Meet a 'hotdogger': This KC native gets paid to drive the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile
Rosie Hutchison was a freshman in college when she spotted her first Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
"As soon as I saw it pull up outside the journalism school at Mizzou, I knew this was the job for me," she says.
After graduating last year, Hutchison became a "hotdogger" — a job that involves driving a 27-foot-long hot dog on wheels across the country for a year.
Hutchison, a Kansas City native, recently rolled through her hometown with fellow hotdogger Nick "Cheesy Nicks" Koors, a Mizzou grad from St. Louis. During their weeklong visit, they handed out Oscar Mayer Wiener Whistles and gave tours of the Wienermobile.
There are currently six Wienermobiles cruising around the country. The one Koors and Hutchison are driving is named "Big Bun." It has a "bun roof," a "bun box" and six seats covered with ketchup- and mustard-colored upholstery. Big Bun also boasts a killer sound system for blasting "The Bologna Song" and the Oscar Mayer Wiener jingle over and over and over.
"This dog's got the works," Hutchison says.
Koors says one of the hardest things about driving the Wienermobile is parking: "We take up quite some space, but we try to make it work in whatever cities we go to."
Hutchison says the best part about the job is watching people react to the Wienermobile. Some are baffled. Others are overcome with nostalgia when they see the hot dog on wheels, which has been around in some form since 1936. Almost all are just plain happy.
"Our main job is to make people smile," Hutchison says, "which I love to do."
It certainly made for some fun for Kansas Highway Patrol troopers on Twitter, who shared some pics of the Wienermobile pulled over by a patrol car.
Trooper Ben Gardener tweeted the photo, saying he didn't know when and where it happened. Then Trooper Candice Breshears, the public resource officer, responded: "@TrooperBenKHP might not know where, when, or who, but I do!! The @Wienermobile was stopped today in #KC on 435!"
This story was originally published March 21, 2018 at 10:19 AM with the headline "Meet a 'hotdogger': This KC native gets paid to drive the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile."