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Shell Oil Co. apologized to truckers for its newest advertising campaign after the industry complained that the ads cast trucking in a negative light.

	Shell Oil Co. placed this advertisement in the Aug. 16 Wall Street Journal.

A nationally televised ad for Shell, titled “Breakdown,” depicts a man who attempts to change a flat tire on a narrow roadside as a big truck speeds by inches away. The rig blares its horn and scares the man and his wife.

The Houston oil company also took out a print ad on the same theme in the Wall Street Journal and other periodicals.

In a letter to Shell, Walter B. McCormick Jr., president of American Trucking Associations, called the ad insensitive, irresponsible and a “slap in the face to many trucking programs in which truck drivers, far from intimidating stranded motorists, come to their rescue.”

Shell apologized in a statement and said the television spot and its accompanying print ad were meant not to disparage trucks, but to be part of the company’s public education campaign on safe driving.

“The ad was designed to show what might happen if a driver puts himself in an unsafe situation by failing to pull far enough off the road or by pulling off the road in a spot where other drivers might not see him until it was too late,” Shell said. “In the ad, the truck is on a two-lane highway with nowhere to go. . . . it is the response to the breakdown that causes the problem, not the truck. We felt this dramatic illustration was necessary to catch people’s attention and to make the information memorable.”

For the full story, see the August 30 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.