By Chris Spangler
Farmers market shoppers didn’t have to go far on Saturday to picture themselves in Fort Atkinson.
The weekly market debuted a semi-wrap tourism promotion sponsored by the Fort Atkinson Area Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with W&A Distribution Services.
Both sides of a 52-foot-long W&A semi trailer have been wrapped with a photo of the Rock River looking east toward the Main Street bridge, accompanied by the words “Picture yourself in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.”
The trailer’s back panel boasts a similar photo that reads “Follow me to Fort Atkinson”; shows a map of the city’s located in relation to Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago; and lists the sponsors of the $5,000 project: Spacesaver, Jones Dairy Farm, OSI, Ball Corp., Green Bay Packaging, the Fireside Dinner Theatre, the Hoard Historical Museum and W&A.
Also on the back is a URL, choosefort.com, that links to the websites of each sponsor to promote local job openings and unique experiences in Fort Atkinson. The website landing page will provide updates on where the semi is traveling to, photos of Fort Atkinson, and links to additional information on events, recreation, and shopping and dining in Fort Atkinson.
On Saturday, chamber tourism manager Katie Carey invited passersby to have their photo taken with the picturesque semi for posting on the chamber’s Facebook page.
“We’ve had a lot of people stop by the tent for pictures,” she said in between snapshots. “We’ve got an informational flyer, and people have been asking questions about where the truck is going and when it will be on the road, so that’s really exciting.”
By the way, the answers to those questions is: Maryland this week.
Carey said the idea of a truck-wrap initially started as research in developing the tourism department’s strategic plan to create a cohesive look and message to raise awareness of Fort Atkinson as a tourist destination. During the past seven months, the chamber worked with Mindy Witte of Witte Design & Consulting in Fort Atkinson on perfecting a design; The Vomela Companies, St. Paul, Minn., on printing and installation; and Brett Perucco Photography, formerly of Fort Atkinson and now of Johnson Creek, for Fort Atkinson-centered photos.
“W&A had worked with Vomela Companies, the company that installed the wrap, before and highly recommended them,” Carey said. “They were fantastic to work with. W&A takes great care of their trucks, and Vomela said the wrap can actually last up to 10 years, so it could be on the road all the way to 2031.”
While the side wraps on the semi trailer are pretty to view, it is the back panel that provides the most important information, she noted.
“On the back, we’ve got ‘choosefort.com,’ and that’s a special URL that actually will redirect to the chamber website,” Carey said. “We’ve made this landing page where the first thing you’ll see are the logos of the eight business sponsors on the back of the semi. If you click on any of those logos, it will take you to their website.
“So people can find out, say, if Spacesaver is hiring or where they can buy Jones Dairy Farm sausage … Maybe they can click on the Fireside logo and see what shows are coming up,” the tourism manager added.
Carey said the chamber is hoping to implement soon a way the public can keep track of the semi’s whereabouts.
“W&A is able to track where this semi is, and they are going to let us know every week or so where the semi is going …,” Carey said.
The chamber officials hope that people will let relatives and friends know that the semi will be rolling through their town in the next week. If they can get a photo of it there, their name would be entered into a drawing for a prize. One possibility is a trip to Fort Atkinson.
“When we announced the truck on Facebook, it got a tons of positive engagement,” Carey said. “It’s great to see. The hope was it would be a point of pride for the residents of Fort Atkinson.”
One of the main drivers of the Fort Atkinson-wrapped semi will be Kurt Riehl. He said Saturday that two or three different semis will haul the trailer.
“The trailer can go anywhere. Its just a matter of availability,” he said, noting that W&A drives to all 48 contiguous states.
Among W&A’s main contractors are Spacesaver, Jones, Green Bay Packaging, Palmer Hamilton in Elkhorn and Wisconsin Built in Deerfield, among others, he said.
Their product “comes to our warehouse, we load it to go to specific areas and that’s where we’ll run,” Riehl said.
And if there is a specific region the chamber would like the specially wrapped truck to visit, he said, W&A “can work it out.”
The truck certainly will not be sitting idle, he noted, as the warehouse currently is full from a backlog due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Riehl, who has worked for W&A got about 15 years, enjoys photography and owns drone, so he plans to take photos of the Fort Atkinson-wrapped truck in various picturesque settings.
In the past, he has photographed his truck in the red rocks of Utah, aside a Ferris wheel in downtown Orlando, in the mountains and along a river in Idaho, for example.
Photos he sends to the chamber will be posted on the chamber’s website.
At the same time, Riehl and other drivers will carry in their cabs Fort Atkinson visitors guides along with their W&A driver recruitment information. That way, if questioned about Fort Atkinson at a rest stop, they can hand out guides and invite people to “come see for yourself.”
Nancy Leinius, whose daughter, Carrie Chisholm, is the chamber’s executive director, was among the local residents who stopped by at the farmers market Saturday to check out the truck wrap. A retired high school English teacher, she has resided in Fort Atkinson for 15 years.
“I absolutely love it,” she said of the trailer wrap. “I’m a photographer and I love to take pictures. I knew this was going to be on the truck, and I thought, ‘I wonder how blurry it will be because they’re going to have to blow up the photo very large.’
“But it’s not blurry, and the best place to see it is right on that line …,” Leinius added, pointing to an area about the same distance away as an adjacent traffic lane.
“I love the heart and I love the Fort Atkinson symbols,” she said, referring to the city logo.
Leinius acknowledged she also is a fan of the photo because it includes the riverfront mural on the rear of the Fort Atkinson Water Department, which she helped paint.
For more information about the Fort Atkinson-wrapped semi, visit the chamber website at https://fortchamber.com/ and its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/fortchamber.
A story about the chamber of commerce, and its mission as it celebrates Chamber of Commerce Month, is here: https://fortatkinsononline.com/fort-chamber-celebrates-chamber-of-commerce-month/.
Chamber tourism manager Katie Carey, far left, snaps a photo of Jaelynn Wagner, left, and Carlee Hein, both of Fort Atkinson, for the chamber’s Facebook page. The Fort Atkinson Area Chamber of Commerce introduced the public to its new semi truck wrap during the farmers market Saturday.
A rear panel of Fort Atkinson’s “traveling billboard” truck provides information about the Fort Atkinson community and truck sponsors. The Fort Atkinson Area Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with W&A Distribution Services, has sponsored the semi trailer wrap, which will next travel across the 48 contiguous states.
Joyce Gengler of Fort Atkinson admires the semi trailer wrap’s back panel during the Fort Atkinson Area Chamber of Commerce “traveling billboard’s” reveal at the Fort Farmers Market Saturday.
On display at the Fort Atkinson Farmers Market Saturday, the Fort Atkinson Area Chamber of Commerce reveals its semi trailer wrap. The semi and wrap were developed by W&A Distribution Services and the chamber, along with other financial sponsors, who worked in partnership on the project.
Kurt Riehl, pictured, will be a main driver of the W&A Distribution Services semi pulling a trailer decorated with a wrap promoting Fort Atkinson. Riehl has worked for W&A for about 15 years and plans to snap photos of the truck as it travels the 48 contiguous states.
Chris Spangler photos.
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