workers) to Atlanta on time. They then volunteer to drive a trainload of napalm to Springfield so they can get home. The other truckers briefly consider relying on their own skills to drive, but instead decide to come up with a different money-making scheme. Meanwhile, back in Springfield, Marge decides to have an adventure of her own and takes Lisa on a trip to buy a new doorbell for the house. They choose one that plays a snippet of "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and install it, but Marge is dismayed when no one comes to ring it. Lisa loses her patience and rings the bell herself, causing it to malfunction and play the tune over and over. When Marge pulls out one of the wires in an attempt to shut it off, it instead plays faster and louder and disturbs the neighbors. The doorbell store's mascot, Señor Ding-Dong, appears and silences the bell with one crack of his whip; when he tries to leave, though, his car will not start. Production "Maximum Homerdrive", originally called "Homer the Trucker", was written by staff writer John Swartzwelder and directed by Simpsons director Swinton O. Scott III. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 28, 1999. The meat-eating contest seen in the beginning of the episode was conceived by Simpsons writer Donick Cary during a story pitch-out, according to writer and executive producer Matt Selman. When rewriting the episode, the writing staff was divided into two groups, so that one group wrote the A-story, while the other wrote the B-story. After the second act, the writers were "stuck", as executive producer and former showrunner Mike Scully recalled in the DVD commentary for the episode. Eventually, staff writer and co-executive producer George Meyer pitched the idea that the truckers would have "a secret device, that actually did all the driving for them", called the Navitron Autodrive System. In order to animate Barclay's truck in "Maximum Homerdrive," Scott bought a model truck, which he also based the design of Barclay's truck on. According to storyboard consultant Mike B. Anderson, the trucks in the episode were very difficult to animate, as the Simpsons animators were still working with traditional cel animation at the time and did not have access to computer tools. In a scene in The Slaughterhouse, an employee is shown killing a number of cows