10/08/2026
In the early 1970s an Omaha advertising executive named Bill Fries created a fictional trucker character named C.W. McCall for a series of bread commercials. Fries wrote the folksy dialogue and provided the voice; musician Chip Davis handled the music. The ads were so popular that the character stepped out of the commercials and onto actual records.
By 1975 the national 55-mile-per-hour speed limit was squeezing long-haul drivers, and citizens band radio had exploded into a full-blown craze. Fries and Davis bought a CB unit, listened for hours to the truckers’ colorful jargon, and built a story around it. They imagined a rebellious convoy stretching from coast to coast, led by a driver who called himself Rubber Duck, talking in the same coded language real truckers used every day.
Fries delivered the tale in a half-spoken, half-rhythmic style that sounded exactly like a late-night CB transmission. Released late in 1975, the record roared up the charts, spending six weeks at Number One on the country side and topping the pop chart as well. A made-up trucker invented for bread ads had somehow become the voice of a real American subculture.
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