OOIDA on the road – November 2021

This won’t be the first Thanksgiving that Marty Ellis will spend on the road. He looks forward to spending time with his family before the year is out. In the meantime, there is a lot to be thankful for in addition to a potential turkey dinner at a TA or Petro restaurant.

For one, Ellis and the Spirit of the American Trucker will be touring Arizona in late November, at a safe distance from potential snowstorms. He and his family had considered a Las Vegas Thanksgiving. That didn’t come together, but it’s OK.

“We’ve never been stuck on a day, like Christmas on a certain day or having Thanksgiving on a certain day,” he said.

For another, he’s survived his first summer behind the wheel of the Western Star pulling OOIDA’s tour trailer and has found his groove.

“It has been a challenge. I knew that this first year would be,” Ellis said.

Route planning has been new for him. Gone are the days when he’d tell his company when he needed to be home and they could send him wherever they needed to send him otherwise. Now he coordinates stops with colleagues at OOIDA to make sure he is effectively reaching out to the professional truck driving community and also event organizers and truck stop managers.

Besides that, he has gotten to see some truck shows. That includes the South Dakota Truck Convoy for Special Olympics, which he has helped organize from 2002 on. This year, while the number of trucks involved was down slightly, donations were up, he said. The next weekend was the Guilty By Association Truck Show in Joplin, Mo. Fall was busy for Ellis and The Spirit.

Beyond all that, he said he has caught up with some friends and met a lot of others in trucking. That has more than met his expectations, he said. There are a lot of great people on the road. LL