Truckers Truck Turkeys To Grandmas House(and everywhere else)

ST. PAUL, Minn., Nov. 15 -- When Americans sit down to enjoy their Thanksgiving feast they will consume a whopping 45 million turkeys. Since turkeys can't fly, how do they get to your holiday table? The answer is simple: trucks.

In fact it takes over 80,000 truck loads to make Thanksgiving happen, according to a recent survey conducted by the Minnesota Trucking Association. If you parked those trucks end-to-end you would create a convoy over 1,200 miles long, stretching from Duluth, Minn. to Austin, Texas heading down Interstate 35.

Turkeys should adopt CB handles, given the time these noble gobblers spend on the open road. Every turkey takes at least three big rig rides in its life. As soon as baby turkeys, called ``poults,'' leave the shell, they travel by truck from the hatchery to the farm. A short fourteen or so weeks later another truck takes the plump birds to the processing plant to prepare them for your Thanksgiving dinner. Bagged and ready to cook, the succulent birds take a refrigerated ride in a climate-controlled truck to your local grocery store.

Trucks play a vital role in the growth of turkeys as well, transporting the 15.5 million bushels of soybeans and 27.5 million bushels of corn it takes to raise these truck happy turkeys to maturity.

The next time you hear ``Traveling Tom'' calling for a ``Breaker 1-9'' on the CB radio, pay close attention. It just might be a turkey speeding to your holiday dinner!