You know how the giant trucks that haul stuff across the country are called “semi-trucks”? That means out there somewhere is a FULL truck. I wouldn’t want to meet that on a deserted highway in the middle of the night.
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What was the name of that movie that was based off of a short story about some guy in a dinky little car that’s getting terrorized on some desert highway by a giant semi?
[Duel, Spielberg’s first feature film. That guy was lucky it was only a semi-truck. -Ed.]
You know, sometimes these names are just marketing ploys. Take mobile homes. I heard a guy talking about his double-wide and how spacious it was. Well, it really wasn’t that wide (think about it — a single-wide fits in one lane on the highway) but somehow the name had convinced him that it was. So I think the whole “semi” thing is just a ploy to get us to think they really aren’t that big and dangerous. Let’s not fall for it.
And the truck is called a semi as in semi-articulated, meaning that the trailer has only one load-support point and the remainder of the load is supported by a tractor rig with an articulated joint. Just a little edukashun to interrupt the humor.
Yeah, I got to ride in my first ‘FULL truck’ in Iraq – it’s called a Stryker. You’re right, you don’t wanna meet one on a deserted highway in the middle of the night. Or anywhere else for that matter.
So what is it called when you see two of those semi trailers connected together (you know, the ones that sway back and forth on the highway right before one rolls over and crushes the hybrid cruising next to it?). Is that a double-semi? Seems like more words than you need to crush a hybrid.
If you spend your afternoon debating truck semantics on a blog, you might be a redneck.
If I comment about commenters debating trucking semantics, I AM a redneck!
BTW, Kenworth is much better then Peterbilt. Cat is much better than Cummins or Detroit. Richard Petty in his prime would beat the hell out of Dale Earnhardt in his prime. The Steelers are the greatest team evah. Rednecks have strong opinions and stand by them!
innominatus – My father was a career long-haul driver, who’s now a safety instructor at Werner(bleh), and I’ll take his old Peterbilt over just about any Kenworth I’ve ever seen. And while the Steelers fielded some really great teams, none of them hold a candle to Montana’s 49ers. We can agree on the other two counts though. God, does the fact I can discuss these topics knowledgeably make me a redneck? I mean, I live in Indiana now, but I was born in Oakland California for Christ’s sake. Guess it takes all kinds.
Excuse me, but I believe Mean Joe, Jack, and the rest of the boys also have four rings. And, with the exception of an occasional toss to Swanny and Stallworth, they did it the real way – playing smash mouth football. None of that cowardly “forward passing” nonsense.
I know Marko – that’s why this site needs an ‘edit’ feature. About ten seconds after I hit submit I was like “Wait a second, 1…2….3…. CRAP!” I will say this much though; the reason you don’t see that kind of smash mouth football much anymore is because that West Coast Offense you so eagerly mock ran circles around it.
Scott F. –
I once managed to get a Peterbilt dump truck stuck in a ditch WAY up a stupid muddy dirt road. It too a couple hours for the wrecker to get up there and winch me out. It wasn’t Pete’s fault, but, uhhm, well, ya know…
All this talk of “offense” is making me pine for the good old days when football was a man’s sport. There was no need for “matchups” or “scoring”. No! You took the ball and rammed it down the enemy’s throat until he begged for mercy!
But not anymore! Now it’s all about “putting your team in position to win” or “making plays”. The whole NFL is full of these ridiculous terms. And let’s not even get into college, where that disgusting and communist “spread offense” has infested most of the sport.
And the other reason we don’t see smash-mouth like we used to is that so many teams now play on plastic grass under a roof. The running game was a lot bigger factor back when men played with real cleats on their shoes. I will concede that the Niners put some excellent teams on the field, but I always felt sorry for Steve DeBerg. He was the starter in SF ’til Montana chased him away. Then he was the starter in KC ’til again Montana chased him away. DeBerg should have just paid some biker gang to crowbar Joe in the shins or something.
Laughing. I love that clip of Earl puttin’ his hat right in the middle of that Ram’s LB’s chest at about the 5 yard line and knockin’ him flat to the ground.
Hey, nothing wrong with an old Mopar! When I was 16 in ’85 I bought a ’69 Camaro SS and had it until two years ago. Unfortunately it was falling apart faster than my income would allow me to keep it up, so I figured I’d sell it while it was still worth something. Ever watch Overhaulin’ on TLC? My wife always cries at the end ‘cuz she thinks that should be us getting my Camaro fixed up.
