WORKING MAN’S PhD

A perfect name for Brian O’Leary’s tribute to the truck drivers of America

By Todd Dills

Owner-operator Brian O’Leary has accomplished more than most in his 37-year trucking career: in addition to nearly 4 million safe miles completed, he was named the Truckload Carriers Association’s 2004 Company Equipment Driver of the Year and the Colorado Motor Carriers Association’s 2007 Driver of the Year.

But for him, it’s his latest accomplishment as an owner-operator – a custom build-out of a 1999 Peterbilt 379 stretched to 300 inches – that makes it all worthwhile.

He’s crafted the Pete as a tribute to those he most respects in trucking, his fellow drivers and owner-operators.

“It was a wrecked truck” when he found it, he says of Working Man’s PhD, which comes complete with Aaron Tippin’s signature on the back of the sleeper – the truck is named after a famous Tippin song.

O’Leary located it five years ago at the repair and restoration shop of some friends and colleagues in Utah. He was still driving for Western Distributing then, though, and it was tough to find the time to really put the work that was needed into the truck.

About “two years ago,” he says, all that changed. “I decided I needed to get serious and get this truck built.”

The pictures tell most of the story, but dovetailing neatly with the 2005 story on O’Leary that appeared in Custom Rigs‘ sister magazine Truckers News upon his winning the TCA award is the fact that he’s gone back to his trucking roots, heavy-hauling with Hersch Trucking, to free up time to complete the build.

It made its show debut as part of the Mid-America Trucking Show, and you can catch it on the road in the near future: Other than memorializing the many men and women who’ve worked as drivers over the years, says O’Leary, “my intent has always been to work the truck in my own trucking company hauling enclosed classic cars, which I have previously done.”

Give the horn a pull next time you see him.

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