Hamilton County, Tennessee's Touch-A-Truck event drew about 577 attendees and volunteers to Tennessee Riverpark on Sept. 12, an event designed to give children the opportunity to get up close and personal with large motorized vehicles

. An annual event, Touch-A-Truck is sponsored by Hamilton County's Parents Are First Teachers, Parks and Recreation and its Read 20 initiative.

According to Marguerite Chambers, promotion manager for Parents Are First Teachers, the event was launched in 2003 with a grant from the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth as part of delinquency prevention funding. The hope is that as children and their families have fun together at the event, this will protect children against delinquent behavior.

Why trucks? "They never get a chance to get up close and explore them," Chambers said. She said the kids are fascinated by the large trucks and love to get up inside of them and toot the horn.

"We had a lot of horn tooting on Saturday," she said.

This year, Touch-A-Truck had several motorized vehicles for the young ones to enjoy, including a tractor-trailer rig from Kenco Transportation Services, based in Chattanooga.

"Kids of all ages enjoyed sitting in the drivers' seats and visualizing what it's like to command a big rig," said Bill Mitchell, vice president of Kenco.

David Gardner, Kenco fleet safety generalist, was on hand to explain the safety features of the heavy rig. He also distributed a safety-oriented pamphlet from the American Trucking Associations called 'Sharing the Road with Big Trucks.'

A local moving company called Two Men and a Truck brought in their truck for the kids to see. The company papered the inside walls of the truck trailer and provided crayons, so the kids could draw.

Other vehicles featured at the event included: a mail truck; an oil tanker; a concrete mixer; a van from Chattanooga Speech and Hearing; a golf cart ambulance; a truck from the Electric Power Board; a Chattanooga fire truck; a neo-natal ambulance; a recycling truck; a street sweeper; a knuckle-boom; an old Chevy station wagon; a bus; several motorcycles from the Christian Motorcycle Association; and a Bobcat tractor.