Trucking News, Updates, & Back Issues

Hope you had a safe and restful holiday break with lots of good eats and friendly company to help you usher in the New Year. We spent the evening resting comfortably, listening to America’s Top 40 with Casey Kasem, (yes, we know he’s been gone awhile, that’s part of the magic of radio!) when Casey mentioned that the rock group Bachman-Turner Overdrive [Randy Bachman (lead guitar, lead vocals), Fred Turner (bass guitar, lead vocals), Tim Bachman (guitar, vocals) and Robbie Bachman (drums)] took the 'Overdrive' part of their name from a magazine they came across while eating at a truckstop. Casey said they liked the name and wrote to the publisher to ask permission to use it as part of their band name. They never heard back.

We thought that was an interesting bit of trivia, and since BTO has been around nearly fifty years it made us wonder how long Overdrive magazine has been around. With a couple of clicks (the magic of the Internet) we learned the first issue of Overdrive hit the market in September of 1961 so the magazine would have been around ten years or more when the Bachmans ran across it in a truckstop in the early 1970s.   

Another interesting bit of trivia tied to the above bit of trivia happened just a few days ago on the game show, Jeopardy, when the $1600 clue in the Double Jeopardy category ‘MUSICAL 3?INITIALers’ read: “BTO was this group; the "O" was originally a trucking magazine”.

The answer, of course, in the form of a question, “Who is Bachman-Turner Overdrive?”

Bachman Turner Overdrive Anthology