Six young people from across the U.S. have been on tour with an L.L. Bean Bootmobile and the Planters Nutmobile since September and June, respectively. Pictured are (from left) Mason Mulrooney, Shelby Lewis, Clara Adams, Molly Swindall, Tania Castro and Katie Chesebro. Luna Soley / The Times Record
Cashew Katie, Macadamia Mulrooney and Treenut Tania get along pretty well, considering they’ve covered more than 16,000 miles together since June — all inside an oversized fiberglass peanut on wheels.
“It really is the best job in the world,” said Katie Chesebro (alias Cashew Katie). “You get to see the country through the eyes of a giant peanut.”
Sunday, the mobile nut stopped in Freeport for a photo op with Maine’s own Bootmobile, a giant L.L. Bean boot on wheels.
Chesebro, along with her coworkers Mason Mulrooney and Tania Castro, all got a one-year contract with Hormel foods, the parent company of snack maker Planters, to drive the Nutmobile 45,000 miles across America. Built with fiberglass and pool noodles — which form the decorative ridges on the vehicle’s exterior — the Nutmobile also boasts a flat screen TV and a “nut locker,” double doors emblazoned with a full color graphic of (you guessed it) nuts and overflowing with customized Christmas ornaments, countless packets of honey-roasted peanuts, pecans, trail mix, almonds, pistachios, mixed nuts and more for handing out on tour. The giant peanut doesn’t have any beds, so the intrepid peanut-drivers are put up in hotels along the route.
One of three Bootmobiles owned by L.L. Bean. this particular boot is dubbed “L.L. Bean,” after its vanity plate. The other boots — Big Foot and the original Bootmobile — are away on tour. Luna Soley / The Times Record
This year, Chesebro, Mulrooney and Castro will make stops on their road trip at the Super Bowl, the Christmas tree lighting in New York’s Times Square and the Kentucky Derby. For now, they’re parked behind the L.L. Bean corporate offices next to one of the three Bootmobiles.
“It’s fun to meet other people who are going through the same experience,” said Molly Swindall, a New York resident who is taking to the road for a year aboard the L.L. Bean boot. She, along with her coworkers Clara Adams from Portland, Oregon, and Shelbey Lewis of Scottsdale, Arizona — all alums of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile — take the three Bootmobiles on tour all over the Eastern seaboard.
With the help of the Planters crew, they were planning to film social media content on Monday and drive down Freeport’s Main Street with the peanut in tow — or perhaps out in front of the boot. That part was up for debate among the groups.
“[The Bootmobile and Nutmobile] are such a unique way to get to engage with people and get them excited,” Lewis said. “I think there’s this misconception about marketing and that it’s not as friendly or it’s not a two-way conversation, and I think that these programs are able to really engage with people and hear their stories, share your stories, and it’s such an easy icebreaker; you’re able to meet strangers and right away you have something to talk about.”
“We’re coworkers but we’re friends at the same time,” Chesebro says of Castro and Mulrooney. Along with showing up to conferences and country-wide events, the three passengers of the Nutmobile volunteer to fight food insecurity, generate content for their companies’ social media pages and are provided with an endless supply of road snacks.
“I’m obsessed with the dill-pickle cashews,” Mulrooney said.
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