I’m currently working on a future post about racing haulers in the movies and couldn’t help but think of all the classic trucking and racing movies of the 1970s and 1980s. Sure, they were not about our main topic here, but just for fun, here are my top three trucking and racing movies of my childhood.

Most Quotable Movie

Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

“What we’re dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law.”

–      Sherriff Buford T. Justice

The 4^th highest grossing movie of 1977 (getting beat by Star Wars is nothing to be ashamed of!), Smokey and the Bandit follows Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed as the Bandit and Snowman from Atlanta to Texarkana, TX and back with sheriff Buford T. Justice (“of Texas!”) in high speed pursuit of their tractor trailer full of bootleg Coors beer. A box office and critical hit; the film made Bandit’s black and gold 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Special Edition and Snowman’s 1974 Kenworth W900A truck and Western mural Hobbs trailer American automotive icons.

 “Smokey and the Bandit” Film Trailer

Best Family Movie (That You’ve Never Heard Of)

Six Pack (1982)

Sugar sweet, this family film follows the adventures of a struggling stock car driver as he is “adopted” by a group of six orphans. Opening with his stock car being stripped while on his flatbed trailer at a Texas gas station, driver Brewster Baker (played by country music star Kenny Rogers) discovers a gang of orphans who steal car parts for the local sheriff in exchange for not being separated and sent to orphanages. Agreeing to take them away, the orphans travel from track to track in Baker’s recreational vehicle that doubles as his home (but he does get a real hauler by the end!). As usual for such a family film, Baker makes his comeback and finds love himself.

Race fans will be most interested in the ending scenes filmed during the 1982 Coca-Cola 500 NASCAR Winston Cup the Atlanta Motor Speedway which was won by Darrell Waltrip who just beat out Richard Petty in a sprint to the race-ending yellow flag.

The film is rated PG for a little off-color language but nothing terrible.

Funniest

Stroker Ace (1983)

“Stroker Ace was born to race
He had a mean streak ten feet wide
A son of a gun with a taste for fun
And more than his share of pride
Take a dirt road curve with the Devil’s nerve
And make a car dance across the mud
Haulin’ shine was his regular line
‘Til the track got in his blood”

-Charlie Daniels “Stroker’s Theme”

Burt Reynolds returns to the list with another laugh-filled comedy-adventure, this time as NASCAR driver Stroker Ace. With a “win or crash trying” attitude, he wins three Winston Cup titles but loses his sponsor with an ill-conceived prank. Returning to the track as “The Fastest Chicken in the South”, he is humiliated by his sponsor’s promotions which involve him dressing up in a chicken suit. Torn between his massive ego and the opportunity to be released from his contract in the season-ending race, Stroker crosses the finish line in spectacular fashion. Much of the race footage was filmed during the 1982 Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway with Tim Richmond driving the #2 movie car.

The movie was a box office bomb, but still enjoys a loyal following from Burt Reynolds’s fans for its campy fun. NOT one for the kids.

Stroker Ace Film Trailer

What Did I Miss?

Did I leave your favorite film off? Tell me what you think in the comments below; thanks!

Imagine you have a perishable product which is only available one weekend a year in each larger city across the country. This product is dynamic, colorful, and some might say outlandish. Your target audience is young families, specifically families with little boys in the home. 

You do have some advantages in that the product you’re selling is on the move in huge tractor trailer trucks on busy interstates during the week and then those same trailers are parked in high visibility, high traffic locations for the weekend your product is for sale in that market.

Given all that, you MUST be shipping your product in colorful trailers that are works of graphic art, right? Right? Not if you are Feld Motor Sports’ Monster Jam monster truck series. With multiple casts of trucks and drivers performing at the same time across the country (at up to TEN cities across North America on any given weekend), this series involves dozens of racing haulers. Of those dozens of trailers, very few are branded. The in-house Monster Jam racing haulers are typically plain white, maybe with a couple of logos on the rear trailer doors such as the one shown below in Birmingham, AL in 2012.

Incredibly, even the show monster trucks, whose purpose is to draw attention to the weekend’s shows with promotional appearances, are often delivered in plain white trailers like this one. A typical 53′ hauler has over ONE THOUSAND SQUARE FEET (92 square meters) of prime, mobile outdoor advertising space, all going to waste.

What would I like to see Monster Jam do for their racing hauler marketing? First, ANY consistent branding or logos on the trailer sides and rear doors would be a start to build brand awareness. Going a step further, Monster Jam has great associated visuals; why NOT promote your show’s biggest stars and most action-packed moments with a life sized photo graphic? Add the website URL and social media contacts to the hauler and suddenly you have an impactful mobile advertisement that generates excitement and engages potential customers.

Keep in mind that event tickets and souvenirs sales are only part of Monster Jam’s revenue stream. Monster Jam has extensive licensing agreements with companies such as Hot Wheels to produce and market Monster Jam products. These products are available year-round at big box retailers like Target and Wal-Mart as well as online through their own e-store and e-commerce sites such as amazon.com. Branded haulers would serve as triggers of goodwill from past experiences for existing customers; adding advertising specifically for these licensed products would then help generate more sales and even impulse buys with the ubiquitous of mobile computing today.

