California all-star customizer Jeff Botelho’s show truck and working rig, 5150, inspired by grief of father’s passing

by Todd Dills

“Up until recently,” says Jeff Botelho, customizing trucks was more a highly advanced hobby than anything else for himself and crew at the Botelho’s Custom Trucks shop in Los Banos, Calif.

He runs his family’s Botelho Bros. Trucking business and custom shop out of the same facility, from which the shop’s unofficial name, Tin Can Customs, comes.

“My shop’s kind of like a tin can,” say Botelho who has won his share of Custom Rigs Pride & Polish and other truck show awards over the years. “It’s definitely no 4 States – it’s a small shop with three fulltime employees, and most people can’t believe we turn the equipment out of the little facility that we do.”

Big-Rig Build-Off contenders are among the shop’s repertoire, but perhaps the most meaningful piece Botelho and his crew have built is his personal working rig.

The workhorse 2007 Peterbilt 379 had fewer than 35,000 miles on it when Botelho lost a man he says had been “my business partner and my best friend” for a decade and more – his father, Jim.

“I used to see him in the shop every day,” Botelho says. “I was down for three months when he passed. I’d fire my truck up and go in the shop and cry for 20 minutes. One morning I went into the shop and my truck was getting a service – it was a mess at 7:30 a.m., and so was I.”

He turned to his shop guys and told them to halt work on it. Then he proceeded to outline to them what he wanted to do.

The next day, the truck’s interior was near gutted when Botelho’s current business partner, his mother, Alvina, walked in. “She was livid,” Botelho says. “The truck was 10 months old with 35,000 miles on it and there I’ve got it gutted and in pieces – I said, ‘Go ahead and tell me I’m stupid like dad did.’”

Botelho describes his father as a quite opinionated truck owner whose idea of a perfect truck was one with a “clean, old-school, simple” design.

In stark contrast, Botelho’s ideas have run counter to that style over the years – his 2006 Big-Rig Build-Off entry was a convertible Class 8 he’d dreamed of building as a child, and last year his entry was a big-rig limo.

Botelho convinced his mother to devote $10,000 to what became his personal project truck, his way of dealing with his father’s death.

“You’ve got 60 days,” she told him.

What emerged from the encounter with his mother is a bad-ass, flame-throwing custom rig inspired directly by an emotion that seems somewhat out of sync with the rig’s design – grief.

Botelho and his crew – then made up of John Shamoro and Francisco Murrillo, both of whom remain with the shop – built a rear roll-down power window into the 36-inch sleeper and custom-fabricated sheet-metal flooring and door panels.

Then they went to work ovehauling the interior for maximum sound entertainment with the addition of a 2,800-watt Pioneer head unit thumping through 18 Image Dynamics speakers in custom enclosures.

The exterior and interior design scheme is united by unique flame-design vinyl graphics, expertly cut and installed by Botelho’s “big brother,” also named Jim, four years his senior, and Jim’s crew at 100 Proof Ink.

There are very few custom rigs on the road similar to Tin Can Custom’s creation called “5150.” It’s look and custom touches have resulted in a number of wins at competitive events around the country – including second in its class and third for its custom paint and graphics at the 2009 Great West Truck Show Custom RigsPride & Polish in Vegas.

But it’s a day-to-day worker more than anything else, says Botelho. It primarily runs locally, pulling a stainless-steel spread-axle reefer or a flatbed.

“It’s also set up with a hydraulic equipment trailer” on occasion, says Botelho, to move large equipment for a local towing company. “It’s not really set up to do that,” he adds, “but it pays good, so I do it.”

The truck’s low mileage has occasionally caused problems registering at some truck shows, where judges often question which class it should be competing in – working class or the limited-mileage show trucks.

“I have to prove I run it local sometimes,” Botelho says. “It’s harder on the truck when you’re running local. I could work a ten-hour day and put 100 miles on it that put it  into situations with plenty opportunity for nicks, scrapes and bumps for the pristine graphics and custom chrome and stainless accents.”

All told, Botelho’s happy with the result. The long hours and work he, his crew and some of his trucking company’s drivers put into its build was the “perfect therapy” for the grief he felt at his father’s death.

As Botelho puts it, the 379 was “my own last little ‘Hey, Daddy, look at what I can do.’”

[View with PicLens]

Spec’s

Truck Name: 5150

Owner: Jeff Botelho, Los Banos, Calif.

