Title: Skin Cancer Awareness Month: Spot the Signs and Protect Your Skin
May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month, a time dedicated to raising awareness about the dangers of skin cancer and the importance of early detection. At TruckMelanoma.org, we’re especially focused on educating Motorsports enthusiasts, automotive enthusiasts, truck drivers, outdoor workers, and those in high-UV exposure roles about the risks—because melanoma and other skin cancers don’t discriminate based on occupation.
Understanding the Three Most Common Types of Skin Cancer1. Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC)

• The most common type of skin cancer.
  
• Caused primarily by long-term sun exposure.
  
• Frequently found on sun-exposed areas such as the face, ears, neck, and arms.
  
• May appear as a shiny bump, pink growth, or a scar-like lesion.
  
• Early skin cancer detection can prevent tissue damage and disfigurement.
  

2. Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC)

• The second most common form.
  
• Often presents as a rough, red patch, scaly bump, or open sore.
  
• Occurs in sun-damaged skin, especially in fair-skinned individuals.
  
• SCC can spread if untreated—prompt skin cancer diagnosis is key.
  

3. Melanoma

• The most aggressive and deadly type of skin cancer.
  
• Can develop from existing moles or appear as a new, dark spot on the skin.
  
• Melanoma symptoms include rapid changes in shape, color, or size of a mole.
  
• It can spread quickly to lymph nodes and internal organs if not caught early.
  

Melanoma Risk FactorsWhile everyone should be cautious, some individuals have higher melanoma risk factors, including:

• Fair skin, light hair, and blue or green eyes
  
• A history of severe sunburns or frequent tanning
  
• Family history of melanoma
  
• A large number of moles or atypical moles
  
• Occupations with high UV exposure—like long-haul truck drivers, construction workers, road workers etc. 
  

How to Spot a Skin Lesion with Warning SignsThe best way to protect yourself is through early melanoma detection. Use the ABCDE method to examine your skin regularly:

• A – Asymmetry: One half of the mole doesn’t match the other.
  
• B – Border: Uneven or jagged edges.
  
• C – Color: Multiple shades of brown, black, blue, red, or white.
  
• D – Diameter: Larger than 6mm (pencil eraser size).
  
• E – Evolving: Any visible change in shape, size, or texture.
  

If you notice a suspicious skin lesion, don’t wait--schedule a skin check with a dermatologist immediately.
Melanoma and Driving: What You Need to KnowUV rays penetrate vehicle windows, meaning truckers and other drivers are at increased risk—especially on the left side of the body. This makes truck driver melanoma a serious occupational concern.
Tips for Skin Cancer Prevention on the Road:

• Apply broad-spectrum SPF 30+ sunscreen daily, even when inside a vehicle.
  
• Wear UV-protective clothing and wide-brimmed hats.
  
• Use UV-filtering window film in your cab.
  
• Perform monthly self-exams for skin lesion warning signs.
  
• Get a professional skin exam annually.
  

Melanoma awareness saves lives.
This Skin Cancer Awareness Month, take a moment to examine your skin and talk to others about the importance of early detection. Whether you’re a driver, technician, or work under the sun, protecting your skin today could save your life tomorrow.


Stay informed. Stay protected.
Visit TruckMelanoma.org for more resources on melanoma prevention, diagnosis, and support.

