A thousand trucks stopped in their tracks, blocking the highway and the road shoulder. S2: The Ohio Turnpike was empty four miles between Cleveland and Toledo. And before long, you had a nationwide convoy of parked trucks. S5: Word spread to other truckers across the country via the CB channels. Hundreds of trucks and cars brought to a standstill on Interstate 80. S2: For nearly 5 hours, their lights extended up to ten miles in either direction. It was a spontaneous one man demonstration, but another trucker heard what he was doing on the CB and parked right next to him. River Rat Edwards parked his rig in protest in the middle of the interstate.
#Trucker lingo flagtown driver#
S5: It all started with a lone fed up truck driver in Pennsylvania. Today, they began demonstrating their anger on signal by Citizens Band radio. S2: A high percentage of the nation’s over-the-road trucks are operated by self-employed driver.
#Trucker lingo flagtown drivers#
S5: As the oil crisis entered its third month, the drivers demonstrated just how much political power those gadgets in their truck cabs held. S8: So what had been just a way to alert fellow drivers to police cars or speed traps or just to break up the monotony of the drive? Now took on this sort of political caste. The trucks on the inside of the convoy were completely shielded and there was very little the cops could do. As a group, they could drive as fast as possible. Suddenly, the truckers had strength in numbers. A trucker would get on the radio and say to all the other nearby trucks, Hey, let’s all drive together as a pack. S5: But they also used CB radios to form tightly packed blocks of trucks known as convoys. They would warn each other over the airwaves of upcoming speed traps. S5: Speaking in this code, truckers used their radios to coordinate resistance to the double nickels speed limit. S6: They called it double nickels, 55 double nickels. S5: And that hated 55 mile an hour speed limit had a nickname, too. S2: Because they were these acts like Smokey the Bear. S5: Los Angeles became shakey town because of the earthquakes. S2: Everybody said ten four instead of yes.
#Trucker lingo flagtown series#
S6: Breaker breaker there one nine the series music man calling for the rubber duck over. S5: Truckers developed an entire CB specific language. They all sort of have these names that they adopt and appropriate. They’re using all these unique names they call them handles. S6: Bill had gotten a CB and had it in his jeep and he’d he’d tell me, call me. Truckers constructed a whole culture around CB radios, and that caught the attention of Bill Frist and Chip Davis the CW McCall musicians. All clean and green, all way back to that. So truckers could talk with each other while on the go. And they’re small enough to fit in the cab of a truck. They allow you to converse with other people over certain radio frequencies. Shared citizen’s band radios or CDs are walkie talkie like devices. S5: So these drivers came up with ways to get around the limit, aided by a ubiquitous piece of trucker gear. And this pushed them really over the edge. There was less of it available and they now had to abide by 55 mile per hour speed limit. S8: They had to pay more for the diesel when they fueled up.
Their earnings depended on getting places as fast as possible. S5: And it was truck drivers who felt the effect of the speed limit laws the most especially the independent ones who didn’t work for big companies or belong to the union. That’s a very real infringement on that sense of who they are. S8: So that’s a very real infringement as Americans conceive of their rights to cheap oil and all the driving they want to do. Like I said, Evan Chung reported and produced the story and he’s going to take it from here. So today on Decoder Ring, we got ourselves a convoy. It touches on advertising, hamburger buns and speed limits, but also global conflicts, skyrocketing gas prices and aggrieved protesting truck drivers. It’s from Slate producer Evan Chang, who’s going to take us through the history of this bizarre, number one smash an artifact from a time when truckers were also at the center of the culture. For this episode, we’ve updated a story that originally aired in 2017 but could not be more relevant. This is decoder ring and I’m Willa Paskin. And it all made me wonder, how did this odd song come to exist in the first place? And what are it been trying to say? Turns out I knew just the guy to ask. S1: The original convoy is also all over protesters, YouTube videos and social media posts. S2: Overnight, Canadian police tried to clear out this truculent protest blocking the Ambassador Bridge.
S1: That’s one of a few modified cover versions inspired by the recent protests in Canada.
0 kommentar(er)
