This is “The People’s Choice” Truck at 2015 Pride & Polish. Can You See Why?

Mike Lemley’s 2000 Peterbilt 379, “Cathouse,” won the Truckers’ Choice Pride & Polish National Championship.

Pride & Polish has a lot of category’s for winners, but “Truckers’ Choice” is the people’s choice. This 2000 custom Peterbilt 379 got decided by Overdrive magazine’s readers casting votes online.

It’s owned by Mike Lemley. The truck also won First Place in the Custom Paint and Working Bobtail (2000 and older).

This custom semi has a 48″ Unibilt Bunk, 300″ Wheelbase, C-15 CAT, 18 speed transmision.

Lights is one area where a truck can really stand out, even to people who don’t know what to look for in custom semis. This Pete 379 has an LED light kit, which can switch through 27 different colors.

Lemley’s rig has a mix of painted parts – the fenders, drop visor and grille – while still sporting a little chrome on the stacks and front bumper. The colors are “Viper red” and “Bone leather.”

“Oklahoma City has done all my custom red painting and Jerry’s Interior out of Minkle, Oklahoma, has done all the custom leatherwork for me.

“And the Cathouse, that was given to me by my father 20 years ago, and we’ve just carried on. It’s the Cathouse Mouse and we’ve named the truck Cathouse. It’s my CB handle.”

Sources: Overdrive Live Trucking Strada on Pinterest

Stepdeck Winner at Pride & Polish 2015

Ray Rodriguez’s 2015 Peterbilt 389 and Western stepdeck trailer won the Pride & Polish National Championship in the Limited-Mileage Combo category.

A 389 won the Working Combo category as well: Phil Miller and his 2010 Pete 389 and Wilson livestock hauler.

Rodriguez and his combo won Best of Show at last year’s GATS, too, qualifying it to compete in the National Championship round of judging. He also picked up a Best of Show victory at the Dynaflex Monster Stack Shootout Pride & Polish earlier this year. The grain hauler runs a three-truck fleet out of Salinas, Calif.

Truck Model: 2015 Peterbilt 378

Class: Limited Mileage Truck Division Registration

Build Process: “We bought a brand new truck and took it apart. We then started with all the murals. That led to adding custom light bars and a lot of lights. We are still working on the truck!”

Ray Rodriquez is a perennial competitor, according to Overdrive. He regularly enters the show circuits. He owns and runs a fleet.

Peterbilt 389 specs:

ENGINE
PACCAR MX-13
Cummins ISX15

WHEELS
Aluminum 22.5″ / 24.5″
Steel 22.5″ / 24.5″

SLEEPER
Low Roof 44″ / 58″ / 72″
UltraCab 58″ / 72″ / 78″

FRAME
Steel 10-5/8″ / 10-3/4″ / 11-5/8″

FRONT AXLES
Dana Spicer 12-22K lbs.
Meritor 12-14.6K lbs.
Wide Track Available

FRONT SPRINGS
Taper Leaf 12-23K lbs.
Air Leaf 13.2K lbs.

REAR AXLES
Dana Spicer Single – 21-30K lbs.
Tandem – 40-52K lbs.
Tridem – 69K lbs.
Meritor Single – 21-23K lbs.
Tandem – 40-46K lbs.
Tridem – 66K lbs.

Working Combo Tractor-Trailer

The national winner of the Working Combo category of the Pride and Polish competition was this 2010 Peterbilt 389/Wilson livestock combo. Cream colored, polished silver grated sides, and look at the details… Look at those headlights!

Look at the stacks, too. Just simple smooth columns shining silver. Those look pretty striking. This custom truck is put together pretty well.

It’s owned by Phil Miller. He’s a newcomer to the competition. The grain hauler runs a three-truck fleet out of Salinas, California.

This truck got second place at Shell SuperRigs in Texas. What does it take to win one of these events? Longtime judge Jami Jones explained some of the things they’re looking for:

“You talk about SuperRigs, these are your top-shelf trucks, so it’s almost impossible to find the flaws,” she said. “If they painted the frame, is it all the way through? Is it consistent? Do they have the stripes matching? The lights, are they symmetrical? Whatever their theme is, did they follow it through from start to finish? That’s probably the biggest key to it, in addition to just keeping it up. These are working trucks, so you can tell the guys who bring it off the road and clean it on a daily basis.”

The trucks win cash (in the hundreds and thousands, depending on the event and placing), but they also get to be featured on calendars and in magazines.

“Face it, the calendar immortalizes you,” said Jones. “The calendar’s definitely a big deal but I think also it’s a big deal to have that $10,000 cheque at the end of the day. This is the biggest prize money out there on the show truck circuit, so these guys are out there to compete.”

