OOIDA on the road
Jon Osburn, skipper of OOIDA’s touring trailer, has his hands on the wheel of a new, gleaming red Western Star tractor.
The new tractor replaces the white-with-blue-trim Western Star 5700XE that Osburn piloted for two years.
The new truck is a 2018 Western Star 5700XE with white trim and silver and gold wings on the sides of the engine compartment. It has an 82-inch high roof Stratosphere sleeper. A Detroit DD16 15.6-liter engine powers it, churning out 560 horsepower and 1,850 lb-ft of torque. The transmission if a Detroit DT12 heavy-duty 12-speed overdrive automated manual.
Among the stops where Osburn will be showing off the new truck are the 40th annual Walcott Truckers Jamboree on July 11-13 at the Iowa 80 Truckstop in Walcott, Iowa, and the Shell Rotella SupeRigs truck show on July 25-28 at Trail’s Travel Center in Albert Lea, Minn.
Osburn has been pulling The Spirit in a Western Star truck since March 2014. This is the fourth Western Star truck OOIDA has used.
Osburn spent much of the spring in the southeastern U.S., where he ran into a lot of drivers pulling reefers with produce. They were hungry for information about how to get involved.
One thing anyone driving up and down the East Coast gets fed up with are the tolls that keep increasing and popping up. Every state and local government seems to think of semitrailers as rolling cash cows. An article in the June issue of Land Line Magazine by Staff Writer Tyson Fisher really explained the fights over highway funding and why truckers need to be heard. The article rang true with a lot of truckers, Osburn says. LL