SuperRigs judge ‘blown away’ by trucks at annual contest — and by high winds

The SuperRigs awards ceremony had to be rushed near the end following this disconcerting announcement: “we’ve just learned that a tornado has been spotted nine miles away and it’s moving in this direction.” (Jerry Cordova/The Trucker staff illustration)

By DOROTHY COX
The Trucker Staff

7/10/2008

WALCOTT, Iowa — To twist a phrase used by late actor Jim Varney in his rubber-faced portrayal of Ernest P. Worrell: “I came, I judged, I got blowed away.” (Know-whut-I-mean-Vern?)

I was blown away by the quality of the trucks entered in the 26th annual Shell Rotella SuperRigs competition here in June, and I was literally blown away (well almost) after the awards ceremony on June 7, the last day of the show, by the high winds and torrential rain that were the outermost edges of a tornado/storm cell that snarled air traffic from the Moline, Ill., airport right on up the road to O’Hare in Chicago.

Indeed, the blackish-purple clouds did look ominous, and some of the clouds even had little tails dangling down from them. But, after all, this is journalism. I still had two contest winners to talk to and photograph. Others were milling about, too. I suppose we all were thinking we had more time or that surely there wasn’t REALLY a tornado on the way.

I had completed my interviews, snapped the last pictures, scrawled in my notebook: “Waiting on a tornado” and was rolling my luggage behind me to put it in the car when snap! The sky got black and the rain started coming down in sheets. Or rather, the rain was coming sideways in sheets. Midnight Trucking Radio Network host and fellow SuperRigs judge Eric Harley and Blair Hefty of Coyne, PR, were already in Blair’s car, waiting on me, ready to drive to the airport.

Harley told me later they looked out and saw me bent against the wind and not going anywhere.

I just remember thinking that I wasn’t going to let a tornado get my clothes as the wind and rain whipped this way and that, blowing my luggage with it. My wrist was being twisted back and forth as I tried to hold on to the suitcase.

Harley said later, “there’s something about someone named Dorothy and tornados.” In fact, if it hadn’t been for Harley and Hefty, I might have been blown away, luggage and all. As it was, my clip-on sun shades were blown right off my face. After what seemed like decades (it was only seconds), Hefty and Harley got out of the car, grabbed my luggage, stowed it in the car and helped me make it inside the Iowa 80 Truckstop’s front door. As I write this, my shoes are STILL drying out (Harley had to ditch his).

As much as I had hoped, the security scanners at the Moline and Chicago airports failed to dry out my wet clothes, which had been transferred to a plastic bag for the trip home to Arkansas. Fortunately for us, we had dry clothes to change into.

Some of the SuperRigs entrants were caught off guard by the storm, to we’re told by Darlene Swift that her husband Wayne Baker was caught in the storm while trying to help a fellow trucker load up. Swift and Baker were both SuperRigs winners.

In fact, Swift was first runner-up for Best of Show. Her orange 2000 Freightliner Classic with murals of running horses embodies what to me, working show trucks are all about.

Swift and Baker both run the crud out of their trucks and right now they’re “pulling ugly containers for John Deere. I can’t believe we’re using our show trucks to pull these ugly containers but it’s good money,” Swift said, explaining that they’re getting 100 percent fuel surcharges. Also, they’re home every night, which is a plus since living with the couple on Swift’s family farm in Taylor Ridge, Ill., are her prized show horses, not to mention dogs, cats and other critters that they have to feed.

Swift has put in 36 years as a trucker, most of it OTR; she and her husband run their trucks all through the winter, too, including hauls up to the Canadian border, which, she said, is murder on their trucks.

“I’m just a country girl,” said Swift, which is why her truck is such a good representation of her and her lifestyle.

Trucks, and especially show trucks, are an extension of their drivers’ personalities. It’s the way they show their creativity and individuality.

As judges, we saw creativity galore during the three-day SuperRigs competition. Some trucks were slap-you-in-the-face bright. Others, like Best of Show winner Ryan Danylchuk’s dusky purple and sunset-orange 2001 Peterbilt 379, were understated and refreshingly unique in design.

Bob and Shelley Brinker’s “Pirates of the Caribbean”-themed 2000 Freightliner Classic had breathtaking and painstaking artwork and detail inside and out. The Brinkers’ truck is a tribute to their late daughter, whose favorite movie was, you guessed it, “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

I like what photographer/author Bette S. Garber wrote in her latest book, “Ultra-Custom Semi Trucks,” that there’s “an instinctive need within the trucker’s soul to out-chrome, out-light, out shine and out-paint everyone else” on the road.

When asked what she would spend her prize money on, Swift didn’t hesitate: “Chrome and lights. Oh boy, more chrome; more lights.”