TM.com:
How did you first come to meet Tyrone Malone?
K. Harris:
I first met Tyrone Malone when I finished with truck driving school. I was working for my brother in the oilfields in Bakersfield, California and checked the Sunday paper and saw an interesting ad. On Monday morning, I called (Malone) and he interviewed me that morning. (Malone) gave me a tour and asked me if I could wash and clean trucks and if I was mechanically inclined.

He offered me the job on the spot and told me I had to make up my mind immediately. I called my brother to quit my job and told him I was going to Europe with the Bandag diesel racing team. That split second changed my life?

TM.com:
What year was that? And when were you guys planning to leave with the trucks? And what town was the interview held in?
K. Harris:
That interview took place in March 1989 at (Malone’s) shop in Tulare, California. We had until the end of April to prepare the trucks for the upcoming tour. Then we headed to Baltimore, Maryland where they were loaded onto a ship and taken to Brussels, Belgium.

TM.com:
How did you get a passport so quickly?
K. Harris:
I went to Los Angeles, and got it right away.

TM.com:
How many trucks were involved in this project?
K. Harris:
Malone had three haulers which hauled the Super Boss, the Boss truck of America, the Bandag Bandit, the Hurricane truck, and the Black Gold GMC Diesel Pickup truck. There were also a living quarter semi, Malone’s personal tour bus and Mac Abernathy had his band tour bus.

TM.com:
Tell me about your first gig?
K. Harris:
Bandag dealerships hosted open houses where Malone displayed his trucks and Mac Abernathy played country music with his band. All the trucking customers of the dealership were invited to the open house where they got to meet Tyrone Malone in person and see him do his 360-spins using the Super Boss truck (red, white and blue). There was free food and beer served to the customers to promote Bandag recapped or retread tires. (Malone) did these open houses in the United States, Canada and Europe. He was in Europe in 1981 and again in 1989 when I was a member of his crew.

TM.com:
Is this because Bandags are worldwide?
K. Harris:
Yes.

TM.com:
You mentioned that (Malone) would do 360-spins in parking lots? What’s that all about?
K. Harris:
Usually there was a street or straight away strip near the shop having the open house. We would take a gas can with diesel and water and go out and pour it on the pavement and at the end of the show (Malone) would take the Super Boss down the strip about 40 mph then he would cut the wheels and spin it around in a 360 degree burnout. The smoke would sizzle around the tires, while he was spinning because of the diesel and water we poured on the pavement. This got the crowd going! They loved it!

TM.com:
Do we have any pictures of that on the website, from Europe?
K. Harris:
Yes, some of them are on the website.

TM.com:
Could you tell me what countries in Europe you went to?
K. Harris:
We toured through France, Italy, Belgium; we then loaded the trucks on a freighter headed to Finland. We were in Finland for two weeks then we returned to Germany and from there we did the Newberg Ring European truck races. Tyrone Malone was the half-time entertainment during the races.

TM.com:
Did you just do open houses with dealers while over there, or did you also do some exhibitions?
K. Harris:
We did 50 open houses for Bandag dealers, a few exhibitions and a USO show in Italy.

TM.com:
Tell me about some of the things you saw and people you met while you were on this tour.
K. Harris:
Everywhere we went we met the nicest people. Hundreds of people would show up at these open houses to see the colorful American custom trucks. I felt like a celebrity driving down the road where people would stop to take pictures of our convoy.

TM.com:
Did anything unusual happen to you on the tour?
K. Harris:
Yes, in Italy machine guns were drawn on me!

We would always have escorts in all these countries. Someone from Bandag in a car would meet us at the border of each (country) to escort us through the country.

There was a guy named Benito sent by Bandag to escort us through Italy. His job was to get us through the country, tell us where to get diesel fuel, where to park and things like that. Benito told Tyrone how serious the cops were in Italy on speed limits.

