Doswell, Va. – And they’re off. The first shift of Beltway-bound truck drivers pulled out of the Doswell truck stop off I-95 about 25 miles north of Richmond early this morning. Steve Gronka, one of the event’s organizers, tells me he thinks about 50 trucks left from the travel plaza here and more than 100 left from a stop off Exit 104. Zeeda Andrews, who’s helped organize the event with a group called Truckers for the Constitution, says that first wave, which left at 5 a.m., will circle the beltway. Then they plan to deliver a list of terms to Representative Louie Gohmert (R., Texas). Gronka says some members of Congress will meet with truckers at 11:30 a.m. today at the WWII memorial.

The truckers’ goal?

“To wake people up,” Andrews says. “This is just the beginning.”

They hope to slow down traffic, she says, but that’s not their ultimate end.

“The American people have to take the bull by the horns, I’m sorry,” she says. “And it’s just common people like me and everybody else that’s going to have to do it, because it’s come down to that. So this is about waking them up. And people are not awake.”

She says truckers are planning a cross-country drive for December 14th with five shifts of at least 1000 drivers each. They picked that date, she adds, because it’s the birthday of the Tea Party.

Regardless of whether or not there’s a Congressional imprimatur, the truckers have plenty of support from outside the Beltway. Chip Jones and Ruth Saylor tell me they felt so strongly about the protest that they hitchhiked to the Doswell travel plaza from Smithfield, North Carolina with the first trucker they asked.

“Between the two of us we’ve got 10 kids,” Jones says. “Their future means more to me than anything. We just want the Constitution upheld, the Bill of Rights.”

He and Saylor say they hope the trucker protest will strengthen the push to impeach President Obama.

“President Obama’s been compared to being a tick,” Saylor says. “He’s sucking the life out of the American people. And when you get a tick on you, the first thing you do is get it off. So you know what? He’s a tick, he’s gotta go.”

“Don’t let the head burrow in too deep!” adds Jones, laughing. “And that’s a pretty harsh way of putting it but — we’ve got rights, we’ve got freedom of opinion, we’ve got a lot of rights that quite honestly, I’m not going to stop using or anything, not matter what anybody says, you know?”

Keith Bone of Charles Town, West Virginia, also hopes the truckers’ efforts will strengthen the push to impeach the president.

“We impeached Clinton for his adultery,” he says. “Why can’t we do that with Obama?”

“Obama’s done much worse, so why not?” he adds. “We stand up for America.”

Bone tells me he offered space on his farm for truckers to camp out for the night. He says that though he doesn’t vote, he’s an adamant supporter of the Constitution and the truckers’ efforts.