The roaring of tow trucks and tractors filled the air on the strip of East Main Street bordering L. Hogeland Auto Plaza on Tuesday, as the owner, Lonnie Hogeland, displayed a show of solidarity with the Canadian truckers currently protesting vaccine mandates.

Large equipment and trucks were situated along Hogeland’s property line, with the vehicles running with their lights on to show support for the cause.

In January, a large group began protesting against mandates requiring truckers crossing the United States/Canada borders to be fully vaccinated. This protest has since been dubbed the “Freedom Convoy” by its backers, and Hogeland says he wholeheartedly supports the truckers.

“The government’s fighting against them, and now (the government) is even taking gas from them or diesel fuel from them so they can’t proceed with their protest,” Hogeland said. “I’m just here to support the truckers. The government has overreached.”

This silent protest was inspired by Hogeland’s friend John Worden, who owns the John Worden Garage in Green Mountain and suggested the display.

“(Lonnie) and I are both in agreement that the Freedom Convoy protestors needed encouragement, and we wanted to demonstrate that encouragement. That’s the heart of the issue. We wanted to demonstrate that we were backing them,” Worden said.

While Worden himself is not participating in the display since Green Mountain gets substantially less day-to-day vehicle traffic than Marshalltown, he encouraged Hogeland to do it. He also suggested that all the businesses along East Main Street participate and put in several calls to their owners, but it appeared L. Hogeland Auto Plaza was the lone participant.

Hogeland said he considered not even taking calls for tows on Tuesday but ultimately decided against that course of action.

“I thought about not doing business today at all, just barricade, but that’s not right. If you get into an accident out on Center Street, you need me to come out,” Hogeland said. “I’m not going to be that guy.”

While Hogeland supports the truckers and opposes the vaccine mandates, he said he thought the government needed to be involved with certain things — but, he added, it shouldn’t be granted unlimited power.

“I do think the government needs to be put in there for safety regulations, (to) make sure you’re doing things safely. They’ve got a touch in everything, but it just has to have checks and balances,” Hogeland said.

The show of support was to run all day Tuesday through about 5 p.m., and while Hogeland wasn’t planning on doing it again this week, he said he may be interested sometime in the future.

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Contact Susanna Meyer at 641-753-6611 or

smeyer@timesrepublican.com.