Wienermobile Openings: Want To Drive A Huge Hot Dog Across The U.S.?

ACROSS AMERICA — A handful of current college seniors could spend a year driving around the country in the Wienermobile, a 27-foot-long hot dog-cradling bun on wheels, to proselytize on the virtues of Oscar Mayer’s popular wieners and make people smile.

The position is “Hotdogger” — code for “spokesperson” or “brand ambassador” in the wiener business — and Madison, Wisconsin-based Oscar Mayer is on the hunt for a half dozen “outgoing, creative, friendly, enthusiastic, graduating college seniors who have an appetite for adventure” to drive its fleet of Wienermobiles.

Preferred candidates for the yearlong, full-time position will have a four-year degree in public relations, advertising, marketing or related fields, though Oscar Mayer said in a news release that it will consider applicants with different backgrounds as well.

Hotdoggers represent Oscar Mayer in radio and television appearances, grocery store events, charity functions, and other marketing and brand-ambassador responsibilities that could lead to lucrative gigs in their post-Wienermobile lives.

They also get to have some fun handing out laughs and Wiener Whistles, developed in 1951 and included as a giveaway with packages of Oscar Mayer hot dogs in 1958. The whistles, by the way, made their film debut in 1994, testing a 3-year-old’s belief in Father Christmas in “The Santa Clause.”

Applicants shouldn’t be afraid of puns such as “it cuts the mustard,” because clichés will be handed out with the uniform. It’s a costume, really, and applicants should possess the necessary self-confidence to be at ease as they travel 20 states, logging something like 200,000 Wienermobile miles, looking like a human-sized hot dog.

And when this grand adventure is over, they’ll be able to list “graduate of Hot Dog High” on their resumes. That’s a sure-fire conversation starter with future employers. (It is not a state of gastronomic euphoria or any other self-induced state of euphoria.)

Hot Dog High is an intense two-week course through which Hotdoggers learn to drive the hot dog and talk up the product. Maneuvering the Wienermobile is probably harder than it looks, at 27 feet long, 11 feet high and 8 feet wide. For comparison, a Ford Expedition Limited is a little over 6 feet tall, 6½ feet tall and 7 ½ feet wide.

A solid driving record is essential. Hot Dog High does not want its graduates being this person:

Three years ago, a Wienermobile was pulled over by a Wisconsin sheriff’s deputy and the Hotdogger was given a warning for failing to follow the state’s Move Over Law, which requires motorists to change lanes to move away from vehicles that are on the side of the road with their emergency lights flashing or, if that’s not possible, slow down enough to pass the vehicle at a safe speed.

Or this person, although slick roads, not driver error, were behind a 2015 Wienermobile crash in Pennsylvania. The hot dog slid off the road and into a pole, snarling traffic “because really,” the Consumerist reported at the time, “who’s not going to rubberneck a crash involving a giant hot dog?”

Wienermobile Origin Story

Wienermobiles in the current fleet are about twice as long as Oscar Mayer’s first Wienermobile in 1936. It was a 13-foot-long, hot dog-shaped shell that rolled along the streets of Chicago, where the company namesake founder opened his first butcher shop in 1883.

The Great Depression was ending, and “the country’s spirits needed lifting,” Oscar Mayer said on its website. (By the way, the original Wienermobile was scrapped for metal to aid World War II efforts, The New York Times reported.)

Wienermobiles have been chugging along ever since. The pandemic threatened to idle Wienermobiles, and the rolling buns did get off to a late start, but Oscar Mayer decided America needed joy in 2020 as surely as it did in 1936.

“As you can imagine, how can you not smile when you see a giant hot dog on wheels rolling down the road, even if it’s just playing music and waving out the window,” Ed Roland, the senior experiential marketing manager at Oscar Mayer, told The Times in 2020. “That brightens people’s day.”

So the company loaded its fleet of Wienermobiles with PPE, altered its routes, created signs that told the throngs that visit them at every stop to keep their distance and rolled merrily along.

This weekend, the rolling wiener will make stops in Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee, according to the Wienermobile tracker.

Thousands of people apply every year to become Hotdoggers, and competition is fierce. The deadline to apply online is Jan. 31

BONUS FUN FACT: You can thank us later for resurfacing the Oscar Mayer wiener song lyrics — you know you know them — in your brain. Oscar Mayer retired the famous jingle in 2010, ending a 47-year run that made it one of the most recognized advertising jingles in the country. You’re welcome.