You'd think George Strait held his third annual concert tour just to benefit the trucking industry, since it took more than 50 trucks, divided into two independent fleets, to carry all of his stuff.

But there is no truth to the rumor that it took a 53-foot Great Dane trailer just to haul the official name of the tour, "Nokia Presents the George Strait Chevy Truck Country Music Festival." It only took a 48-footer -- and a flatbed at that.

The Festival - that's easier to say - played 10 shows this year. Eight were held in NFL or college football stadiums; one was held at Lowe's Motor Speedway, the NASCAR track in Charlotte, N.C.; and one was held in a room where they play baseball - Enron Field, the covered home stadium of the Houston Astros.

The shows were sellouts, the stars stellar and to the fans, at least, each concert seemed as easy-going and laid-back as Strait himself. In fact, the tour ran on a timetable as crisply defined as the crease in one of his Western shirts.

It had to. The Festival played 10 shows on Saturdays and Sundays in 10 different cities on five weekends between April 29 and June 11. That's why it used two separate fleets, leapfrogging each other across the U.S.

The rigs hauling the equipment for each Saturday show arrived at the venue on Tuesday morning. Meanwhile, the trucks hauling the equipment for the Sunday shows were being loaded, driven to the next city and set up on Wednesday morning. Getting to "Amarillo by Morning" was easy compared to this schedule. The main stage in each convoy was 168 feet wide and 60 feet deep. "We always keep one truck at the site so we can move equipment around the site," says Jim Evans, president of Mountain Productions in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., which built the stages.

"I started this company 20 years ago. I was in the building supply business then," says Evans. "Our National Guard unit lost its funding for recruiting. I suggested they put on a fund-raising show and I built the stage. That was the start; now we employ 70 full-time people. Our first client was the young singing group, 'America.'

"This has been a decent summer," Evans adds. "We're supplying stages for 30 artists doing 200 shows. The trucks from the Strait tour are doing 'N Sync now. We've never had to have a salesperson. All our business is from referrals." Juggling all the vehicles and schedules is the job of Kyle Jones of Baytown, Texas. As transportation coordinator for all vehicles, his duties extend to arranging parking places for each vehicle, even those belonging to the other artists.

Jones has been working with Strait for nine years. "This thing started in San Antonio at the Alamo Dome. George and his manager, Erv Woolsey, got some of us together, and we held the first concert on Labor Day weekend. We booked five or six acts, but there were no corporate sponsors.

"The next year, we did the same thing in Texas Stadium in Dallas over the Fourth of July weekend," Jones says. "After five or six years of doing those, we decided to take it out on the road, and it's been a huge success. We just completed our third year. Each of the two previous years we did 18 shows. Next year, George is talking about doing maybe as many as 30 shows."

Besides the main stage, each of the two tour fleets included rigs that hauled lighting, sound equipment and the equipment of the various bands. The band members also had trucks and buses of their own.

The only equipment that was not duplicated were the Diamond Vision Jumbotron video screens the tour used - a 13-by-33-foot screen set up behind the stage and two 13-by-17-foot screens placed on each side of the stage. These had to be packed up after the Saturday show and rushed to the Sunday venue.

Oh, and Jones also had to be in two places at once. "At the venue, I was also the stage manager," says Jones. "The stage manager runs the stage from the time it is set up until it is taken down. During the show, it was my job to tell the bands where to wait, when to start, when to stop, when the corporate sponsors could go out and make announcements, when the local DJs could go out. It is a very time-sensitive thing. Seven acts, a certain amount of time for each one. If anybody ran long and got us behind schedule, George would have to cut his show. We couldn't let that happen - George is the headliner," he says.

The shows ended promptly at 10:40 p.m., and then the crews took the stage - literally. The trucks were usually loaded by 1 a.m., and the weary crew boarded the 20 buses assigned to them and headed for the next venue. After a Saturday show, however, Jones and the 11-person video crew also hopped on a bus and tried to sleep as it raced to the Sunday show.

Jones had a trucking company, Shoquip, that merged with Tour Transportation, a carrier in Dallas owned by Doug Burch, to form a new company, Paramount Tour Transportation. Paramount has 70 trucks, both owned and leased. About a fourth of them are owner/operators.

"When I bought my first tractor and started this company, I went down and got my own commercial driver's license," Jones says. "I didn't think I'd have any standing with drivers if they knew I'd never been behind the wheel of a truck. "I put in six solid months as a full-time driver," Jones adds. "Now I can sympathize with them. And I also know when a driver is not playing straight with me.

