The Wienermobile Turns 90 and Six Still Roam the Roads

In 1936, Carl Mayer walked into his uncle Oscar's office in Chicago with an idea most bosses would have laughed out of the room: build a 13-foot hot dog on wheels and drive it around the city selling wieners. Oscar Mayer said yes, and the Wienermobile has never really stopped rolling since.

A Nephew's Wild Pitch

Carl was Oscar Mayer's nephew, working in the family meat business. He believed a rolling billboard shaped like the product itself would stop traffic in a way no print ad could.

He was right. A Chicago outfit called General Body Company took the idea and welded it into steel: a 2,000-pound, 13-foot metal frank with open cockpits in the center and rear, built to putter through Chicago's streets promoting Oscar Mayer's "German-style Wieners."

The Shop That Made It Real

General Body Company had no way of knowing it was building something people would still be talking about nine decades later. It had no roof at first, just an open seat where the driver waved to bystanders.

By 1940, a glass enclosure was added to protect the driver and passengers from the weather. Then World War II hit. Gas rationing pulled the Wienermobile off the road for the duration, and the original truck never came back - five brand new ones took its place when the program relaunched in 1952.

Six Trucks, One Job

The program returned for good in 1988 with a new fleet, and six full-size Wienermobiles still tour the country today, each one covering a different slice of the map.

Every truck carries two drivers, and the job title is real: Hotdogger. Oscar Mayer hires about a dozen of them each year, straight out of college, for a single paid year on the road.

Thousands apply for that one year behind the wheel.

Still Rolling at 90

Every Hotdogger carries a stash of Wiener Whistles, plastic hot-dog-shaped toys that have become an Oscar Mayer tradition on tour.

Ninety years after Carl Mayer's pitch, the routine hasn't changed much. A Wienermobile pulls into a gas station or a parking lot, and cameras come out before anyone even asks what it is.

Spotting one on the highway is still a family event, exactly the reaction Carl Mayer was chasing back in 1936.