Good morning! I wanted to give a quick update on what has been taking place with Truck Melanoma in 2025! 
So far, event wise, we have only had one, but it was a BIG one. We were able to attend the Matt's Offroad Games for the second year in the row, and in 2025 we were able to bring our massively upgraded Truck Melanoma! booth to the vender show at the Games and we were very well received. 
We were lucky enough to have our booth placed between two very popular YouTube channels that were taking part at the event, and that meant that there was a steady stream of people that were able to connect and interact with our outreach. 
This year, we were also able to bring along our race truck, the LentiGO and our drift trike, the Ugly Duckling to the event and it was a lot of fun to talk to so many people about the truck and the ongoing LS1 swap (which is very near running BTW!) One surprising thing was how incredibly popular the drift trike was, that silly piece of steel with a 200cc motor on it had nearly everyone at the event talking, and everyone wanted one of their own, it was very cool to have that drift trike be able to open the lines of conversation with so many people. That is ultimately what the purpose of our truck, our drift trike, our overland tow rig etc...to start those conversations out on the same plane and that way making it easier to talk about what can be a potentially unpleasant and sometimes scary subject, melanoma and other skin cancers. 
Along the lines of spreading our message of melanoma awareness, early detection techniques, and sun protective measures, we handed out over 6,000 sunscreen samples, got a good deal of our merch into people's hands, and on the Saturday when we were able to over free skin checks with the help of Dr Sancy Leachman and her crew of 3 med students, all from the University of Utah, 25 people took advantage of the checks and we identified several dysplastic nevi as one very obvious Squamous Cell Carcinoma. 
Over all the event was a great success, and we have already received an invitation to come back next year. How should we make it even cooler for 2026?

Stay tuned for more to come! 2025 is going to be a great year for us! 

Ryan

Truck Melanoma! had the great opportunity to participate in a huge trunk or treat event put on by Elevate Oregon (www.elevateoregon.org) and the Parkrose School District on Sunday 10/27/24 at Parkrose middle school. 
The event is an annual event that takes place and is open to anyone in the community. It is a very well attended event, and even thought there was periods of very heavy rain and wind this year, it did not discourage anyone from attending. 
Our team passed out over 100 lbs of candy, over 1200 sunscreen samples and nearly 500 Truck Melanoma! and LentiGO stickers! 

We had a blast creating and setting up our Halloween decorations and think that our exhibit turned out pretty great!  

It was so much fun to see all of the kiddos out enjoying the festivities in a safe environment. 

Thank you to Elevate Oregon for having us out, and we look forward to next year! 

The 2024 Portland Gran Prix INDY Car races at Portland International Raceway were a massive success!  
Our outreach efforts on Saturday and Sunday were massively popular. This year we had several sponsors that helped make our outreach successful. La Roche-Posay provided all of the incredibly popular sunscreen samples, and we passed our well over 2,000 samples to very appreciative race fans. Fuck Cancer sponsored the free skin checks, and our team of providers did 55 skin exams, helped identify 3 potential melanomas and a hand full of basal cell carcinomas. 
This year Truck Melanoma! was also able to have 3,000 sets of ear plugs with our logo on them made up to hand out, and these were incredibly popular. As we see it, we need to help protect your Trucking hearing as well so we can talk to you about how to spot and help prevent skin cancer! 
Rubbery Ducky Sunscreen provided our team with 200 samples of their SPF 44 lip balm, and not only is it a very quality product, it was wildly popular and we were quickly out of samples.

The mobile clinic space that was sponsored by Ironman 4x4 America worked out amazingly well and offered a private area for the skin checks to be performed. 

Thank you to all who stopped by our booth. Thank you to the sponsors who helped make it possible for us to be at such a high profile event. 

Remember, YOUR support is what allows us to continue to potentially live saving work that we are doing to spread the message! Please consider a donation today! 
​

We are very excited to announce our newest partnership with Fuck Cancer through the remainder of 2024. (www.letsfcancer.com)
Their organization has a wealth of information regarding cancer prevention as well as resources fr living with cancer, whether in yourself or a loved one. Team Truck Melanoma is pleased to partner with Fuck Cancer and know that it will be a great relationship that helps to further melanoma and skin cancer awareness. 
Their funding dollars will allow us to expand our skin check events to make them even better for the community that we are striving to reach! 

​Thank you Fuck Cancer! 

Hello Truckers!


Check out the new 2024 sunscreen update from AIM at Melanoma Foundation. It has a lot of very good information in it that helps to demystify the often-confusing subject of sunscreens. 

It still remains; the best sunscreen is the one that you WILL wear and the one that you WILL reapply. 

Check out the article below:

​https://issuu.com/aimatmelanoma/docs/sunscreen_update_2024_3_?fr=sZDExODY5MjcyNzM

Hello Truckers! 

