Thursday, July 18, would be a short day of work for operator Josh Gentry. It began at a leisurely 10 a.m. in Fort Payne, Alabama, outside the Quality Inn. There, Gentry picked me up in his Chevrolet, rolling then to the site of an old auto dealership that, since the 1980s, has been the home base of the fan club and the general headquarters for longtime country-rock group Alabama.

Josh Gentry is son of one of the last two founding members in the band, bassist and harmony singer Teddy Gentry. After years pursuing music himself, then hauling grain around his home region (some of those years as an owner-operator), Josh today serves as hauler of Alabama’s touring operation, moved in a single truck and 48-foot Great Dane show trailer emblazoned with the band’s insignia and the “Roll On II North America Tour” logo.

Linda Gentry and her son, Josh GentryGentry and his mother, Linda Gentry, stage right watching Alabama perform at Bridgestone in Nashville.That truck, a 2021 Kenworth T680 detailed in this week’s podcast, rekindles an old partnership between the Alabama group and the Kenworth company, dormant since a farewell tour marked the end of the band’s first long tenure in the early part of this century. As you’ll hear on this three-hour run to Nashville to load in for Alabama’s July 19 show at Bridgestone arena, Kenworth’s relationship with the band tracks back to the 1980s, when the tour operation was as many as four trucks and trailers, and the band was at the height of its popularity with big hits like “Mountain Music,” “Tennessee River” and, yes, the classic “Roll On (18 Wheeler).”