Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. We're just traveling along this highway called life. Luckily, once in a while there's a big blue sign that says, there's a frishes this way.
I want to ride it all night long. Now I have that.
Song in myn I'm very sorry about that. Who was that Mark Oh, I don't know. I think that was his only hit. I'm going to look though while you talk.
All right, well, you put this together with our friends from How Stuff Works and Nathan Chandler about these blue highway exit signs. Off, Mike, I'll go ahead and say it. You thought you said this one, you thought might have been kind of boring. But I think it's interesting because you see in the United States, we'll explain for our
international friends. When you're driving down the highway in the US, and they probably have these in other countries, I imagine, and you approach a highway exit, you will have these blue signs that the first one will say like, you know, gas and food this way, or maybe gas, food and lodging if you're really lucky, and then as you get closer it will say Burger King on this exit, and you get all excited, and then they'll say waffle house and two of them even you get even more excited,
and a BP gas station and a motel six and so you know specific brands of companies, food companies and hotel companies and gasoline petrol companies, and you'll know whether or not you want to stop there or not, depending on what you want to eat or what kind of gas you want to get or where you want to stay.
Yeah, and the whole thing's really standardized, so it's like that company's logo, but it's within a certain size little rectangle on a larger, certain sized rectangle. I think the things are like nineteen feet wide and ten feet tall.
Way bigger than I thought that's the average size. That's crazy.
Well, they need to make it big enough so that you can see that while you're driving by really high speeds and say, oh, there's a burden king.
They don't look that big though from the highway. I guess that's the point.
By the way, Chuck, I think we're in trouble with Canada again, because of course the guy who sings Life as a Highway was as a Canadian singer named Tom Cochrane, and I'm sure he's another national treasure that we've just defended one hit.
What are you talking about?
Okay, sorry Canada, but let's get back to it, Chuck.
Man, What do I have against I love Rush? I mean sure you know.
Name the song.
Spirit of Radio.
Yes, you didn't even need to name it when you came up with like the next chord.
I saw a brief snippet that my buddy sent me the other day of a sound check them doing that in a sound check in the seventies, and it was just awesome.
Did you see the Rush documentary?
Oh? Yeah, so good.
I had no idea. I mean I knew that they were like incredibly technically proficient prog rock musicians, but I didn't realize that like they would not they like a recording where they didn't play their twenty minute song perfect note for note. It just got recorded over. It was like a bad take, Like I can't imagine just the stress of that.
Yeah, they're a great story too, because they there's never any backstabbing and bad drug things that were just like, yeah, three of us will just get along and make music and have great fans. Yep, all right, Canadians, are we okay now? All right? So back to these signs. They are a form of advertising, which is something I never knew because I always kind of wonder, like, they don't show all the things on that exit, So how do
they figure this out? And they figure it out because companies pay quite a bit of money to be placed on these signs.
Yeah. I think Tennessee breaks in about eight million dollars a year. Virginia gets six million dollars. It's a lot, but you know, I think in the larger budget it's a bit of a drop in the bucket. But I think most of these these states just specifically earmark that money for this program, so it's like a self sustaining program rather than being like, we need to cover this budget cut over here with some of that sweet road sign money.
Yeah. I think Iowa was one of the few states that were it's still state run there, right.
Yeah, there are some contractors that they I think twenty states say here have have added contractor handle all this for us and just give us like eighty percent of the gross. But yeah, Iowa handles it themselves or itself. And according to information specialists for the Iowa Department of Transportation Tracy Bramble. They have not raised their rates on these signs since nineteen ninety six.
Yeah, that's what you get when the state's doing things right.
Yeah, I guess I'll bet, I'll bet like New Hampshire just choked on it.
Yeah, they had a big price hike, right, sure, Well that's what can happen. Apparently when you're dealing with independent contractors, they'll just they'll hike up the big the price overnight and all of a sudden, you know, Burger King's going, what.
Right? The King himself is like, I'm not okay with this. As a matter of fact, it did actually happen in New Hampshire. Funny enough, they went from I guess, year over year five hundred to eighteen hundred's a lot, which let me do a little public math. It's like, I think three hundred and eighty percent increase or seventeen million percent increase. It's one of the two, yeah, somewhere between there.
Well, before we take a break, we will just say that those signs I mentioned earlier come in in triplicate. Not in triplicate, they come in threes, which is to say that first one that you see, which I mentioned, which just says what is available like gas or food or lodging or all three or any combination. Those are called the main line. And then when you get a little bit closer to that exit ramp, that's when you're gonna see the specific you know, brand or the chain
or whatever. And then I guess is the trailblazer the one? Is it at the end of the exit ramp.
That's the ramp one.
Oh, like it's actually on the ramp that says like left or right.
The mainline one, the main line one is the first one you see, but it still has all the logos. The ramp one is that the end of the ramp saying turn this way or not.
So what's the trailblazer?
It is an actual individual sign where after you turn right off of the ramp and like your fishes is you know another right at that corner where you and right, that's the trailblazer sign.
Yeah, I've ever seen those.
Yeah, they're kind of rare.
All right, So basically generally it's the main line and then the ramp.
Right, That's what I That's how I take it.
All right, Well, we'll settle on that. Then we'll take a break and we'll talk more about this right after this. Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck.
Want to learn a thing.
Or two from Josh camp Tuck.
