A Shoe That Goes 65 M.P.H.

Mandee Flanders was cruising south on Route I-95 at 65 miles per hour behind the wheel of a giant shoe — specifically, a giant duck boot.

It was a Friday in July and her road trip had begun hours earlier, in Freeport, Maine, at the headquarters of L.L. Bean, which employs Ms. Flanders as a driver of a company vehicle known as the Bootmobile.

From Freeport, Ms. Flanders had driven the Bootmobile to Portland, Maine, to begin a day of “what’s called ‘surprise and delights,’” she said from behind the wheel.

The itinerary involved driving from Maine down to Revere Beach in Massachusetts and back — a 200-mile round trip — and stopping along the route to dole out free branded trinkets and, at certain spots, free meals. A “surprise and delight,” Ms. Flanders said, is when the Bootmobile shows up at some restaurant or ice cream stand and she plunks down a corporate credit card to pay for everyone’s orders.

As she eased into the flow of morning traffic in Portland, Ms. Flanders typed a destination into a Garmin Dēzl, a GPS navigation system designed for truck drivers. “It will take us on known truck routes that are safe for the Bootmobile,” she said.

Like the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and Lindt’s Chocolate Gold Bunny Car, L.L. Bean’s promotional vehicle takes the shape of what the company considers its signature product: a duck boot — or Maine Hunting Shoe, as L.L. Bean calls it. At 13 feet high and 20 feet long, the Bootmobile, were it a real shoe instead of a billboard on wheels, would be a size 708.