Our CB slang for cops was “99” instead of “smokey bear” which is the code here in the states. On our way to Rome we were going down this hill on an open freeway with Benito in front. He had no CB and Tyrone lost track of him. In an effort to find Benito, Malone takes off speeding down the highway looking for him but passes him by. The convoy had to follow Malone so we went speeding down the highway after Malone.

When I passed Benito I could see this look on his face like “where are you guys going”. It was priceless. Malone gets on the CB and said there was a guy taking photos from the side of the road. There were always people taking pictures of us from the side of the road when the convoy was traveling. As I was following Malone down the road I see this semi truck parked on the side of the road in front of the guy taking photos. I blew my air horn twice just in time to see that there was a cop in front of the truck writing out a ticket for the semi truck driver. Our eyes met and I could tell that he wasn’t too happy with me over something but I didn’t know what.

I then hear over the CB “99 getting on”, the cop was coming after me. Suddenly, two cops in a squad car pull up next to me on the freeway and the cop in the passenger seat sticks a lollipop out the window and waves it at me. I told Malone over the CB that I needed to pull over and then I pulled into a rest stop with the rest of the convoy. The cops were pointing machine guns at me and motioned me to pull to the other side of the parking lot away from the convoy. I was scared because I could tell they were really angry with me by pointing their machine guns and talking angrily in Italian but I couldn’t understand what I had done.

Benito caught up to us and calmed the cops down. Malone ended up charming the cops with Benito as an interpreter and got me out of trouble by giving them a bunch of Tyrone Malone hats and posters. Later Benito let me know that air horns are illegal in Italy and that is why they were so upset.

TM.com:
Bandag brags about how great their tires are, is this true?
K. Harris:
I’ll tell you something about Tyrone Malone. Every piece of equipment that Tyrone Malone ever ran on the highways was Bandag all the way! We did over 20,000 miles in Europe on the same set of retreads. Those tires were great, we never had a problem and they really held up.

TM.com:
Does Bandag pay you to say this?
K. Harris:
No, Bandag does not pay me to say this. I say this because I’ve seen it, its all true. These tires are the best.

TM.com:
How long were you gone?
K. Harris:
We were over there for four months. We got back to California, our home base in the fall of 1989. Those four months changed my life. I continued to remain friends with Tyrone even though I left his crew after we returned. I was really thrilled to be out of trucking school just six months and driving one of the most famous custom trucks in the U.S. I learned a lot in those four months. Because I was a rookie, Malone put me directly behind him in the convoy and kept a close watch on me.

TM.com:
Did you bring back any souvenirs?
K. Harris:
A lollipop is a sign on a stick shaped like a ping-pong paddle that says police on it. The police use this to get someone’s attention. I brought one of these back from my trip. I was talking to a motorcycle cop that had come to a show in Italy about the sign that he carried in his boot and he gave it to me as a souvenir.

TM.com:
How long after this European tour did you decide to do this website in honor of Tyrone Malone and the Truckers Hall of Fame?
K. Harris:
Eight years after the tour, in 1997, I was talking to a friend of mine via the internet about my experiences with Tyrone Malone and his dream of building a Truckers’ Hall of Fame Museum and how that dream had probably died with Tyrone Malone. My friend was a computer engineer and he suggested that I start a Tyrone Malone website and offered to help me. That was the beginning of the first website. The current website was built and is maintained MichaelBare.com

TM.com:
What was the first website like?
K. Harris:
It was a good first attempt but it is nowhere near as nice as it is now. Not too many people knew about it because none of the search engines picked it up at that time.

TM.com:
This interview with you, is going to be the first for the website. Do youthink interviews on the website are a nice way for the website readers to see what Tyrone Malone was like?
K. Harris:
I am hoping to get interviews in the future with people that knew him, worked for him, was a friend or someone that went to his shows when they were younger and what it was like. I want to encourage people that come to the website to leave a message on the message board about how they know of Tyrone Malone and what you think of our website. I also hope people leave ideas about how to improve this website.