Oscar Mayer's Weinermobiles Need Drivers
The open road, smiling faces, and a nearly 30-foot-long mobile hot dog. What more could you want?
The Kraft-Heinz Company is taking applications through January for positions the company calls “hotdoggers.” Not someone doing spectacular stunts on a ski slope or ocean wave, but one-year jobs as drivers for the famous fleet of Oscar Mayer Wienermobiles. Or, as Weinermobile coordinator Dorothy Spratlin puts it, the “cab-forward box truck chassis” that carry the giant metal hot dogs 25,000 to 30,000 miles a year, hither and yon across the nation’s roads.
Spratlin, a former hotdogger herself, now coordinates the 1,200 to 1,400 events a year the crews collectively handle and hires the drivers.
“We’re asking the hotdoggers to leave their families and homes,” Spratlin said. “We find a year is a perfect time.”
A lot of people are ready to make the leap. Thousands a year apply for the dozen positions that fill the teams of two for each of the six Weinermobiles. That’s more selective than Ivy League colleges, as the company likes to note. Maybe understandable, as these positions pay rather than requiring tens of thousands a year for a berth.
The Wienermobile has been a brand icon since 1936, when Oscar Mayer’s nephew Carl Mayer created the promotional idea during the Great Depression. Back then, the vehicle was only 13-feet long.
How things have changed. The current bodies run 60 hot dogs long, 18 wide, and 24 high (otherwise known as 27 feet by 8 feet by 11 feet). The dog body can fit 11,000 of the Wienermobile whistles that drivers give away to the public. The cab sports six captain chairs in ketchup and mustard—sorry, red and yellow. Built in 1995, the Wienermobiles get periodic makeovers — a three- to four-month process to replace most everything other than the hot dog shape molding.
They run on gas, although crews call it “high-octane mustard,” according to current hotdogger Molly Swindall. Of course. Anything else and the Wienermobile might run behind schedule and have to ketchup.
Hotdoggers don’t sleep in them. “It’s not a Weinerbago,” Swindall said. She documents her hotdogging life on Instagram under the name of Mayochup Molly, a mashup of her favorite condiments: mayonnaise and ketchup.
Instead, it’s a chain of hotel rooms that regularly covers the continental U.S. but also has landed in Hawaii, Alaska, and U.S. territories like Guam and Puerto Rico.
The people the drivers meet are usually fun. “We have a lot of people who love coming up in hot dog costumes,” Swindall said. “When I was in California, a family of a mom, dad, their baby, and their wiener dog all came up in costume.” The rolling hot dogs are a big hit with owners of dachshunds, which are frequently called sausage dogs.
In her phone call with International Business Times, she said, “A ferret in a sweatshirt just showed up and is getting its picture taken.”
But the Weinermobile is more than a pet parade. “We have people come up … with their whistles from 1952, which is really cool to see,” Swindall added.
Swindall remembers a blind woman named Beverly in California. “I would guide her hands along every special aspect of it and would explain what she was feeling,” Swindall said. “Afterward, she said she ‘saw’ the Weinermobile. That was really incredible, and it made me realize it was important to everybody no matter what was going on in their life and you can make it special for everybody.”
From her driving days, Spratlin remembers being in the parking lot of her hotel when a man in a hospital gown approached. She asked if he needed help.
“Yes,” the man said, “I just had surgery and came out of my hotel room [to see the Wienermobile] although I wasn’t supposed to.”
Spratlin offered him a ride back to the hotel door so he could go back to his room. “You don’t realize what a tough time I’ve been having,” the man told her. “It means the world to me.’”
In addition to driving around, there are social media postings and events to attend.
If this sounds like an ideal job, then time to get a cover letter and resume together and email them to the Kraft Heinz Co. The company is looking for recent college graduates with a bachelor’s degree in public relations, journalism, communications, or marketing, although that’s not mandatory. Spratlin was a biology major. A love of hot dog puns is a must.
Spratlin has a tip for those who would bun-dle up and head off for adventure.
“We love quirky and fun,” she said. “So, let that shine through.”
And don’t forget the relish.
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