Monster Jam could even take a page from the classic playbook of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. For generations, the circus has paraded from the railroad siding where the circus train parked through the city to the show grounds, generating public buzz and media attention every year. NASCAR now does the same with their immaculate racing haulers, preceding though the streets of Las Vegas and other major cities in a bold announcement of their arrival in town. Combining fully branded racing trailers with the monster trucks themselves in a grand entrance would be a marvelous way to leverage local media and social network activity.

Of course, there are reasons not to brand these haulers. Any wrap or paint work costs money to create and apply. If the haulers are rented or leased versus owned, the owner may prohibit such modifications or require expensive abrasive blast and repaint of the trailer prior to return. Finally, Monster Jam’s marketing team may have simply chosen not to make the haulers part of their overall marketing strategy.

Your comments are always welcome; tell us what YOU think by submitting a comment below. I’d especially love to hear from any marketing or advertising professionals and if you’re a graphics guru, submit your ideas at cahabatech@yahoo.com or comment below.

Next week we’ll look at a couple of racing series who I think are doing racing hauler marketing RIGHT.

Everyone expects a racing hauler to carry one or two race cars, but you might be surprised at what else you can find stuffed inside a hauler when it arrives for a race weekend. To get an idea, let’s take a look at the IndyCar paddock area of the Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama during the 2013 Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama race weekend to see what all has arrived.

First of all, we find the typical race car spare parts: tires, engines, transmissions, and body panels such as those seen below.

Now, the crew just needs tools and a place to work on those race cars. It’s pretty handy when your hauler carries an awning, overhead lights, car lifts, and even snap-together raised rubber panels to create a mobile shop floor above the gravel and rain run-off on the paddock pavement like the Team Penske and Andretti Autosports setups shown here.

When you’re not working, tables, chairs, and fan barricades like these Team Penske Verizon ones pictured below help create a comfortable, more private area between practice and tuning sessions.

The fans of course make the entire race possible. Every team and driver is highlighted by a tall feather flag which snaps in the breeze, creating a unique sight when looking down the paddock row. Many teams provide promotional items and fan cards, like these for AJ Foyt Racing driver Takuma Sato, with information about the drivers, teams, and sponsors in front of their hauler.

When it’s time to take to the track for practice, a cavalcade of vehicles piles out of the paddock. Each of these vehicles arrived in the racing haulers. Gasoline or electric mules like this one from Chip Genesis Racing tow many of the cars from the paddock to pit row. Drivers (such as Ryan Hunter-Reay below from back in 2012) and top team members zip around on motor scooters such as these lined up along one of the Penske haulers. You’ll even find the occasional bicycle, like the one pictured in Ryan Hunter-Reay’s area above, leaning up against a hauler now and again.

Finally, once the race cars make it to pit row, the cars and crews are supervised by those sitting in the elevated pit row booths, booths that were brought in on the haulers too.

When the race weekend is over, everything is packed away and on the road again to the next track where the whole process repeats.

So the next time you wonder what all is inside a racing hauler you see pulling into the track you’ll know the answer: a lot!

The Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam monster truck show made its annual stop in Birmingham, Alabama on January 7, 2012. While the Monster Jam show racing haulers are typically not the most colorful, especially the Monster Jam-owned trucks, at least two of the independent teams added some flair to the lot off of 9th Avenue North.

Not much to the typical Monster Jam trucks; the most interesting aspect of this photo is the four large tires stacked next to the trailer’s rear axles. These (relatively) small tires replace the giant tires used by the monster trucks during the show when the monster trucks are loaded into the trailer; see the discussion of these tires below the photos of GunSlinger.

The GunSlinger monster truck team brought their truck in this deep red hauler decorated with their tagline, “Our Sights Are On You.” The cowboy motif on the hauler’s rear doors would certainly get my attention driving down the road. The GunSlinger “Behind the Scenes” web page has some great photos of their hauler in action as well as the GunSlinger monster truck on the smaller tires similar to those noted next to the Monster Jam hauler above.

Unlike most racing haulers, the “halftime entertainment” of the fire breathing, car eating Megasaurus uses a Fastrak convertible tarp system on its trailer.

A couple of days before the show, my little buddy and I stopped by the Grave Digger – The Legend display at the Advance Auto Parts in Pelham, Alabama. The show truck is carried by Stage Call trucking of Apache Junction, Arizona in this plain white hauler. When the appearance is over, the truck is placed on its smaller tires and rolled into the hauler. The monster truck actually rolls on top of rails and work cabinetry inside the trailer such that the bottom of the wheels are some 3′ above the floor of the trailer.

Thanks for visiting the new RacingHaulers.com website! We will continue to cover the world of professional (Formula 1, NASCAR, V8 Supercars, Monster Jam) and recreational racing haulers around the globe. Let us know what YOU want to see next on racinghaulers.com. Thanks for visiting!

For those curious about the technical details of our relaunched page, we are now running WordPress 3.6 with the Twenty Thirteen Ver. 1.0 theme which replaced the old hand coded HTML pages. All of the old content is being reviewed and refreshed and will appear as new blog posts. Stay tuned!