"I had 29 trucks this year on George Strait, and my new business partner, Doug Burch, had about eight. Mountain Productions had 15 or so," Jones says. "We had about 200 people traveling with us. Good people. Some of them have been doing this for years.

"Steve Lawlar has been doing it over 30 years. He was lighting director for Lynyrd Skynyrd and Peter Frampton, then started working for promoters. He's been with Pace Concerts/SFX since the late '70s. During the show, he handles production.

"If you sold 8,000 tickets on the stadium floor, Steve had to be sure 8,000 folding chairs were out there. His job is to make sure the dressing rooms are right, the catering people are called, the hotels and airline reservations are in order. Steve Lawlar is the reason I'm in this business." Despite everything Jones had to do, he is most definitely still in the trucking business.

"Turnover is the hardest thing in the trucking industry," says Jones. "It costs you about $5,000 to hire a driver and put him to work. You go through all the formalities, the drug testing, the screening and the hiring. If he quits, there goes $5,000 down the drain. That's why you see so many of the larger companies offering all these sign-on bonuses. You don't get those bonuses until you've been there a year, or whatever it is.

"Our drivers are paid salaries. They do a lot of sitting and waiting. There is no off-season, we're always looking for drivers, but we have difficulty in finding drivers who understand this business," Jones says. (If you think you have what it takes, call Jones at 972-228-1691.)

"We get a dozen calls a day. 'The entertainment business, that's glamorous, I want to do that.' Some of them think by being around show business people, they'll get discovered and become big rock stars," Jones says. "It's not like that. They don't realize it is also work. This is a job driving a truck. Rarely do the drivers ever get a chance to sit and watch the shows. While the shows are going on, the truck drivers are asleep."

Jones has been in this business long enough to know what to look for in drivers. "We have to maintain a good company image. Our drivers need to be neat, clean and have good communication skills. They have to communicate with production managers, other members of the tour, sometimes even the artists themselves."

The 2001 tour schedule won't be announced for a while (on the web, look for it at http://straitfest.georgestrait.com). But one thing is for sure: If the "Nokia Presents the George Strait Chevy Truck Country Music Festival" expands to 30 shows, George Strait is going to make jobs for a lot more truck drivers.

Winning five awards this year at the fan-voted TNN Music Awards merely confirmed what his fans have said all along: when it comes to traditional Western-flavored country, George Strait is the real deal. It was fitting that Strait wasn't on hand to accept the awards for entertainer of the year, male artist, single for "Write This Down" and album for "Always Never the Same." He was on the road wrapping up this year's Festival, performing live for those fans.

In keeping with the size of the fleet that transports it, The Festival is a sprawling, day-long affair that's as much country fair as country music. Fans show up long before the first lick is played and stay late into the night, turning each site into a good-sized town. And although the music is the main attraction, no town would be complete without a marketplace. The Festival carries its own market. Each stadium was ringed by "Straitland" - rows of huge tents sheltering souvenir merchandise, food concessions and corporate sponsors. Of course, Chevrolet trucks were on display in one tent, and the Nokia tent had its product line out for all to see and hear. And here's a juicy trivia tidbit: Pemmican is the tour's official beef jerky.

Also in Straitland was the Jack Daniels Lynchburg Live Country Music stage, where the music started at 11 a.m. Clay Davidson and Jerry Kilgore, both artists on the Virgin Records label, and Lace, the Warner Brothers Records female trio, each performed two shows a day.

Armed with souvenirs, sodas and cell phone literature, the fans settled in the sold-out stadiums in time for the opening act at 1 p.m. Calling the leadoff act a warm-up band would be an insult, since it was Grammy-award winning Asleep at the Wheel. Strait appeared on the group's award-winning tribute album to Bob Wills, "Ride With Bob."

Following acts included Martina McBride and Tim McGraw, the winners of the Country Music Association female and male vocalists of the year, and the platinum-selling acts of Kenny Chesney, Mark Chesnutt and Lee Ann Womack. Strait played the last two hours, and closed the shows promptly at 10:40 p.m.

Two hours is, of course, barely an appetizer for Strait's ravenous fans. Their numbers have grown steadily since his debut in 1981. His many hits - such as "Amarillo by Morning," "The Chair," "Check Yes or No," "Ace in the Hole," "Overnight Success," "Love Without End, Amen," "Drinking Champagne" (written by trucking radio's Bill Mack), and "Carrying Your Love With Me," - have influenced dozens of singers. It would take considerably more than the Festival's 50 vehicles to transport the devotion of his fans.