Model: 2007 Peterbilt 379 extended hood

Engine: 475-hp Caterpillar with Performance Diesel tuning to 980 hp

Transmission: Eaton Fuller 18 speed

Exterior mods: Power roll-down rear sleeper window, custom vinyl graphics by 100 Proof Ink, custom stainless bumper, 8-inch Dynaflex stacks, stainless accents the length of the rig by Aranda Truck Accessories

Interior mods: Custom sheet metal floor and door panels, vinyl dash and panel graphics by 100 Proof Ink, 2800-watt Pioneer head unit with satellite radio and iPod plug, 18 Image Dynamics speakers, ranging from 10- to 60-inch mids and numerous tweeters.

A game of one-inch-upsmanship between two longtime friends results in one rocking work-in-progress

By Todd Dills

Truck names come from a host of different origins – the occupation of the owner-operator, remembrance of a loved one, a favorite color, a movie hero or any number of other reasons. Two very custom rigs on the circuit take a different tack, getting their moniker from the wheelbase: Project 350 and Project 351. The latter takes its name from something of a challenge.

After Richie Acosta put together his now-infamous Project 350 custom Pete that was profiled in the pages of our sister magazine, Truckers News (March 2010), Acosta’s childhood friend, Anthony Fischkelta, was determined to make his own KW project one better.

He spec’d it straight from Kenworth, working with Tri-State Diesel, a dealership the Fischkelta family has a long relationship with for several trucking generations moving product for their Moonachie, N.J.-based Grand Street Warehouse.

That close working relationship came in handy, as Anthony was about to get quite specific indeed about the specs he needed for his 2009 W900 KW, chief among them an odd wheelbase measurement: 351 inches. (One inch longer than his buddy’s custom working class rig.)

“Originally, my truck was going to be a 42-in. flattop in a KW” to complement Acosta’s 36-in. flattop Pete, says Fischkelta. “But at the last minute, matter of fact it cost me $1,000 to change the spec it was so last minute, I switched to a 72-in. Aerocab sleeper.”

“There is a big market for that [style] truck,” says Fischkelta about the decision, but resale considerations weren’t the only factors involved. “I chose to do that hoping to inspire other Aerocab owners that enjoy working on their rides.”

Fischkelta has spent a lot of time fabricating, personalizing and customizing his truck to make it stand out while keeping it functional. The drop air suspension slams the bumper within an inch of the ground, and the other custom touches inside and out make this rolling office a real head-turner.

After more than two years’ worth of work on the KW, it’s clear he’s been abundantly successful in his mission to inspire today, as “Project 351” has become something of a sensation among fellow full-time haulers and custom rig enthusiasts who’ve lit up Fischkelta’s Facebook page with commendations, questions and pictures from the road.

At first, he documented progress on the rig via a static website. But when he moved to the social platform last year he suddenly found out very clearly how he was doing in getting the word out about the project.

“I never knew how many people follow this truck,” he says. “If they’re a truck fan, they pretty much know about it. I don’t need to solicit people. And I never knew it.”

Don’t be surprised to see him competing in a couple Pride & Polish events as well – if he can get time away from hauling groceries and frozen foods for the family business.

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Spec’s

NAME: Project 351

Owner: Anthony and Richard Fischkelta/Grand Street Warehouse, Moonachie, N.J.

Model: 2009 Kenworth W900L, 351-in. WB

Engine: 700-hp Cummins ISX

Transmission: Eaton-Fuller 18

Exterior mods: Custom cab/sleeper panels; 12Ga visor; fiberglass deckplate and fiberglass rear fenders; custom axle covers and tank covers in the rear; one-piece steps designed with 4 State Trucks; HID headlights; custom grille; 20-inch bumpe; air-ride w/ 12Ga Customs suspension drop kit; custom window shades; eight-inch exhaust; custom hidden hood latches

Interior mods: Stainless floor, ceiling and cab sides; painted dash; custom inserts supplied by 4 State Trucks

Customizer/Installer: Fischkelta, friends and Profab of Mannheim, Pa.

Randy  Humphrey’s Legacy Class Pete carries a lot more than livestock.

By Bruce W. Smith

Randy “Hump” Humphrey’s distinctive Legacy Class Peterbilt 379 is a familiar sight along the interstates between Florida, the southern states and all the way to Colorado. The Cool Blue Pete with the “Missouri Outlaw” band running from hood to sleeper and bright cattle trailer is always on the move, just like its current owner and operator.

But there’s more to the story behind this Custom Rigs Pride & Polish Working Class combo winner from last year’s Wildwood, Fla., show than the obvious: Blue Mule’s distinctive look and name are a tribute to friendships and respect.

“Back in the early ‘70s (and) through the ‘80s an old-time friend from Warren, Ohio, named Pappy Whitlatch used his truck to haul heavy loads of iron,” Humphrey says. “Pappy named his truck ‘Blue Mule’ after the mules that did the same job a century earlier. I’m carrying on Pappy’s legacy.”

The Wauchula, Fla., resident says his Blue Mule also pays tribute to another old friend, Tim Cantrell. Cantrell had his truck painted with a very distinctive black stripe that wrapped over the front of the hood and ran along the side of the cab and sleeper.

“That stripe is called the ‘Missouri Outlaw band’,” says Humphrey. “It was well known from East Coast to West. And if you saw a truck with that band you instantly knew it was from Missouri.”

This Legacy Edition tractor (No. 989 out of 1,000 built) was originally owned and spec’d by Clint Moore. It’s the crème de la crème of this model Peterbilt, complete with the unpublished Cool Blue paint, a factory 565hp ISX, 18-speed auto-shift, chrome engine package, car hauler front axle, factory 310-in. wheelbase, 10-foot insert rails, upgraded shocks and full-locking HP 40 rear axles.

The exhaust, breathers, steps, tanks, tool boxes and bumpers are also customized or upgrades.

Cattle riding from Florida to the West and back couldn’t be pulled behind a cooler mule.

[View with PicLens]

Spec’s

OWNER: Randy “Hump” Humphrey

MODEL: 2007 Peterbilt 379 Legacy Class

WHEELBASE: 310-in

ENGINE: 565hp Cummins ISX

TRANSMISSON: Eaton Fuller 18-speed Autoshift

EXTERIOR MODS: Outlaw paint job; 12ga Customs bowtie sunvisor; headlights turn signals shaved and installed on the fenders; boxed end bumper; Double Eagle generator; custom Coolpac and tool boxes; Rhino-lined; Brunners Drom deck; powder-coated fuel tanks; SS cab & sleeper panels; double-hump WTI with the lips trimmed to match front fender with 12 ga custom brackets; 7-in Dynaflex/Pickett exhaust; custom cab lights and spotights

INTERIOR MODS: Platinum leather interior; seats slid back 6-in; second bed, refrigerator, mini side extenders;  shifter relocated to dash; painted floor; wood trim painted to match the outside including tilt column covers and all removable plastic piece

Travis Lyon’s 1987 Kenworth K100E brings the demented Decepticon Motormaster from comic book ink to real-world form.

by James Jaillet

By his own admission, Travis Lyon was “a man in need of a project,” and on a long drive down Tennessee highways “to just get out and clear my head,” he stumbled upon an old junkyard ’87 model Kenworth K100E Aerodyne that, several years before, he wanted to buy and turn into an actuality based on comics and cartoons he revered as a kid growing up in the 1980s.

It was sunken in the mud a bit, “and the radiator and a bunch of the metal had been stolen out of it, but it was mostly intact,” Lyon says. “I still sort of saw in it then what I’d seen in the past.”

And after a quick chat with his then girlfriend, now wife, he returned to buy the truck, something he says he “thought I could make a difference with and something I could turn into something positive.”

In the months leading up to the truck’s purchase, Lyon had lost both of his parents. His dad died of heart disease less than a year after his mom died of an illness she’d battled for years. As a self-employed engineer and consultant, he was able to take a good bit of bereavement time, and after he bought the truck, he turned his attention to converting its remains into the real-world form of the Transformers-based Decepticon Motormaster.

Lyon says he had “within 95 percent of what I wanted to do with it” in his head, and “from the very beginning, I told everyone involved the most important part of the project is making everything we do fit the character and making his personality make sense in this vehicular form.”

Appropriately,  3-ft. by 4-ft. painting of a black and purple Kenworth K100E on down a deserted Southwestern highway at sunset hung in the shop at Blue Ridge Kenworth in Abingdon, Va., (the shop that helped Lyon rebuild the truck) throughout the entire project.

It served as a reference for everyone involved, and it was based on pencil sketches scribbled down at a four-hour brainstorming session in a Cracker Barrel before any work on the truck began.

The result is what Lyon calls “a mix of two worlds,” he says, in which he mixed “a little old school trucker with the other-worldly, highly advanced, futuristic technology.” Lyon says the truck’s purple neon, 3,000-watt audio system, TV and Blu-ray setup and ultra-suede interior blend with the truck’s chrome, eye-popping exhaust system and overall old school look to do just that.

‘A real bastard’

Lyon says the truck’s Detroit Diesel 8V92 Silver Series engine “fits the character so well because that engine just sounds so, so angry.”

Lyon says the truck’s Detroit Diesel 8V92 Silver Series engine “fits the character so well because that engine just sounds so, so angry.”

Being a good fit conceptually didn’t make the engine a good fit during the building process, though, as the truck was equipped with a Caterpillar B-Model when Lyon picked it up from the junkyard.

To make matters even worse, the truck the engine came from was a K100C — slightly different than Lyon’s K100E. “It didn’t fit under the dog house correctly in the E model like it would have in a C [model],” Lyon says.

After a few test fits in the donor truck, the 8V92 was lowered into Motormaster, and the engine is one of the integral parts of bringing the character to life, Lyon says. “We really wanted to imitate Motormaster’s sound going down the highway,” he says.

“Since 1986, the character has been known as just being a real, real bastard. He’s so mean to the subgroup he leads. They all hate him, but they all fear him, and the 8V92, sound wise, fits the character in vehicular form better than any other, which is why I built it that way.”

[View with PicLens]

By Todd Dills

“We’re not 100 percent done with it,” says Bryan Martin, Joplin, Mo.-based Chrome Shop Mafia boss and perhaps the most well-known personality these days in the truck customizing world. He’s talking about the 1966 needle-nose Peterbilt 351 whose custom grille is staring you down in the picture above.

Though it looks almost black in this picture and in person in certain light, the base paint on Bryan Martin’s 1966 Pete 351 is a “deep indigo blue,” he says, “with Seminole red, and old-school red pinstriping.” The interior is heavy on button-tuck -- “very Kenworth-y,” Martin says -- done early on in the project’s long history by Truck Interiors of Seattle. And done over the phone. “At the time,” Martin says, “they’d never made an interior for a 351. I sent them some pictures, and they got on the telephone with me. When they sent it to me it fit like a glove.”

Some talk about the truck as Martin’s own personal project, and he admits that, “when we take it to shows or do a local parade with it, typically I’m the one who drives it.” All the same, he rarely uses the first-person singular when talking about the two decades of work put into it.

“It’s a truck that we started restoring and customizing about 23 years ago,” he says. “It’s always been one of those project we had to pull off of to work on a customer’s project.”

But its story is as much his as his team of customizers’, and begins when the 351 was a local tow truck in Joplin Martin long had his eye on as a young man.

“I’d got out of diesel school in 1986 and started work as a mechanic in Joplin,” he says, “and that’s about when we traded for that truck. It was a tow truck with no sleeper, and the engine was blown up. I traded a running dump truck for it.”

Martin removed the tow body and outfitted it with a flat-top Peterbilt sleeper, mid-1980s-era 400-hp Cummins BigCam, 13-speed Fuller tranny and 3:70 Rockwell rear end.

“Laid out in the 1980s,” Martin says, the stretched 248-inch wheelbase “looks pretty short by today’s standards.” All the same, it was the first truck Martin ever had a hand in lengthening, laying the groundwork for the Bossman’s well-known history to come.

At first glance the Bossman’s Pete might look finished, but Martin says “it still lacks electrical wiring and all the weather stripping” to really put a cap on the two-decade restoration, alterations that might get him a little more time behind its wheel.

Martin, no doubt would love more seat time in the old truck. As he says, “The world never looked better than through the windshield of a needle-nose Pete.”

At 129,000 pounds and more than 98 feet, Burningham’s coal ash hauling tandem-trailer combo is one big custom rig

by Hib Halverson

Photos by author and Paul Hartley

The Burningham guys swapped the stock bumper for a smooth-finish Valley Chrome model, along with a VC drop visor. The headlight brackets and front and rear blinker bars are of the Double J variety. Haulin’ Ash has 250 lights, along with blue neon tubes over every axle and beneath the cab.

Half the electricity in the United States comes from coal-fired power plants, the typical power facility in the West burning 50 tons of bituminous an hour –about 1,600 pounds a minute.

Out of the fires comes ash – a lot of ash. Perhaps surprisingly, 43 percent of that ash, about 29 million tons annually, is recycled for use in chemical products and construction materials, primarily cement. It’s usually hauled from generating plant to cement plant by rigs pulling special 30- to 35-foot doubles. Such rigs’ GVWRs can scale as much as 132,000 pounds.

One of the most wicked ash haulers on the road is a rare 2005 Peterbilt 379X called Haulin’ Ash, owned by Burningham Enterprises of American Fork, Utah, located about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Gary and Jeff Burningham started the business in 1988 to pay for college as owner-operators hauling sand, gravel and anything else they could. Today Burningham has grown to 60-truck fleet hauling coal ash and aggregates. Haulin’ Ash is its pride.

“In 2005, Gary and Jeff were looking for a truck for heavy haul projects,” says Brad Rigby, a Burningham dispatcher. “Jeff ordered a 379X Peterbilt and was lucky enough to get one of the last ones.”

What arrived was a rare, special-edition Pete made only in the ’04 and ’05 model years, spec’ed the way many Burningham trucks are: with a

long nose, 270-inch wheel base, 475-hp Caterpillar C15 Acert engine, Eaton 18-speed double-over trans, Dana 46,000-lb. drive axles with 3:58 gears on a Pete air leaf suspension, 295/75R22.5 tires on Alcoa wheels and polished aluminum, four-strap fuel tanks.

“One day, Gary and Jeff put it in a local truck show and won Second,” says Rigby. “ Once they had a taste of the show truck life, they told Kerry McGraw and myself we could customize it.”

Rigby, Mcgraw and Kendall Curtis, all former company drivers, took to the task quite seriously, burning through what might otherwise be a 10-year project budget in just one. This customized ash hauler’s distinctiveness comes from its killer paint job.

Applied over the stock Peterbilt black Imron is some incredible airbrush work by Dan Langston. The owners’ last name provided the theme for the artwork: burning ham. Thus a big, ugly wild hog trailing smoke and blue flames is on the hood and the back of the sleeper. More blue flame and smoke adorns the tractor’s doors, the sleeper sides, the rear fenders and the trailers.

The interior’s a sick combination of chrome, leather and marble. Burningham's shop added chrome gauge covers and jeweled switch extenders while Contempo Tile handled the intricate black marble cab and sleeper flooring.

Prior to airbrushing Haulin’ Ash, Langston, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, known for his work on custom bikes, had never done anything larger than a pickup. Nevertheless, he finished the combo in 12 hours – an astonishing feat. More of Langston’s imaginative work is on the underside of the hood, where an underwater panorama of a hot-looking mermaid, a giant shark, a Kenworth lying on the ocean bottom, a sinking Freightliner and the two owners, Gary and Jeff Burningham, looking on through portholes.

“The scene portrays the sink-or-swim mentality of the trucking industry of late,” Rigby says.

Burningham’s custom rig has a mere 8,000 miles on the odometer. But that may change. With business slow, instead of buying new equipment they may put “Haulin Ash” to work pulling a set of newer trailers. “The truck was built so it can go on the road,” Rigby says. “If that happens, I hope I can dispatch from the driver seat, because nothing is better than driving something like this down the road and seeing the people’s reaction and approval.”

Besides truck beauty shows and work, Haulin’ Ash has another important duty: motivational assemblies at elementary schools around the Salt Lake City and Utah county areas. Burningham drivers challenge school kids to read more pages in books than they drive miles on the road during the school year. So far the race between the two has been close. We’ll have to wait and see whether the kids can keep up if she hits the road in earnest.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of Custom Rigs.

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SRS National fleet owner and part-operator Jerry Beaudoin drives his company’s calling card

By Todd Dills

Many big-rig customizers back their way into building a dream truck. After years of on-road hauling, all the while slowly acquiring the technical know-how to take a working tractor and turn it into a project truck, they hot-rod an old family workhorse or turning a junkyard find into a machine that gleams like new.

Jerry Beaudoin, owner of the Southington, Conn.-based SRS National fleet of 10 company-owned straight and tractor-trailer dumps specializing in contaminated soil removal, did the opposite.

He built his business to back up “my disease for chrome,” as he jokingly calls his customizing obsession.

How does he do it? As his latest custom creation, a 2007 Peterbilt 379 he calls Triple One, shows it takes dedication. Beaudoin specs a new truck, ordering very little in the way of finish.

“We usually order them with customizing in mind,” he says. “We order our trucks with no visors, no chrome, and just basic paint. Then we take them apart—right down to nothing.”

The work on this SRS National’s latest creation then proceeded over a four-month period, focused on what Beaudoin calls a guiding vision of creating a long, low and clean, seamless design from front to back. Inside, too.

The cab is unadorned with any kind of panel trim, the smooth-paneled doors painted to match the striping on the exterior. That paint job, finished with “three or four” layers of clear coat for a no-edges finish over the stripes, was laid on by New Haven Truck and Auto Body, whom Beaudoin and company rely on for paint and some body work.

Otherwise, “My shop team is me and three or four drivers who like to do the same thing.” They perform the rest of the work totally in-house.

Among special features unique to the Triple One build is the team’s successful engineering of a blind-mount arrangement (under the custom deck plate) for the hydraulic hose that feeds the dump trailers it hauls from cleanup sites.

“I’ve seen guys try to do that,” says Beaudoin, but turning and dumping then typically become problematic. “I figured out a way to do it so the hydraulic hose stays on the truck and you can turn and dump with it. Once you figure it out and look at it, it’s pretty simple, really.”

“We get approached quite a bit to build trucks for people, which we do from time to time” the 38-year-old Beaudoin says. “I’m not set up to do it as a business, per say, but this may be a platform to get to that point someday, when I’m tired of dealing with chasing work.”

In any case, Beaudoin certainly has the know-how. Watch for more custom rigs chsoing up from him in the near future.

He and fellow Connecticut customizer and friend Todd Roccapriore, big winner with his Chopped ’93 Peterbilt 379 at MATS, Shell SuperRigs and 75 Chrome Shop shows last year, are reportedly working on a new build to debut at the Louisville Pride & Polish this month.

“It’s Todd’s truck,” the SRS owner says. “He’s doing a majority of the fab work. I’m helping with the ideas. It’s going to be pretty wild.”

Spec’s:

Owner: SRS National/Jerry Beaudoin, Southington, Conn.

Model: 2007 Peterbilt 379

Engine: 565-hp Cummins ISX

Transmission: 18-speed Eaton Fuller

Interior mods: low-base leather seats; twin-stick shifters; custom-built aluminum flat panels; interior stripes painted to match the exterior; painted dash; stainless steel headliner and floor; solid chrome steering wheel

Exterior mods: suicide doors; removed door handles, cab lights, horns and emblems; automatic hood opener; painted and chromed motor; blacked out grill; remote control-operated, bumper-mounted revolving headlights

[View with PicLens]

By James Jaillet

Sanger, Calif., resident and single-truck owner Stephen Ashburn’s 2005 Peterbilt 379, pictured here under the lights on the north side of the Las Vegas strip, presented an ideal starting point for his truck-showing career.

The car hauler “was wanting to build my own truck, but just didn’t know where to start, to be honest,” he says, and when he saw the truck for sale online in 2007, “It was everything I loved.” The truck didn’t have many miles on it, and the previous owner had already started fabricating, including a few interior touches, the hood’s flames and a few mod’s that increased the truck’s car-hauling prowess.

Stephen Ashburn says he got the idea to light up his interior with bright blue LEDs from another truck on the highway. “I liked it, and I wanted to do it to my truck,” he says. The car hauler went to a shop that had Woody’s lights, and he bought six of them to replace the lights already hung in the interior. When trimming later, he added two more blue oval lights.

And for the first year he owned it, he ran it as was, “running it hard,” he says, as the foundation of his Southern California car-hauling operation.

The second year, though, Ashburn began fiddling with the interior, and he started by hanging mirror-finished stainless around the cab and finishing them with a few flames. “Ran it like that for 6 months,” Ashburn says, “that’s when I met Jeff Botelho,” owner of Botelho Brothers Trucking and founder of Tin Can Customs.

He befriended the show and custom truck veteran on his first trip to Vegas for the Great West Truck Show Pride & Polish competition in 2009, and “that’s when we sort of got a lot of the bigger stuff going,”

“He had a lot of the ideas,” he says. “I just kind of took advice from him, and he made it all happen,” – to the tune of ripping out the hardwood flooring and replacing it with aluminum, redoing the truck’s exterior flames, hanging custom 5-in. sidewall fenders and replacing the already-aftermarket bumper with an 18-in. blind-mount Aranda bumper, painting the dash and stripping off a good bit of diamond plate on the deck plate and trailer and replacing it with stainless to match the rest of the truck.

To polish it off, Ashburn’s wife Lindsay came up with a fitting name. “We were sitting around joking at the first Vegas show,” Ashburn says, “The style of the car hauler – it is called a screw truck, and with the head rack on there, she goes ‘you should call it a Screw ‘n a Nice Rack,’ and everybody thought it was hilarious. It’s never been posted on anything, but we just joke around with it.”

Spec’s:

Owner: Stephen and Lindsay Ashburn

Model: 2005 Peterbilt 379

Engine: 475hp C15 Caterpillar

Wheelbase: 265-in.

Exterior Mods: Custom flame paint job, nearly 300 6-in. Maxima LED lights, custom-cut stainless steel over truck and trailer, custom-built 18-in. Aranda bumper, stainless steel battery boxes, custom visor, chopped top

Interior Mods: Painted floor and dash that match exterior, stainless ceiling and door panels, custom sanded and painted dash and gauge panels, painted aluminum floor, custom-cut and –painted door panels, blue LED lighting throughout, Silva custom toggle switches and brake knobs, RoadDawg flamed-polished aluminum steering wheel

By James Jaillet

When the company Robert Ewing works for, Hi-Plains Leasing, bought a ’97 Mack previously owned by the United States Post Office, turning the truck into a show rig was one use he hadn’t envisioned for the box-bodied, snub-nosed Gone Postal.

Other than a paint job, Ewing and Hi-Plains used the truck as purchased for nearly three years before taking it out of service, putting it into the shop and, ultimately, leading it onto the truck beauty show scene.

“It becoming a show truck was no where on the radar,” Ewing said. “We bought it for the sole purpose of filling a niche we had at the company. It just sort of turned into a project we wanted to do. We wanted something everybody at the company could be involved in and be proud of.”

Hi-Plains owner Gary Disher purchased the truck at an auction in 2006 for its ability to be used hauling construction equipment and moving large machinery in tight situations.  The three-axle set up, automatic transmission, short turning radius and ease in maneuverability made the truck useful to the company, Ewing said.

A trip to the Mid-America Truck Show in March of 2009, however, steered Gone Postal’s utility in a different direction.

“[The show] really got my boss going,” Ewing said. “He got really fired up at the uniqueness of all of the trucks, and we thought this would be a unique piece to throw in with all of the Peterbilts.”

After the show, Ewing went to work under Disher’s direction, and for the next four months he spent 40 hours a week in the shop converting the old USPS truck into a show rig.

Before the real customizing process could even begin, though, Ewing said some changes and relocations of certain parts had to be made.

“The truck was still put together the way the factory turned it out,” Ewing said. “It was built totally for utility purposes. The exhaust, batteries, fuel tanks – everything on this truck was built for ease in production and maintenance.”

Ewing said most of the custom parts were used, and they picked up almost all of them in the Denver area. The 80-in. visor was made at Outlaw Customs and modified and mounted at Hi-Plains. Outlaw also supplied the wheel covers, toolboxes and tank straps.

Interstate Turbo supplied the truck’s fenders, which had been in inventory for more than a year when Ewing and crew. got their hands on them.

The rest of the custom parts, Ewing says, were either shelf items at Western Truck parts or parts taken off of other Hi-Plains trucks.

Ewing finished the first round of Gone Postal’s renovations in July of 2009 , and he and the Hi-Plains crew began to escort the truck to shows around the country.

However, after only a short road tour, the rig went back into the shop for another round of modifications. .

Ewing said this time they’re concentrating on a few interior changes. Because the truck’s exterior features some aluminum diamond plating, Ewing said he wants to finish the truck’s interior with diamond plate floorboards and door padding. They’re also looking to add an 18-in. Texas-style fiberglass bumper before it’s unveiled again.

Some engine modifications – to make the truck more powerful – may be on the way, as well. Ewing said Pitt Power has been doing work with the E7’s to give them a power upgrade.

As for the future of Gone Postal, Ewing said he and Disher plan to take the truck to the Great West Truck Show in Las Vegas in June and the 2010 Great American Trucking Show in Dallas in August.

“After Dallas, I think we’re done,” Ewing said. “But it all depends on what the boss wants to do.”

Post-Dallas, however, Ewing and his boss are in sort of a disagreement about how to use the truck once it settles back down in Denver.

“It’s kind of a tug-of-war between myself and the owner. I want to get the truck on the street, running around town where a lot of people could see it. He really doesn’t want to put it back to use immediately,” Ewing says. “But, I think I’ll win it.”

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Spec’s

OWNER: Gary Disher, Hi-Plains Leasing

MODEL: 1997 Mack MR 688 S

BUILT BY: Robert Ewing, Hi-Plains Leasing drivers and shop crew

ENGINE: E7 Mack 350

TRANSMISSION: Allison AT 540

PAINT/GRAPHICS: Rush Peterbilt, Denver, CO;  Stan’s Signs, Henderson, CO

EXTERIOR MODS: relocation of air tanks, install left-hand fuel tank, lowered headache rack, dual side pipes, full drive axle fenders, extensive exterior lights, polished dual intake pipes, lots of chrome

Sherry Martinez and crew exorcised the demons of a troublesome truck, known as “666,” with some devilish customizations

By Ashley Vice

Sherry Martinez’s 1990 Peterbilt 379, affectionately known around Southern California as either The Mean Bitch or 666,  is visually hell on wheels born from personal trials and tribulations.

Martinez says her Pete, the first of three tricked-out trucks in the Mira Loma, Calif., based Jessica Martinez Trucking fleet, was designed to match the tough times that came with going independent.

“Its looks reflect the hell me, my husband, and my family went through when we first got it,” says Martinez, adding that they’ve owned the truck for ten years. “Everything that could go wrong with it did. But now it’s a part of my life and I wouldn’t give it up for any other truck.”

Martinez and her husband, Paul, flatbed mostly pre-fabricated concrete, like highway dividers and underground vaults used for sewer, water and power systems. Martinez says she’s the last person expected to hop down out of that cab.

With long brown hair and carefully manicured nails she admits, “I’m a little woman in a big man’s job.The best part is when I get to a job, get off my truck, walk about seven steps, turn around and watch everyone stare,” says Martinez.  The most common response to her Pete is “That’s your truck?”

She got into trucking being offered a permanent position driving after doing some customer service work for the company her husband drove for.  “Paul told me ‘Come on you’ll be good at driving,’” she says.

Co-workers placed bets on how long it would take Paul to teach her how to drive a truck when she started.  “I don’t take bets well,” says Martinez, a fiercely independent person. “I try to never lose; isn’t that the point? From beginning to end I think it took me two weeks.” She won every bet.

Martinez says that her truck, with its showy looks and chrome “666″ on the hood sides, is first and foremost a working truck. “If the local shows ask us to show up then we will, but I’d rather work.”

Transforming her truck into a showstopper was a family affair, says Martinez, who took a hands-on approach to customizing her rig. The 425hop Cat engine and the running gear are stock, but that can’t be said for the exterior.

Martinez, Paul, and Ernie and Jermaine Rubio painted the truck candy cobalt blue in the open shop behind their house while SoCal pin-striping legend Wild Bill airbrushed ghost flame and skull graphics.

“I kind of took him out of his comfort zone,” says Martinez of Wild Bill’s airbrush work. “He’d never really done something this big.”

Paddy Lyons of P&A Lyons Industries, (951) 658-2514, and his son Nigel crafted the side mirrors, a combination of ghost flame skulls and spider webs, to match the truck’s hellish theme and paint job.

“We’ve scared a lot of people with those mirrors,” says Lyons, who also crafted an aluminum piece that says “Mean Bitch” attached to the back of the truck. “There was a lot of design work to come up with what she liked, and then we had to get the size right so the mirrors were legal,” says Lyons.

The headlights and taillights also incorporate webbing. “My nephew and I made the headlights from different parts from different stores,” she says, adding that the webbed attachments were done by Lyons.

In all, 50 lights give the truck an eerie blue glow at night, including the clearance marker

lights on top of the truck, which Martinez can turn from amber (legal) to show glow blue with the flip of a switch.

The nightmarish theme doesn’t end with this Pete’s exterior though. Opening the suicide doors installed by Jermaine Rubio reveals more ghost flames and skulls on the interior door panels designed by Isaac Espinoza.

Inside the truck Martinez enjoys BMW seats and a Sony audio/visual system, including a complete stereo system and custom speaker boxes with 12-inch kickers.  Jermaine also crafted a custom dash for Martinez by pulling out all of the stock controls and replacing them with new switches.

“We also put in a lot of three-way switches, so it went from one switch operating one thing to one switch operating two or three things.” To finish the look the dash was painted candy cobalt blue to match the truck’s exterior.

The Martinez family affinity for custom rigs doesn’t end with her truck.  Customizing is less of a hobby and more of a lifestyle, she says. “We like to look good in whatever we drive.” Since the family does most of the custom work themselves, Martinez says it’s very affordable.

In addition to its three tricked-out trucks, the Martinez family has several other custom vehicles including mini-pickups and Harley-Davidsons. Of course Sherry’s hog is painted to match her rig — right down to the skulls.

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