In fact, one of the most inopportune breakdowns came right after a Con Agra pitch in the mid-1990s. The RV that was rented for the trip broke down when the engine failed in the middle of Nebraska, leaving the pitch team to thumb a ride all the way back to Kansas City before renting a car for the drive back to Springfield.

“You’d have thought they learned their lesson from the first time they tried renting an RV,” said one source close to Marlin insiders. However, last year, Marlin’s Blue Bunny team found themselves piling into yet another similar situation: an RV that barely ran. Despite having a bathroom that didn’t work, a generator that made doing business on the road pretty much impossible, and non-functioning air conditioning, the people of Le Mars, Iowa greeted them like rock stars as the locals cheered the RV’s way through town.

Meanwhile, many situations involved “close call” incidents that left employees thinking on their feet. Due to time constraints on a project for Seattle’s Best Coffee last year, Marlin’s Jeff Hedrick and Quentin Brown had no option but to drive a gigantic red shopping cart 12 hours straight to New York City. Before that, to help win a Nestlé pitch, the company fabricated a 6 foot tongue in less than two days, and were forced to hunt it down just prior to the pitch. Carrying the toungue proudly down Brand Blvd. in Glendale, CA and into the Nestlé corporate offices ultimately helped them win the business.

And of course, random run-ins with celebrities are bound to make any travel situation more interesting. Because of client-related travels, Marlin Network employees have rubbed elbows—a term one source claims is actually greatly exaggerated—with celebrities like NBA stars James Worthy and Shaquille O’Neal, musician Dave Navarro, NFL star Herschel Walker, and actor Dennis Haskins from Saved by the Bell.

“Fortunately, nobody has gone to jail yet,” said one insider who volunteered several off-the-record stories. “At least not that I’ve heard. They always come back saying ‘what happens on the road stays on the road’.”