10-4 Magazine November 2023

Truck Show Report: By Daniel J. Linss The 34th Annual Great Salt Lake Truck Show was a fun event, as always, but this year there was a little rain to muddy things up a bit. Held on August 4-5, 2023, at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, UT, we at 10-4 Magazine were able to attend this event in person for the first time in several years because the date was pushed sooner than usual. Held in a pretty park-like setting, the trucks are parked on nice green grass, with shade trees all around, which are nice things to have when it is sunny and hot, as it typically is in Utah in August. Thankfully, it wasn’t too hot this year, but there was some sporadic rain throughout the weekend, but not enough to dampen anyone’s spirits. Arriving in Salt Lake City on Thursday afternoon, the day before the show started, the weather was perfect. Earlier that week, it was really hot (100+ degrees) and a lot of rain had fallen, which made things a bit humid, as well. That evening around dusk, as we were heading to dinner with our contributor and friend Stephanie Haas who was also there to cover the show with us, a huge thunderstorm with wind, thunder and lightning rolled through, dropping a lot of rain in about an hour, causing some small landslides near where we were staying, the lane of a road to collapse, and plenty of mud bogs to be formed on the grassy areas of the show grounds. Come Friday morning the rain was gone, and there were mild temperatures in the 80s, along with a bit of residual wind still blowing. Since we were not setting up a booth at this event, we were able to spend much of that first morning exploring Provo Canyon before heading over to the show grounds. As we began walking around and looking at the trucks, we noticed some pretty deep ruts in the mud made from the trucks rolling in that morning to get parked, but it seemed like everyone got in and parked okay, and nobody got stuck. Finding our friends C.G. and Ashleigh Soza and their two little boys, Cody Davis and his family, and Eric and Val Gibbons, who were all sitting under canopies near their trucks, we spent much of the weekend hanging out with all of them. As evening approached, the annual Dutch Oven Dinner was served in the main covered pavilion nearby. Once again sponsored by the Utah Trucking Association, this dinner included pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans, corn, coleslaw, and peach cobbler. As always, it was a terrific meal, shared with a few hundred of our trucking friends! It didn’t get dark until about 9:00 PM, so that is when the light show finally started. We spent the next few hours walking around, taking pictures, and talking to everyone there. It was a nice night. Saturday morning brought warmer temperatures, but it was still pretty nice, all things considered. At 11:00 AM the “Dunk-A-Cop” fun started, where people paid to get a chance to throw baseballs at a target and, if they hit it, send a Utah police officer down into the cold water. It’s all done in good fun and the money goes to charity. At 1:00 PM the “Human Truck Pulls” began. Starting with kids pulling a miniature side dump trailer, it then switched to the adults, who put on a harness with a long strap attached to a Utah DOT pickup truck, and attempted to pull it a predetermined distance in the fastest time. This event is always fun! 20 10-4 Magazine / November 2023 MUDDY FUN IN UTAH