Samantha – no real man can see another man’s opinion about a sports team without putting in hit two cents. Reminds me of a story my British step-dad told me when I made an observation about how riled up Europeans get about soccer. “You know that Christmas Truce in World War I? They’d have to believe it was all peace and good will towards men that stopped the fighting that day, but the truth is that a German Captain hoisted the banner of his favorite football team over the top of the trench. Our boys weren’t about to let a simple thing like a World War stop them from giving him a piece of their minds.”
My old landlord has a ‘Cuda that runs 9s in the quarter and he still takes it on the street. All motor – no nitrous or anything. I like to think I have big brass ones, but that car kinda scares me.
The only car I was ever scared to ride in was a co-worker’s car – a ’69 GTO. It’s possible, however, that my fear stemmed primarily from the fact that he drove the thing like he thought he was Steve McQueen.
I used to have a lot of fun scaring people in my Camaro. It was fast, though not really scary-fast. But compared to the Celicas and crap that my friends drove, it seemed like a beast. Unfortunately a couple of my McQueen impressions ended up in me sliding sideways into a curb. Got so crossed-up one time that I almost smashed the front glass at the Baskin-Robbins.
Heh, speaking of Celicas, there’s a kid next door to me who owns a crappy Celica with some crazy muffler (At least it sounds fast!) on it. One day, while he’s out putting some stupid decals on it, some guy in a Mustang Boss 429 (I think) goes roaring down the road. As I’m watching, the kid looks up with his mouth dropped as low as you would see in a cartoon. Priceless.
What was the name of that movie that was based off of a short story about some guy in a dinky little car that’s getting terrorized on some desert highway by a giant semi?
[Duel, Spielberg’s first feature film. That guy was lucky it was only a semi-truck. -Ed.]
Isn’t a FULL truck just a semi with a trailer full of illegal aliens? Or it could be a truck that got a little too FULL of gas! Ha ha.
You know, sometimes these names are just marketing ploys. Take mobile homes. I heard a guy talking about his double-wide and how spacious it was. Well, it really wasn’t that wide (think about it — a single-wide fits in one lane on the highway) but somehow the name had convinced him that it was. So I think the whole “semi” thing is just a ploy to get us to think they really aren’t that big and dangerous. Let’s not fall for it.
see, Frank, now you will have to be silenced…
The movie was called “Duel”
And the truck is called a semi as in semi-articulated, meaning that the trailer has only one load-support point and the remainder of the load is supported by a tractor rig with an articulated joint. Just a little edukashun to interrupt the humor.
“That means out there somewhere is a FULL truck.”
Yeah, I got to ride in my first ‘FULL truck’ in Iraq – it’s called a Stryker. You’re right, you don’t wanna meet one on a deserted highway in the middle of the night. Or anywhere else for that matter.
So what is it called when you see two of those semi trailers connected together (you know, the ones that sway back and forth on the highway right before one rolls over and crushes the hybrid cruising next to it?). Is that a double-semi? Seems like more words than you need to crush a hybrid.
I thought a “semi” meant two articulated trailers with the lead trailer attached to the tractor.
Otherwise, a single articulated trailer is called a “tractor-trailer rig.”
Otherwise, it’s just an old-fashioned truck.
The two are just not comparable, Frank. Stop by my office and have your logic chip checked.
I thought a ‘semi’ was a truck that wished it was a HEMI.
BadAndy, that’s a tandem trailer setup.
If you spend your afternoon debating truck semantics on a blog, you might be a redneck.
If I comment about commenters debating trucking semantics, I AM a redneck!
BTW, Kenworth is much better then Peterbilt. Cat is much better than Cummins or Detroit. Richard Petty in his prime would beat the hell out of Dale Earnhardt in his prime. The Steelers are the greatest team evah. Rednecks have strong opinions and stand by them!
They have them in Australia, they’re referred to as road trains.
innominatus – My father was a career long-haul driver, who’s now a safety instructor at Werner(bleh), and I’ll take his old Peterbilt over just about any Kenworth I’ve ever seen. And while the Steelers fielded some really great teams, none of them hold a candle to Montana’s 49ers. We can agree on the other two counts though. God, does the fact I can discuss these topics knowledgeably make me a redneck? I mean, I live in Indiana now, but I was born in Oakland California for Christ’s sake. Guess it takes all kinds.
Viagra is shipped in really big trucks. Nothing semi- about them.
Joe Greene and Jack Lambert would pound the crap out of that sissy boy Montana.
If they do beat his ass Marko, it’s probably because he’s weighed down with 4 Superbowl rings.
Excuse me, but I believe Mean Joe, Jack, and the rest of the boys also have four rings. And, with the exception of an occasional toss to Swanny and Stallworth, they did it the real way – playing smash mouth football. None of that cowardly “forward passing” nonsense.
