10-4 Magazine / May 2025 21 meet and greet, and to take pics with her fans who stopped by. After taking our last few pics outside, with lots of help from our friend and photographer Jacob Gunderson, we headed back inside. The show ended at 4:00 PM and then we proceeded to tear our booth down and prepare the pallet that would go back to California (thanks to our friend and past cover trucker Ron Beer for hauling our stuff out and back). Once we finished our tear-down, we headed downtown to our usual post show destination, Los Aztecas Mexican Restaurant, with our entire show crew. We would like to thank Tim and April Sieben, Eric Hill, Josh, Renee and Carson Reitveld, Gerald “JT” Todd and his son Trey for helping all week in the booth and at the show. Also, thanks to our contributors Mark Harter, John and Kim Jaikes, and Stephanie Haas for spending time with us, as well. Big thanks to our digital guru John Testa for doing live remotes from the show all week, and even bigger thanks to all the sponsors who supported those efforts. The final event at MATS is the PKY Parade, which happens at dusk on Saturday night, and features the competitors taking “victory laps” around the Expo Center loop. Although bad weather had been predicted almost every day of the show, it never really transpired. Most days saw a mix of sun and some clouds, but besides a few occasional sprinkles here and there, for the most part, the weather was great – until it wasn’t. On Sunday night, at about 8:00 PM, the wind and rain finally came, and let me tell you, it really came. Then, the tornado sirens went off, prompting us to prepare the basement at our AirBNB house for a possible emergency shelter. Being from California, this was new to most of us. Everything went crazy for about an hour, and then it was done, just like that. Come Monday morning we were back on a plane headed west towards home. It was another good MATS, but I think the current state of the economy and all the instability in the trucking industry had a few negative last-minute effects on the show’s overall success. People are hurting out there, and good changes aren’t coming quickly enough. But I do think they will come – it just might take a little longer than some (me included) expected. Next year’s show is scheduled for March 26-28, 2026. For more information about it, you can visit www.truckingshow.com anytime. We will be there, but you’ll have to find us in our new booth location, wherever that ends up being. I guess it’s time for us to make a few bold moves, too! n
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