The in basket: Mike Moore called a while back and said that around the first week of September he saw something that seemed unusual.
On his way down Highway 16 driving toward Tacoma, he said he saw a half dozen or so brand new Silverado pickup trucks with all white campers or canopies on the back, without windows in them. The trucks all had U.S. government plates. The campers/canopies were uniformly white, though the trucks were various colors.
As they approached the toll booths for the Tacoma Narrows bridge, one of the trucks was stopped at the side of the highway, with another vehicle in front of it. He didn’t know if the truck’s driver had stopped the other vehicle, was trying to aid it, or had nothing to do with it. But it had the red and blue lights that law enforcement uses flashing in its grill and somewhere on the rear.
He wondered what they were.
The out basket: I can’t add anything helpful here. My Washington State Patrol contact said he had no idea what they were. So I’ll just toss this one out there. Anyone in reader land know what Mike had seen?
wasting taxpayers $$$$$
With an attitude like this, it is no wonder the Gov’t has trouble recruiting good help.
Since they have Govt. plates, then I would say they are Govt vehicles. Chances are they belong to the local military bases from the PNW. They have an assortment of vehicles. Most are marked, but it is possible that they have some unmarked. Or they just had not had the decals placed on them yet. BUt now it would be unusual for the Navy to have pickups since they primarily use sedans and SUVs, I could see the JBLM maybe having them. Who knows. But they do seem to resemble the trucks that WSP uses. But if they had Govt plates, then who knows.
They could have also belonged to the forest service or any of the other gov’t agencies. Maybe moving equipment from the Olympic Peninsula to Glacier Peak to support the increased earthquake monitoring?