I know Marko – that’s why this site needs an ‘edit’ feature. About ten seconds after I hit submit I was like “Wait a second, 1…2….3…. CRAP!” I will say this much though; the reason you don’t see that kind of smash mouth football much anymore is because that West Coast Offense you so eagerly mock ran circles around it.
Scott F. –
I once managed to get a Peterbilt dump truck stuck in a ditch WAY up a stupid muddy dirt road. It too a couple hours for the wrecker to get up there and winch me out. It wasn’t Pete’s fault, but, uhhm, well, ya know…
All this talk of “offense” is making me pine for the good old days when football was a man’s sport. There was no need for “matchups” or “scoring”. No! You took the ball and rammed it down the enemy’s throat until he begged for mercy!
But not anymore! Now it’s all about “putting your team in position to win” or “making plays”. The whole NFL is full of these ridiculous terms. And let’s not even get into college, where that disgusting and communist “spread offense” has infested most of the sport.
Cowards! The whole lot of ‘em!
And the other reason we don’t see smash-mouth like we used to is that so many teams now play on plastic grass under a roof. The running game was a lot bigger factor back when men played with real cleats on their shoes. I will concede that the Niners put some excellent teams on the field, but I always felt sorry for Steve DeBerg. He was the starter in SF ’til Montana chased him away. Then he was the starter in KC ’til again Montana chased him away. DeBerg should have just paid some biker gang to crowbar Joe in the shins or something.
Heh@Marko. Spread offense = “We have a lot of fast gangstas and nobody on the team can block.”
Ah, you’ve hit another nerve, innominatus! Domes! They play inside domes!
“We can’t play outside in the snow or in the rain. We might melt!”
Cowards! May they all be damned to an afterlife of being constantly run over by Earl Campbell.
Laughing. I love that clip of Earl puttin’ his hat right in the middle of that Ram’s LB’s chest at about the 5 yard line and knockin’ him flat to the ground.
When did this become a Football debate thread. O.O;
We can talk about trucks, too, I guess.
My personal favorite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdvVaTbwMrE
We could talk about muscle cars. I can only think of one, though.
Hey, nothing wrong with an old Mopar! When I was 16 in ’85 I bought a ’69 Camaro SS and had it until two years ago. Unfortunately it was falling apart faster than my income would allow me to keep it up, so I figured I’d sell it while it was still worth something. Ever watch Overhaulin’ on TLC? My wife always cries at the end ‘cuz she thinks that should be us getting my Camaro fixed up.
Chip Foose’s work gives me a tingle up my leg.
Er, nevermind.
Samantha – no real man can see another man’s opinion about a sports team without putting in hit two cents. Reminds me of a story my British step-dad told me when I made an observation about how riled up Europeans get about soccer. “You know that Christmas Truce in World War I? They’d have to believe it was all peace and good will towards men that stopped the fighting that day, but the truth is that a German Captain hoisted the banner of his favorite football team over the top of the trench. Our boys weren’t about to let a simple thing like a World War stop them from giving him a piece of their minds.”
Before I clicked your link, I was worried that ponysite.de was going to throw a bunch of Mustangs in my face. Thankfully I was wrong.
Foose is a stud. And I want his waterjet cutter.
Eh, Mustangs are all okay. Ain’t got crap on a ‘Cuda or a Challenger, though. 🙂
That shouldn’t say “all” before “okay”.
My old landlord has a ‘Cuda that runs 9s in the quarter and he still takes it on the street. All motor – no nitrous or anything. I like to think I have big brass ones, but that car kinda scares me.
The only car I was ever scared to ride in was a co-worker’s car – a ’69 GTO. It’s possible, however, that my fear stemmed primarily from the fact that he drove the thing like he thought he was Steve McQueen.
I used to have a lot of fun scaring people in my Camaro. It was fast, though not really scary-fast. But compared to the Celicas and crap that my friends drove, it seemed like a beast. Unfortunately a couple of my McQueen impressions ended up in me sliding sideways into a curb. Got so crossed-up one time that I almost smashed the front glass at the Baskin-Robbins.
Test.
Heh, speaking of Celicas, there’s a kid next door to me who owns a crappy Celica with some crazy muffler (At least it sounds fast!) on it. One day, while he’s out putting some stupid decals on it, some guy in a Mustang Boss 429 (I think) goes roaring down the road. As I’m watching, the kid looks up with his mouth dropped as low as you would see in a cartoon. Priceless.
Weird. Two comments – the original and the edited version – are “awaiting moderation”. Is cr*p a bad word?
I just used “crap” in my previous post. My “redneck” comment at #11 was in moderation for a few minutes, too.
It’ll probably get in tommorow morning. I’m off to bed.