I spent much time inside live trucks, often eating lunch or snacks or waiting to watch that beautiful piece of machinery rumble down the highway with the grace of Fred Sanford’s truck. Raise your lavaliere microphones to live trucks and hope for the following ten reasons, their masts keep stretching for the sky.
1. After working all day to prepare to deliver an important story to thousands of people, we feel a rush of adrenaline not knowing whether the live truck’s generator will stall moments before going on air.
2. We enjoy riding in a vehicle wrapped in the images of TV anchors who are smiling despite most of what they say on air sounds scary.
3. We appreciate vehicles still running with more than 200,000 miles after years of people treating them like crap.
4. We know only the finest engineers are selected to wire a live truck’s equipment.
5. We are fascinated how the law of physics makes it nearly impossible for all of a TV station’s live trucks to be working at once.
6. We look forward to big events, when managers and producers assign five crews to all edit their stories in the same live truck within an hour.
7. Speaking clearly on air while simultaneously breathing the live truck’s exhaust separates the real journalists from the pretenders.
8. Few things bring out the best in us than when the live truck’s AC breaks down in the summer or when its CO2 alarm sounds off.
9. Like a kid on Christmas, you anxiously await the shinny new live truck the news director promised back in 2008.
10. Live trucks build character because when a new one finally arrives, you’re glad the station spent its money on that hunk of metal instead of on that raise you didn’t need anyway.