)
“The people who perhaps benefitted the most from the 8-track, however, were truckers. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense,” says a site Splitsider.
Truckers are on the road for long periods of time, confined to their cabs. They needed entertainment.
Enter the eight-track.