"I'm BATMAN!" shrieks a three-year-old, as he drags his mother toward the shiny black vehicle gleaming under a cold winter sun in a Nashville, Tenn., park. "This is the Batmobile from the TV series," says Mark Aaglan over and over as more people come up. Next to the Batmobile he's parked one of the prop "cars" from the Flintstones movies.

Mark and his wife Kathy are owner-operators from Polk City, Fla., leased to Passport Transport, a covered van transporter of costly, rare and one-of-a-kind vehicles. They had to deliver a run-of-the-mill Mercedes nearby. There wasn't enough room in the owner's tony gated community, so they had pulled into the park's parking lot to unload.

The Batmobile and the Flintstones car were in the rear of the two-level transporter and thus had to be taken out. The park was beside a busy city thoroughfare and close to a daycare center and, well, you get the picture. A whole lotta bat-turns were comin' round.

"Lookit the Batphone!" one admirer says, pointing at the red, bat-shaped (what else?) handset mounted between the seats in the cockpit. It's all here: detector scope, parachutes for those 180 turns, switches for exotic Bat weapons. Again and again, people chant the theme from the '60s series -- Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah and on and on.

Inside the trailer the Aaglans had the Batcycle as well as a 1999 Bentley bound for Connecticut, and a 1929 Pierce-Arrow headed to Washington, D.C. The Bat vehicles and Fred's flivver were en route to Long Island -- they are part of a private collection and had been loaned out for exhibit at the Peterson Automobile Museum in Los Angeles.

The Aaglans agree the job sounds glamorous -- you get to meet celebrities and watch them lose their cool over exquisite works of steel, leather and rubber. But it's also hard work and stressful. Your loads run from very expensive to almost priceless, so damage is a constant worry.

So you work cautiously. After obliging visitors for about an hour, Mark covers the driver's side door with a towel and lifts Kathy into the seat. As she steers, he slowly winches the Batmobile onto the liftgate (the owner doesn't want the engine run)and eases it aboard with just a few inches clearance on either side.

The Flintstones car will go up top, but first they must deflate the Batmobile's Mickey Thompson racing tires to make enough room between the Batbeacon and the upper ramp. Otherwise -- BAM! POW!

The Aaglans also transport vehicles to shows, and say they are planning a new tractor to replace their Kenworth and its 86-inch StudioSleeper with a bigger sleeper with a shower. After all, even the Batcave was equipped with a... batroom. *

Guardians of the Road

Goodyear has named four truckers as finalists for its 2000 North America Highway Hero Award. They are:

• David Zorn, a driver for Consolidated Freightways, of Forest Park, Ga. Traveling through Norcross, Ga., on Nov. 21, 1999, Zorn saw an officer being attacked on the side of the road. When Zorn stopped to help, the suspect fled. Zorn pursued and caught the suspect and held him until police arrived.

• Brent Shupe of Charleston, Ill., Midwest Coast Transport. On June 30, another vehicle collided with Shupe's truck and caught fire. He rescued two women from the burning car. While trying to free the elderly driver, Shupe was thrown against a guardrail when his truck's refrigerator unit exploded. By that time, the driver crawled out of the car but seemed unable to move any farther. Shupe dragged him away from the car, seconds before it exploded. Shupe suffered burns on his arm from the first explosion.

• Edward Bowlin of Black Mountain, N.C., Payne Trucking. On Nov. 10, Bowlin was parked at a store parking lot when he saw a woman struck by a motorist. The motorist, the woman's estranged husband, jumped out of the car and began stabbing her in the chest. Bowlin tackled the man and held him until police arrived. The woman survived.

• Carl Tafua of San Jose, Calif., Viking Freight. While passing through Santa Clara on Aug. 12, Tafua noticed an 8-year-old girl screaming at a man who was pursuing her. The girl ran toward Tafua's truck, got in and told him she had been kidnapped. Tafua called his dispatcher, who called police, and then he took down the license plate number of the fleeing suspect. The suspect was later arrested for kidnapping.

Winning Ways

Two happy truckers started the New Year in new tractors. Walter Carter, 72, of Nashville, Tenn., now drives an International i9400 ProSleeper he won as the Truckload Carriers Association's Independent Contractor of the Year. He has 4 million accident-and claim-free miles in 50 years of trucking. And Tom Marsillet of Prestonburg, Ky., took home the Kenworth T2000 from "18 Wheels of Justice," as winner of the top prize in a sweepstakes.