DODGE CITY — Situated right off Exit 299 along Interstate 65, the Dodge City Petro truck stop is just about always a bustling place.

But on Saturday morning, the bustle stretched beyond the truck stop’s confines and up and down a jam-packed Alabama Highway 69, as big-rig truckers and a throng of supportive locals converged on the travel center to kick off the Alabama leg of the nationwide protest convoy bound this weekend for the nation’s capital.

The Cullman County truck stop marked the northernmost staging area for the “Freedom Convoy to DC,” a nationwide trucker-organized movement calling for an end to all federal mandates and restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Though organizers are billing the national movement as one untethered to any political party, the conservative Cullman County crowd showed up in force with apparel, flags, and vehicle decals that displayed their GOP allegiance — or, in many cases, their specific support for former President Donald Trump.

“I’m disgusted with all of them, the Democrats, the Republicans, whatever this regime is that they’ve got in Washington right now,” said Sarah Skinner, a Jefferson County resident who attended the sendoff with local friends and family. “This whole COVID thing has been one big concerted effort to hollow out the middle class and transfer wealth to globalist oligarchs with no stake in America — or at least not a good one.”

Grey skies and chilly temperatures didn’t appear to stifle Skinner’s enthusiasm — nor the crowd’s. A handful of area GOP candidates took advantage of the conservative gathering, making stump speeches endorsing the truckers’ goals.

U.S. Senate candidate Katie Britt and Tom Fredricks, who’s running for the District 14 seat in the Alabama House of Representatives, each gave speeches from atop the flatbed trailer Fredricks brought for the occasion. Other political aspirants stayed down on the ground, making their election-season rounds among the patriotically-attired crowd.

The Alabama arm of the convoy headed south down I-65, joining with eastbound truckers on I-10 at Mobile before making their way eastward to pick up a contingent of Florida truckers before turning north toward Washington, D.C. Downplaying any potential for city gridlock and potential conflict of the sort that affected Canadian capital Ottawa last month, organizers say the “Freedom Convoy to DC” will end on the outskirts of the city.