Meet Tommy Marshall: Lead hauler with ESPN College Gameday tour team truckers

Also in the podcast: Matt Cole live from the Guilty by Association Truck Show in Joplin Missouri in the area around 4 State Trucks there: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/article/15634903/guilty-by-association-truck-show-starts-strong-in-joplin

Cole reports from Day 1 at GBATS -- How many owner-operators were at the show? What’s the mood in what’s certainly been a challenging year for so many small-business truckers? Cole spoke as owner-operators were getting parked up at 4 State Trucks and the surrounding area in Joplin, Missouri, for a bit of an update on how things were looking on-site at one of the absolutely biggest gatherings of the trucking community the nation over.

Cole also directed traffic with Game Creek Video entertainment-biz hauler Tommy Marshall out along University Avenue at the Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa. Marshall is lead driver every fall for a crew of seven rigs and operators that make up quite a unique trucking niche. If you’ve been to OverdriveOnline.com this past week you’ll likely know that Marshall is the lead man for the mobile-television production of ESPN’s College Gameday broadcast, which airs every Saturday throughout the Fall ahead of the day’s football games, live from a different university site each week: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15634571/a-unique-beast-behind-the-scenes-on-mobile-tv-production-trucking

Drop into some of Cole’s detailed reporting around the operation, with Marshall in the production studio truck for Game Creek Video and several operators from a few different companies dedicated to the production. That includes West River Light and Sound, and longtime trucker Gerry Glass. It’s Glass’s initial contact that led to the opportunity Cole got to spend with Tommy Marshall and the rest of the crew in Tuscaloosa two weeks back. Glass got in touch with Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills on Labor Day Monday, as the crew was prepping to head to Tuscaloosa to stage on the campus for Alabama v. Texas.

Would we be interested in seeing what they do firsthand? Gerry Glass asked. Overdrive is headquartered in Tuscaloosa, of course, but Dills live in Nashville, Tennessee. However; Cole was the perfect man for the job, a U. of A. Crimson Tide fan, no less.

He was on-hand for their initial unloading two days later, on Wednesday, and parts of the set-up the following days, too, with Tommy Marshall as a guide. Marshall and crew do a great deal more than just drive in such a production, of course -- in fact, driving might be the least time-consuming part of the whole affair, depending on whatever university location Gameday chooses week to week.

Cole ultimately delivered with a detailed look at the mobile-TV trucking niche. Find that and other reports from a wide array of freight niche operations via our occasional Niche Hauls series, collected via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4378936