Theme Week, Part Truck

Jeremy’s Sametime Status Proudly Presents: 

Music Fact Check Week!  
It really doesn’t make sense that C.W. McCall was hauling trees from Los Angeles to New Jersey by way of Chicago  


Welcome to Music Fact Check Week here at Jeremy Is In The Office.  Everybody knows that Pitbull called Alfred Hitchcock "Albert" and none of Alanis Morissette's examples of Irony were actually examples of Irony, and despite Bono's claims to the contrary, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in the evening, and F-14s Don't Have Overdrive.  There are a few other noteworthy examples of song lyrics getting their facts all mixed up, and we're going to take a look at some of them as we progress through Theme Week.  Enjoy! 


We'll start off this week with C.W. McCall's classic 'Murican trucker anthem "Convoy."  While ostensibly a fun and silly ride across America through the eyes of long-haul truckers, the song is actually a protest song decrying government control over various aspects of the trucking industry, namely tolls, speed limits, selective law enforcement, cargo manifests, weight restrictions, and driver log sheets.  

It also talks about how much pigs smell.

The song follows the story of a trucker who is transporting logs from what we're supposed to believe is a logging forest in Los Angeles (referred to as "Shakey Town," nicknamed after earthquakes).  Now, there aren't many forests in the Greater LA area (Other than National Forests, where it's probably illegal to mass-harvest trees, but I can't be bothered to look that up), but let's make the leap that logging is big business in Los Angeles, and it's time to move some trees.  The trees are going to a lumber mill in nearby New Jersey.  This seems like a reach.  If I'm building a lumber yard, it's going to be at least reasonably close to the forest I'm logging, not a full continent away.  Having a nearby sawmill would cut down on shipping costs dramatically and just makes more sense.  But let's assume I'm wrong, and it's very important for a sawmill in New Jersey to work with Los Angeles logs.

The shortest route from SoCal to New Jersey (I didn't specify where in New Jersey, but it turns out not to matter much) is a reasonably southern route which doesn't come within 200 miles of Chicago:

You'll also note, this route goes nowhere near Nebraska, which will be important a little later.  What this means is that by the time the Convoy "hit that Chi-town", they were way the heck off course, not taking anything remotely resembling the most direct route, thereby costing their trucking company lots of money.  Seems like they need a little overseeing, whether it's by the government or not.  

Even putting that aside, let's take a quick peek at what would happen to a eastbound convoy in Chicago:

Oh yeah...the eastern border of Chicago is Lake Michigan.  Any convoy headed to New Jersey gets dumped in the water.  Why would this convoy take such a side trip this far north only to have to take another detour to the south to avoid going in the drink?  This is terrible route planning. 

All of this aside, we can deduce from the lyrics that McCall's convoy made appearances in both Tusla Oklahoma, and Omaha Nebraska.  Omaha is almost directly due north of Tulsa, which further makes zero sense for an eastward travelling convoy.  To say nothing of the fact that McCall's CB radio apparently reaches from New Jersey to Nebraska.  This song is one giant lie.