Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/165354
Voices A convoy for a cause By Todd Dills Three years ago, Bolt Express Director of Marketing Michelle Dunn and owner-operator Jeanie Silk joined forces to launch the Great Lakes Convoy to highlight cancers specific to women and raise money to support research for a cure. Dunn, a survivor of cervical cancer, has been free of the disease for three years, concurrent with the convoy's duration. After two years in Michigan, Dunn and Silk looked to boost participation by holding the charity event at the Expedite Expo show in Wilmington, Ohio. The convoy rolled out June 26 on a 15-mile run on Interstate 71 to the TravelCenters of America at Exit 65 in Jeffersonville, Ohio, then back to the show. The event garnered thousands of dollars' worth of donations for the American Cancer Society, the Foundation for Women's Cancer and the Susan G. Komen breastcancer foundation, says Dunn. She met Silk when the solo owneroperator had her '05 Kenworth T300 and 22-foot box leased to Bolt Express – today, Silk's leased to Load One. VIDEO Scan the QR for video of the Great Lakes Convoy rollout, including an interview with owner-operator Jenny Marcu, who won a battle with uterine cancer and brought no shortage of creativity to a truck-decoration contest, which she and her team husband Nick won. Alternately, search "Great Lakes Convoy" at OverdriveOnline.com. Midway through the Great Lakes Convoy, participants stepped on the Cat Scale at the TA in Jeffersonville, Ohio, Exit 65 on I-71, for a weigh-in: 6,280 pounds, says convoy organizer Jeanie Silk. With a donation to the effort to raise money for cancer research, those who got closest to guessing the weight won sponsordonated gift cards. Uh-oh! Not exactly. This picture was staged by Cookeville, Tenn.-based eight-year driver and current Greatwide subagent/dispatcher Michael Winton when he came upon the somewhat infamous Tennessee Highway Patrol Peterbilt 379 parked locally. "I just had to get a picture of it" with his custom pickup, he says. Find more about it in the May 18 post to the Channel 19 blog. Driverless trucks = income opportunity? days over come " Theroboticsoftothe truck driver will bewill become 2025 [with] drive the trucks. We obso- lete. I have been thinking of buying a couple of robotic trucks and letting them make me some money. The one thing I haven't figured out yet is how the robotics will dislodge themselves from the wires and circuit boards and tie down those flatbed loads. — Wayne Major, commenting at OverdriveOnline.com " Scan for Kevin Jones' July story on advances in driving robotics, or search "Robotic trucks" at OverdriveOnline. com. 10 | Overdrive | September 2013 Voices_0913.indd 10 8/27/13 8:57 PM