In late January, National Ready Mixed Concrete of Encino, Calif., dispatched eight trucks to the Irwindale Speedway for a customer that had something other than pavement in mind.

Located east of Los Angeles, the speedway was the latest stage for the filming of a spot in an America Online Inc. television advertising campaign. Themed “Choppers,” the campaign was timed with the Super Bowl to support the new TopSpeed Internet service. Commercial director Hank Perlman saw just what he needed for motorcycle jump props at National's Irwindale plant: White mixer trucks with plain cabs and drum stripes, plus a monolithic orange scheme on mixers National inherited from its 1999 acquisition of United Ready Mixed Concrete Corp.

Perlman liked the effect of two colors interspersed across a row of eight mixers, according to National's Alan Ellis, vice president of operations, who is based at the company's Sun Valley plant. The vehicles were rented for one day at the speedway, with a motorcycle jump simulated late in the afternoon using a helicopter, cables and stuntman Mike “Mouse” McCoy.

The TopSpeed campaign, whose spots were filmed during a three-week period leading up to the Super Bowl, borrows characters from the Discovery Channel's American Chopper series. The characters are drawn from a family-owned, custom motorcycle shop, Orange County Choppers, in Rock Tavern, N.Y. — not California, as the name and TopSpeed spot settings suggest. The characters are Paul Teutul Sr. and sons Paul Jr., Mickey and Vinnie. In the motorcycle jump spot, Paul Sr. and Vinnie prepare Mickey to negotiate the mixer trucks.

The mass exposure from the Choppers spot might not be National's last of this television season. Ellis notes the company recently sent a ready mixed load to crews filming an installment of ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, scheduled to run in early March.