Posts Tagged ‘Jan-2009’

There have been a lot of changes in the trucking industry over the past six decades, but not many drivers got to see all of them firsthand. Hap Ghan, 81, who first got behind the wheel of a big rig when he was 17, has seen them all. “I never thought I’d see cruise control or stuff like that,” he says. “The younger bucks that drive them today have no idea what we went through when we started, compared to what we drive today.”Some of those young bucks include two so…

Any trucker knows that sitting on a stuffed wallet for long periods of time is pretty uncomfortable. Since there seems to be a plastic card that goes with just about everything these days, not to mention stacks of receipts, it doesn’t take long before a wallet is pushing past maximum capacity. For Kiril Alexandrov, founder and president of Big Skinny, that constant discomfort inspired him. “Every Christmas I would get a couple of wallets and some of them look thin when they are empty…

An old gasoline pump caught Mark Reiff’s eye while he browsed at a neighbor’s garage sale. He paid $75 for the vintage Wayne, not knowing how he’d use the red and yellow beauty. A few months after the purchase, the professional landscaper gazed out his front window, across his suburban front yard, and something about that pump clicked. “I can put a gas station out front,” he thought. Crazy? Maybe. Fun? Definitely. That was eight years, many miles and 35,000 v…

The best way to get Tony Stewart to do something is to tell him it can’t be done. One of the most talented — and temperamental — drivers ever to strap himself inside a cockpit, Stewart will wear two racing hats in 2009 as a co-owner of the car he’ll try to pilot to a third NASCAR championship. He realizes that the skeptics doubt that he can juggle both jobs at once. “I like challenges,” he says. “I can’t guarantee that I’m going to [succeed…

For more than 30 years, Tom and Ray Magliotti have provided listeners with information on car repair and car care on their National Public Radio series Car Talk. In 2008, the Magliottis, under their radio nicknames “Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers,” became stars of their own television show, an animated spoof of their radio series. The 10 episodes of Click & Clack’s As The Wrench Turns is now available on a two-disc DVD from PBS Home Video.  In addition to the T…