Iowa 80 Truckstop, Jamboree celebrate milestones
From left, Bill Moon, Will Moon, Delia Moon Meier and Jack Horan cut the cake celebrating milestones at Iowa 80 last weekend. Will Moon and Delia Moon Meier are children of founder Bill Moon and are president and senior vice president of Iowa 80 Truckstop, respectively. Bill Moon is Will Moon's son and works on the mechanicals of some of antique trucks on exhibit at Iowa 80. Jack Horan is general manager of Iowa 80 Truckstop. (Courtesy Iowa 80 Truckstop).
The Trucker News Services
7/13/2009
WALCOTT, Iowa — Talk about a giant birthday party.
The Iowa 80 Truckstop, which bills itself as the World’s Largest Truckstop with over 5,000 visitors each day, and the Walcott Truckers Jamboree, a nationally-known industry event hosted each year by Iowa 80 Truckstop, both celebrated milestones July 9-10.
For the Iowa 80 Truckstop, the celebration marked the 45th anniversary of the year Bill Moon opened for business in a small, white enamel building with two diesel pumps, one lube bay and a tiny restaurant in the middle of Iowa cornfields, just west of the Mississippi River, and just north of Walcott.
It was also the 30th anniversary of the Jamboree, which each year attracts some 30,000 truckers, families and other trucking industry stakeholders to what is now a sprawling complex on Interstate 80.
To celebrate the anniversaries, Iowa 80 hosted Aaron Tippin for a concert that attracted over 10,000 and served up a giant tractor-trailer cake.
The 300-pound cake was an exact replica of this year’s collectable Jamboree truck model and served well over 1,000 people in Iowa 80’s Super Truck Showroom.
“The cake was almost too beautiful to cut,” Heather DeBaillie, marketing manager for Iowa 80, said. “The detail was so incredible that people were asking if it was actually a cake.”
The Walcott Truckers Jamboree has been celebrating truckers, rain or shine, since 1979.
This year was no exception.
Even though rain delayed some activities on July 10, the sun eventually came out and the outdoor festivities resumed mid afternoon under sunny skies.
DeBaillie said attendees at the Jamboree enjoyed over 150 exhibits, a Super Truck Beauty Contest with 82 contestants, an antique truck display with over 200 vehicles; an Iowa pork chop cookout, Trucker Olympics, carnival games, three live bands and a fantastic fireworks display.
For a list of winners of the beauty contest, the olympics and the pork chop cook off, click here.
“We are proud to be able to celebrate trucking,” Delia Moon Meier, senior vice president of Iowa 80 Truckstop said. “We appreciate how hard drivers work to keep America going and we appreciate that they choose to stop at Iowa 80. The Walcott Truckers Jamboree is an event that we hope instills pride in drivers and encourages them to celebrate the important job they do. The Jamboree is the perfect chance for us to say ‘thank you’ and we’ll do that rain or shine.”
Meier is the daughter of the truckstop’s founder.
Next year’s Walcott Truckers Jamboree will be held Thursday and Friday, July 8-9, 2010.
The Trucker staff can be reached to comment on this article at editor@thetrucker.com.
Follow The Trucker on Twitter at www.twitter.com/truckertalk.