Our team has been listening to your requests at our events for the past year, and one of the MOST requested items that you wish we had in our outreach booth has been lip balm. Now, given our message of melanoma awareness, we wanted to find you a lip balm with a good SPF rating, but also one that is comfortable to wear. We believe that we have found that for your. 

Allow us to introduce you to Rubber Ducky and their awesome, SPF 44 lip balms. We at Team Truck Melanoma! have been testing out the lip balm over the last month and feel that we can confidently recommend the Rubber Ducky product to our amazing fans. We have not been paid to make this recommendation to you, and purchased the tester products that we have been trying out. 

For the past month, I personally have been using the Rubber Ducky Original Formula LIP NO-OX lip balm. It is Oxybenzone Free and VEGAN, it also has an 80 minute water resistance. 

It is a broad spectrum, vanilla flavored product, that goes on the lips very smoothly and does not feel sticky. 

The Vanilla flavor in my opinion, especially when the stick was new was a bit too much. I found it to taste a bit like frosting, but I have noticed that the flavor does seem to mellow as well as become more pleasant as the product has been opened and used. Rubber Ducky does make a mint flavored version as well, but this is not one that I have personally tried. I received feedback from others that I gave lip balms too that they also thought the vanilla flavor was a bit strong at first.

One thing that I personally very much like about the Rubber Ducky lip balm is that it is a petrolatum-based product (40%). Personally, I have a long (10 1/2 year) history of working in dermatology, and petrolatum (i.e. Vaseline or Aquaphor) is what is very commonly recommended for moisturizing the lips as well as helping to heal wounds. In my experience, the Rubber Ducky lip balm makes my lips feel every bit as moisturized as Aquaphor does. The petrolatum base is what allows this product to glide on smoothly as compared to a wax-based lip balm. 
I have found that it does make this lip balm a little more sensitive to heat, so it is important to remember to twist the lip balm back into the tube to keep it from melting into the cap a little while in your pocket. 

Overall, I can confidently say, Team Truck Melanoma! is very happy to recommend Rubber Ducky lip balm to our audience, and we will have some samples at our future events. 

You can order the Lip balm on amazon using this affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3W87ZNz

You can also order all of the Rubber Ducky SPF products from their website www.rubberducky.com  Through the month of August, use code TRUCK at check out for a 20% discount off orders of $25 or more! 

Active Ingredients:
Avobenzone (3.0%), Homosalate (3.0%), Octinoxate (7.5%), Octisalate (5.0%)----Sunscreen
Petrolatum (40.0%)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Skin Protectant

Inactive ingredients:
c12-15 Alkyl Benzoate, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Flavor, Mineral Oil, Ozokerite, Phenyl Trimethicone, Sucralose, Tocopheral

Good Morning! It has been a while since we had a blog post, and I wanted to take a moment to share some awesome news! 
Team Truck Melanoma has been invited to be a part of the expo at the upcoming Offroad Games that are being hosted by Matt's Offroad Recovery in Sand Hollow State Park in Hurricane Utah March 14-16. WE are very excited to take our melanoma outreach to the event, and are very much looking forward to meeting all of the individuals there. 
Southern Utah is an outdoor recreation Meca, and a place that there is a lot of sun exposure. In fact, Utah, has one of the highest rates of melanoma in the entire country! We are very excited to have the Offroad Games as our first event in out national expansion, and are very much looking forward to the exposure and opportunities for reaching more people that will be had. 
If you are able to attend, I think that it will be an unforgettable event. There is slated to be over 6,000 people in attendance with 25+ of your favorite You Tube influencers from both the Motorsports and automotive realm as well as other genres. 
If you are attending the event, make sure you stop by our booth, booth 14 I believe, and say hello. We are also looking for volunteers to help us out during the event, and if you're already in the area, we would love to have you spend some time working with us. 

You can find out more about the event at www.offroadgames.com

Lastly, we can only do what we do with the continued support of our fans, so I would like to put out the request that you consider making a recurring monthly donation. A $10 monthly donation is an easy amount and one that really adds up for us over the course of the year. Every penny that is donated goes directly into supporting our live saving outreach. 

We look forward to seeing you!