Talking Trucks

As I was driving to work on Friday morning, I pulled to a stop at a traffic light just behind what appeared to be a delivery truck for our local McDade’s grocery store. Since McDade’s was only a block away, I figured the driver had just made a morning delivery, and I didn’t plan to give the vehicle a second thought. (I do remember briefly reflecting on the irony that the advertisement on the back of the truck was for McDade’s produce and that I am never impressed with McDade’s produce selection. It seems that the bananas are the only items that I’m continually satisfied with.)

Anyway, shortly after drifting off into another thought, my attention was abruptly forced back to the delivery truck because as sure as night follows day, the advertisement for McDade’s produce transformed before my eyes into an ad for some New Age-looking kitchen appliance. I stared in amazement for a few seconds wondering when McDade’s started carrying fancy appliances before realizing that the back of the truck was not a pull-up cargo door but a solid wall of rotating triangular prisms. Once again, the advertisement transformed—though I cannot recall at this time the name of the business that was privileged to receive the third spot in the rotation, or first or second, depending on when the rotation started.

Admittedly, I was a bit overly curious at this vehicle since I had never seen one before, so I purposely drove behind it for a few blocks before pulling beside it at a later traffic light. The ads on the sides were constantly changing just like on the back. Perhaps the most surprising ad came when it advertised itself: “Admobile.” As if McDade’s advertising fresh produce weren’t ironic enough, here we have an ad company making advertisements. Moreover, can you imagine the commotion this will cause drivers if such practices become common? Not only must drivers now keep themselves from being distracted by the millions of billboards that interrupt the shoulders of highways—they must now beware of those billboards jumping onto the road and dancing around their vehicles like some deranged elf, coaxing them to rush to the nearest exit to buy produce and the New Age-appliances for processing it.

Of course, this isn’t my own embellishment of the situation. I checked out Admobile’s website just to see it says about itself. Its declaration? “Admobile advertising cannot be ignored, tuned out, crumpled, recycled, or thrown in the trash. Guaranteed.” I see their reasoning. After all, look at the effect it made on me the first time. However, if I were Admobile, for the future, I would seriously rethink this strategy for affecting drivers in Jackson, Mississippi, who have a propensity for ignoring virtually anything on the road that they should be aware of...including large delivery trucks that are trying to talk to them at 80 miles per hour.