Newcomer Phil Miller’s combo also picked up a Best of Show win at the Monster Stack Shootout in California. The Amargosa Valley, Nev.-based owner-operator hauls mostly cattle with the rig.

Sources: Truck News Overdrive

Blue and Black Custom: Father Son Trucker Project

You might see this hard-working Christian’s Custom Kenworth running between Texas and California state sometime. Josh O’Farrell makes the trip every week.

He’s the fourth generation of trucking/transporting-workers in his family (although when you get to his great-grandfarther, its railroad, not trucking).

O’Farrell tries to be a hard worker and from the write up on him and his Kenworth custom truck on Ten Four, where we learned about this story, he does so. So was his dad a hard worker, according to Josh. Josh, as well as his two sisters, used to ride with their father — a way of spending time with a parent who worked a lot away from home. Josh started driving his dad’s truck at 14, “giving his dad breaks.”

He had his own trucks and this one, a 2000 Kenworth W900 he bought new, was originally electric red and bone stock, although loaded.

Of this customized Kenworth, there’s a bit of a family story. The father and son worked together to build it. As Ten Four reports,

“One summer he stretched the wheelbase to 305 inches; one summer he added the fiberglass single-hump fenders from Bad Ass Customs (using custom hidden brackets); one summer he got it painted by Eloy at Big Trucks Paint & Body in Houston, Texas (this is the same blue and black paint job the truck still has today); and so on.”

Around the year 2012, the son wanted to work on his truck to take it to a 2013 show in San Antonio, Texas. He wanted to build a show-worthy truck with his dad.

“Over the next few months, Josh and his dad worked side-by-side, transforming the truck into what you see today.”

The truck got:

a billet grille
an American Eagle 20-inch tapered bumper
a custom visor from Adrian Rocamontes at ACW Specialties
7-inch Lincoln Chrome stacks, cab and sleeper extensions
extra lights
a painted “I-panel” between the fuel tanks

Some other details:

front-end was air-bagged
entire interior was redone (by Josh and his dad)
fitted with a smooth, one-piece, painted deck plate
custom matching KW emblem on the front
many of the exterior and interior pieces were painted
including the tanks, the chopped air cleaners, the visor, mirrors and dash panels

Josh owns and operates O’Farrell Transport out of Houston, Texas.

Visit Ten Four

Bright Tractor Customized With All-American Parts

With one of the BRIGHTest tractors I’ve ever seen, we learn that the owner of this truck likes to make a good — and I’m going to guess strong — first impression.

That’s not all. The owner has a military background (he was in the Air Force and did civil service at the DOD) and is an American patriot, and, when he customized this rig, he got everything to be US made (or as much of it as it was possible to do).

Randy Bryan Fallon of Nevada bought this truck after the Gulf War, where his work required some heavy truck running. At first he ran another truck on days off, then in 2001 he did it full-time when he left civil service.

This truck he bought in 2002. It’s a 2000 Peterbilt 379. He still has the other truck as well.

“Looking out that windshield is the best office view anyone could ever have,” said Fallon of his new trucking job.

The truck was arranged in association with Ten Four Magazine, where we learned about this story, and was built by Moose at the shop, as well as Cody, Leonard and Charlie, and all the others there.

Of the US trucking products part of this story, Ten Four wrote it very well:

“Looking for USA-made products, Randy bought most of his accessories from RoadWorks Manufacturing, including the bumper, visors, cab and sleeper skirts, breather lights, window chops, grill screen and bars, and countless other items. He also had a wood floor, made by our friends at Rockwood Products, another American outfit, installed, as well.”

You can notice:

Modified Hogebuilts on hidden brackets are what we see for rear fenders
There’s Dynaflex 8″ pipes
5 cab lights, a painted deck plate (black)
chopped breather screens and a painted deck plate

Visit Ten Four

Stretch It Out! Like The Long Tractors?

For the most part, people seem to like the look of long tractors. There seems to also be a strong vein of qualification: “How can you get those around a corner?” and similar statements illustrate this point.

This truck is a W900 Kenworth Class 8. (And the green one we’re hoping you guys can identify is a 1988 flattop Peterbilt 379. Picture below.) It’s known for it’s long nosed style, and here it’s stetched out even longer. The W900 continued and continues to be produced, even while other models (like the T600 and other models that have been introduced since the W900 was put on the streets) were more aerodynamic. Popularity with owner operators is one of the main reasons, accounts have it, that the T900 remains produced and sold.

