Big Idaho Potato Truck still draws crowds nearly 15 years later

By Nida Mannan

For Idaho Farm Bureau Federation

The Big Idaho Potato Truck doesn’t need to be at a parade or festival to draw a crowd. Sometimes it just needs to stop for gas.

People have followed the truck off freeway exits to see where it is going.

When it pulls into a gas station, cars follow. People get out, phones come up and before long, families are lining up for pictures next to a giant Idaho potato.

“Even like the truck stopping to get fuel is an event,” said Laura Martin, who manages the Big Idaho Potato Truck tour.

Nearly 15 years after the potato first hit the road, people still want to see it.

The Idaho Potato Commission launched the truck in 2012 as part of its 75th anniversary celebration. The idea was to bring an old Idaho postcard to life, the kind that showed a comically large potato strapped to the back of a truck.

At the time, no one knew how long the idea would last.

“There was a lot of uncertainty around it, if it would be worthwhile or not,” said Jamey Higham, president and CEO of the Idaho Potato Commission. “We weren’t sure if there was going to be a year two or three.”

There was a year two. Then a year three.

Now, Martin said she gets somewhere between 900 and 1,000 requests a year from people and organizations hoping the truck will make a stop. The truck travels for about seven months each year and makes roughly 70 to 80 appearances.

Martin believes she could keep 10 potato trucks busy if she had them.

The requests come from all over. Some are for major events, including the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington, D.C., St. Patrick’s Day parades in Chicago and San Francisco and the Kentucky Derby Festival.

Others are a little more personal.

Martin has even gotten a request to bring the truck to a grandmother’s 90th birthday because potatoes were her favorite food.

“I think what they find exciting is that it is a little bit of pop culture,” Martin said. “The kind of oddity about it really excites people.”

She also thinks there is something distinctly American about it.

“I feel like it gives people a little bit of Americana,” she said.

Martin keeps the requests in a database and starts piecing together the tour by looking first at some of the larger events the truck wants to attend. From there, she fills in stops based on where the truck will already be traveling.

The idea is to cover as much ground and attend as many events as possible without sending the truck back and forth across the country unnecessarily.

Some events have become regular stops. Martin said organizers at the Kentucky Derby Festival, where the truck has missed the past two years, have been especially eager to get it back.

But the truck doesn’t have to be at a scheduled event to get attention.

Martin saw that recently when she met the tour team in Akron, Ohio, for an air show.

An Air Force pilot spotted Martin in the lobby wearing an Idaho potato-branded shirt and approached her. He was laughing because he had just taken another picture with the truck.

Martin asked what he meant by “another.”

The pilot told her he had seen the truck at several air shows. He thought this was his fourth time.

“He said, ‘I have to get a picture and send my kids every time I see it because they love it so much,’” Martin recalled.

That kind of reaction is part of why Higham believes the truck has lasted.

“That big potato is just a magnet to people,” Higham said.

People take pictures and post them on social media, giving the truck an audience far beyond the people who see it in person.

“It’s one of those marketing campaigns that just keeps on giving,” he said.

For Idaho potato growers, all those pictures have a larger purpose.

Idaho growers fund the Idaho Potato Commission, and the truck is one of the ways the commission keeps the Idaho name in front of consumers.

Higham said geography presents a challenge for Idaho growers. Many of the largest population centers are on the East and West coasts, while competing potato-growing regions can be closer to those markets.

The truck gives the commission another way to reach those consumers.

“In the end, when people go to the grocery store, we want them looking for that Grown in Idaho seal on the packaging,” Higham said.

There isn’t one number that shows exactly what the truck has done for potato sales.

Higham said its value is part of the larger recognition the Idaho potato industry has built over time.

“We just know when people hear Idaho, the first thing they think is potatoes, and vice versa,” he said.

For Martin, the value is also in the interaction people have with the truck and its traveling team.

The team represents roughly 700 Idaho potato growers, she said. At stops around the country, team members can talk directly with people about those growers, along with the processors behind products such as french fries and potato chips.

“They are getting the emotional response and the emotional connection to Idaho potatoes,” Martin said.

It’s a connection she has seen play out over and over again.

People tell her they remember where they were when they saw the truck. They remember who they were with. Some remember seeing it years earlier and then stumble across it again in another state.

The truck is approaching 15 years on the road, and Martin said the reaction still surprises her.

With most marketing campaigns, she said, there is always the concern that people will eventually get tired of them.

So far, that hasn’t happened with the potato.

“We have never been to an event where they haven’t begged us to come back,” Martin said.