It's stuff you should know, all right, So, Chuck, it's actually really discriminating who can be on or what kind of business can be on these signs. As a matter of fact, it seems unconstitutional to some degree.
Well, yeah, I mean if you're a movie theater you can't be on them, which is interesting.
Or an adult entertainment place.
Yeah, yeah, or if you're a church they allow things like well, I mean generally it's like gas stations, hotels, and fast food chains, but you will see things. Now I believe that years later they said you could put like tourist attractions on there. So if it's like agritourism or there's like a winery or a museum or a zoo or something like that, huh, those can be on there. Now.
I'm sure there's a church out there, like, No, seriously, you should come to our services. There's so much fun. It's basically an attraction.
Yeah, pretty much. They prioritize the green, but there has to be a certain distance between, like the signs from each other, and signs from the exit. I think it's eight hundred feet apart from each other. So if it's an exit where you can't get them eight hundred feet apart because it can't be close to the green signs that say, you know, like actual highway miles and stuff like that, and exits, those take priority, so they will jump the blue signs in those cases.
Yeah, you're sol Yeah. And speaking of distances, Chuck, they actually prioritize businesses that are closer to the highways than others.
Yeah.
I think Florida, if you're within three miles of the exit, you're given priority, and if you're beyond six miles from the exit, don't even try. Florida says just keep walking.
Yeah, and I think I don't think it's exactly the same in every state, but I think most states have that requirement. But it can be further away for a tourism.
Site, yes, but there are some other typical requirements you know, a very state by state, but generally, if you want to advertise on one of these logo signs, you need to have public restrooms that are available. You need to have drinking water, even if it's just a fountain, or a dude with a bucket. You need to be open during regular business hours, and the more you're open, say twenty four hours or seven days a week, you're going
to be prioritized. So if you want to advertise your after party members only vampire Live Action role playing club, right, probably going to get turned down.
Yeah, unless you are in a pretty rural area that has space on the sign, because sometimes they have space, and these private companies will try it, or I guess sometimes in the case of a state run operation, they will sort of hustle to try and get stuff on there. You know, they'll try and sell the spot, like, hey, I got a spot for sale.
Can you imagine cold calling for that? I don't understand what you're trying to sell.
Me, Like this is a job, Yes it is, sir, Thank.
You, Please stop making it worse.
As far as money goes, that obviously varies from state to state and how stuff works. In this article, they used Nebraska for an example, twelve hundred bucks per sign, so double that if you want both exits in both directions. New Jersey's about twice that, so you know, close to five grand in New Jersey. If you want to mark your your gas station each way.
But there's there's something to be said about that. Yes, you know, five grand a year is a significant amount of money for a small business, but if you look at it in terms of its marketing budget, yeah, sure,
it probably pays for itself very very quickly. And that's one of the things about these signs is they are They were a compromise that came out of an act that Lyndon Johnson signed at the behest of his wife, Ladybird, called the Highway Beautification Act in October of nineteen sixty five, and it basically said, billboards are getting out of hand. We need to really limit them. And businesses said, well, wait a minute, we need something. We're gonna all go
under if we can't advertise on the highway. That's like our life blood. So the compromise that they came up with were these standardized government signs that allow you to put your logo on in a certain square, within a certain distance, and make sure you have that bucket of water that that guy's handing.
Yeah it's pretty great. I mean, billboards can be fun. I enjoy a fun billboard, but I could also see being in the car with Lady Bird Johnson back in the early sixties and being like, these things are everywhere and it's starting to look junkie. Some states outlawed them all together. I think Vermont, may and Hawaiian Alaska you can't even have billboards very nice, which is pretty cool.
What I see a lot is when I go to the camp and stuff, and if you're traveling around rural at least in the southeast, they may have these everywhere.
But if you're just on off road back roads in the rural areas of Georgia and you come to a t stop, people, because that's just the side of the road basically, and right in front of you at the back of the road that makes the top of the tee that will be thirty or forty just homemade signs of the pressure washer guy or the tree removal guy, the house painter or the electrician, any sort of home service and they're just everywhere. Yeah, and it's kind of helpful, but it looks really junky.
Yeah, Lady Bird Johnson would hate that.
But I've called those numbers. It is kind of helpful.
Oh well, then the system works.
I mean, it definitely works. It's just they're so they're just done by people. So they're just like, here's one, here's one, here's one, here's one.
I can't remember what I saw it on. It might have been sixty Minutes or News Hour or something like that. But there's a dude, a graphic designer in New York who just goes around and takes those signs and remakes them with like applies graphic design principles and just gives them to the business.
Like, here's a good one that things are spelled directly and it looks visually interesting.
Yeah, and there's a picture of the pie that you're saying. You know that you were advertising in blue marker before.
Oh, that's pretty cool.
Yeah, I like that. I got a little piece of trivia courtesy of our friends ninety nine percent invisible. If you want to end on.
It, oh I miss Roman, let's hear it.
So if you are driving and you see these logo signs, the big blue signs, they are going to come up in a certain order every single time. Are you ready for that order? If anyone never asks you, they appear in this order camping, lodging, food, and then gas.
Wow.
Yeah great, I guess wow is the appropriate response to that.
No, I love that, and that's a reminder for me to get in touch with Roman and say Hi. It's been too long.
Tell him I said hi too. He never gave me his email.
The great Roman Mars.
Well, Chuck just praised Roman Mars, So of course short Stuff is out.
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