The W900 has movie appearances:

Smokey and the Bandit, driven by country singer Jerry Reed
In M.A.S.K. a W900 (and K100 named Rhino and Bulldog)

The W900 was intruduced gradually in the 1960s, and the model kept a lot of the features that Kenworth had used on predecessors. The predecessors continued also to be sold alongside the W900.

50 years later — more, actually — the W900 is pretty much the same as it was when it started in the 60s.

Some identifying points:

Delicate external doorhandles, mounted just beneath the side windows
Larger ventilation windows in the doors
Chromed grabhandles atop the radiator for tilting the hood.
Bulkhead style doors
Bigger front windows
Fiberglass roof panel.
Lower mounted “paddle-style” door latches (from 1972)
Hood emblem was changed for a simplified model with three rather than four red stripes (from 1973)
These features set the W900 off from earlier conventional produced by Kenworth.

Later style features:

Rectangular headlamps and sitting higher on the chassis (1982) (and it became the W900B in name)
Sloped hood (W900s from 1987 — the “S” is for “sloped”) for better visibility. The W900s can be confused with the T800 but the T800 has a set-back rear axle.
Curved windscreen (from 2006) as a one-piece or two-piece (divider in middle).
Comfortable Studio Aerocab introduced (in 1998)

However, despite all the style changes, lengthening the truck was never considered! You still have to do this custom, and it’s for looks mainly or entirely, it seems.

These aren’t all W900s, but they’re all stretched out:

Red Custom Big Rig Ups The Ante Between Friends… Custom Rivalry

Friends and rivalries between friends, that’s how this Kenworth custom started. The owner of the 2009 W900 Kenny had a friend who customized a Peterbilt and that Pete was featured in on online trucking site. So this guy threw in his hat.

This truck has a name, or the project has a name, maybe you’d be better to say, because it’s called “Project 351.” Can you guess the origin of this name?

The wheelbase is 351 inches — an uncommon measurement.

The engine in it is a 700HP Cummins ISX and it has an Eaton-Fuller 18-speed tranny.

It has customized suspension (drop kit), exhaust (8 inch), hood latches (hidden ones), and headlights (HIDs).

Stainless steel is a theme with this big rig custom truck, as owner Anthony Fischkelta likes, even though he says its also one of the hardest thing to keep maintained with “Project 351.”

The photos seem to come from overdriveonline, at least that’s the tag on them where we saw them first, which was on Live Trucking.

Visit Live Trucking. Photo by Jack Byrnes Hill, someone we like to feature on here any chance we get for his vehicle photos.

Customized Kenny Called “The Punisher” After Its Owner

This truck is named after its owner Richy Ruiz, whose nickname is “The Punisher,” who used to be a boxer before he became a trucker after a serious car accident.

By the way, the person who hit him was someone who was street racing and rear ended Ruiz’s car. He was in the hospital for months.

Ruiz is from a trucking family in New Jersey, and when he started becoming the person around town people called to haul motorbikes out east, things led to him starting a car hauling service called Exotic Carriers. The company hauls for celebrities, businesspeople, and snowbirds. They have 10 trucks. This is the most done up of the fleet.

The truck has had some significant modifications since it came off the factory line 15 years ago.

The truck originally had a 62″ Aerodyne sleeper and a 365″ wheelbase. The work from there was done by Elizabeth Truck Cetnter. This custom job was one of the (ETC) team’s first ever, and Ruiz had the customization done shortly after getting the Kenny.

The headlights got shaved and they added single rounds on Double JJ brackets as some of the first orders of business. Then ETC added the sound system / stereo, chrome, a flat panel TV, some fenders (custom). Those changes still aren’t all that was done and what you see on the truck today.

Ten Four Magazine reported on the truck and customization. The trucker publication wrote, “The truck’s exterior features many custom-built parts including the visor, the boxes (one hides the PTO tank for the wet kit), and the rear light bar. The entire fiberglass hood was re-engineered to lower it down more over the wheels, and the rear pieces of the front fenders were extended down to line up with the bottom of the tanks and steps.” They also did:

Custom sleeper skirts
Custom tank fairings
Custom one-piece rocker panels
Fuel tank filler necks moved toward rear of tank
Centered fuel tanks below sleeper

This Kenworth truck has fiberglass fenders that got installed over top of the drive tires. Also, a billet grille, a 24″ bumper, 8 inch stacks, custom motorbike headlights, high intensity bulbs in the headlights, a Taylor wing.

They chopped the breather lids, on the aluminum step plates they laser inscribed the Exotic Car Carriers logo), and did a bunch of other customization.

Some of the most notable touches: