Outlaw Customs plays its money card with Dead Man’s Hand, one of the hottest trucks shown at the 2007 GATS in Dallas

By Todd Dills

(Lead photo by Paul Hartley)

The crew from Outlaw Customs strode into the Overdrive’s Pride & Polish contest in Dallas last August on a mission.

As Dead Man’s Hand, a 2001 Peterbilt 379, rolled into the show, the guys who built it – Andy and Alex Gobel, Nic Gillan and Jon Gill – hoped it would answer a pressing question.

It had been on Andy’s mind since the Colorado customizers decided earlier that year to break out of Western Truck
Parts, the business owned by Andy and Alex’s father: “How can we get people to talk about us?”

One way was by “having the girls out with us,” he says. During the show, the men were fl anked by four women
in Outlaw Customs T-shirts – one was Alex’s girlfriend, Marina, the others were friends – who tried their best to
help bring attention to Outlaw’s masterpiece.

Taking a cue from the recent trend of twisted-down-tube forks in custom chopper design, the Outlaw Customs crew fired up the torch for the delicate job of twisting aluminum mirror arms.

Turns out, the masterpiece was doing the job all its own; Dead Man’s Hand won Best in Show in Limited Mileage Bobtail and first place in its class. Not bad for a first truck from a new business.

It’s the result of a clear approach and a keen eye for unique features that make up one twisted, bad-ass show truck. Outlaw began its search for the right truck by looking for “a Pete with the biggest Cat engine you could get,” Andy Gobel says.

After canvassing the Western Truck Parts yard and coming up empty, Andy and Alex’s father, Alan, a man with long experience in buying salvage vehicles, found a Pete 379 a few states away. The truck had been driven through a schoolhouse in Lodi, Calif. (school, luckily, was out at the time), but it had a mammoth Cat C16 under the hood.

As Andy Gobel tells it, “When this thing came up, I said, ‘That’s a builder that we can do.’”

His father realized upon delivery of the vehicle that the photos had been deceiving. “The frame was twisted,” Gobel says. Another hitch: When the truck was headed to Denver over Donner Pass at minus-10 degrees, “all thefreeze plugs blew out of it.” Whoever drove it last had used only water in the cooling system. In short, the truck was a mess.

Outlaw set about bringing it up to par, and along the way focused on uniquely designed in-house custom-made parts to really showcase its workmanship.

Both Andy and Alex were reared with welding torches in hand. Alex had plenty of experience in custom car
work, and Alex and Nic Gillan were yard managers at Western Truck Parts before joining Outlaw Customs. They
were all fans of vehicle customizing, down to the arena where many of the more radical designs first pass public
muster: the custom-chopper circuit.

At a Denver Merchandise Mart event sponsored by Easyriders magazine, Andy saw a bike that combined

a sleek, dark look with ornately designed chrome parts, unlike anything he’d ever come across.

Possibly more than any other feature, the "twisted" sculpted aluminum parts draw the most attention to Dead Man’s Hand. Design director Nic Gillan describes the labor-intensive production process. “At 1,300 degrees, your aluminum will be malleable. But at just 1,313 degrees, it crystallizes and breaks.” The customizers thus had to heat a 15-foot aluminum rod, bend the section they were working on before it got too hot, then let it cool before going to the next section. Outlaw now sells cast versions for around $400.

With twisted aluminum forks and a subtle, dark paint scheme, it served as the conceptual prototype for Dead Man’s Hand, a success in showing off not only the new shop’s  ability to trick out a working truck but to fully restore a wrecked vehicle.

Dead Man’s Hand unites the longand-low simplicity of West Coast designs with the more fl ashy, over-the-top murals of the East.

“We aren’t so much about one style. but rather taking elements from both sides and different industries  then  applying them together, being open-minded to all cultures,” Andy Gobel says.

“Whether it’s a lead sled, low-rider, bike or rat rod, there are lines and curves that can work for all industries. Our design style is really diverse. But we do appreciate a cleaner, more sleek-looking truck. We are firm believers in less is more.”

They’ve captured the imaginations of truckers throughout the country. Randy Stroup, for example, is a longtime customizer. A custom Pete he owned was featured in a 1984 issue of Custom Rigs’ parent magazine, Overdrive; today Stroup owns the 106-truck fleet First Class Services of Lewisport, Ky.

When Stroup read about Dead Man’s Hand, he was struck by its originality. “We saw some unique features on it, some new ideas,” Stroup says.

Now Stroup has partnered with Outlaw to customize his 1986 Peterbilt 359, First in Class, an entry in the Big Rig Build-Off competition at this year’s Mid-America Trucking Show. The truck showcases Outlaw’s work in myriad custom component parts.

Part of Outlaw gang: (L to R) Nick Gillan, Alex and Andy Gobel.

“Anybody can buy accessories,” Stroup says, “But these guys have ideas.” “We’re a chrome and truck accessories shop, but we don’t want to just be a chrome shop,”Andy Gobel says.

“Our market model is brand identification.” Taking their cues from extreme sports suppliers,they’re looking for customer dedication to bring their business to the fore.

“The way they do things in the snowboarding industry is to get professional snowboarders to endorse the product,” Gobel says. “The kids, then, are buying the brand.”

Outlaw’s craftsmen hope to take that one step further, Gobel says, to deliver in spades on quality and “to create a lifestyle behind what we do,” he says. “We’re getting customers for life.”– CR