Not all the cool trucks you see at the shows rolled into a shop and, several weeks, months or even years later, rolled out as a “finished” project – in fact, most are not built like this. Many trucks are customized over a long period of time, and some, like the cool cabover seen here, are a “rolling restoration” done while the truck is still working and earning its keep. Blayne Amoth (31) of Bonners Ferry, ID bought this 1996 Peterbilt 362 in 2019 and has since been fixing it up, little by little, while working it full-time through the summer and fall months, creating the cover-worthy working truck you see here. Trying to keep it as original as possible, Blayne has not deviated far from what this truck would have looked like back in the ‘90s – it even still has its original factory paint job!
This story begins five generations ago, when Blayne’s great great grandparents came to America from Norway. Living in North Dakota, Blayne’s great grandfather Walter was born there. In 1938, Walter and his wife Susie, along with their kids, relocated to Bonners Ferry, Idaho, a beautiful and historic small town that was established in 1893 along the banks of the Kootenai River in the panhandle of North Idaho just 27 miles south of the Canadian border. Once in Idaho, Walter bought a small farm there and then began driving a milk truck in the early 1940s, going to all the local dairies, and picking up cans of milk. Walter’s son Donald, Blayne’s grandfather, who was born in 1931, eventually began driving a milk truck in the area, as well.
In the 1960s, Donald “The Don” Amoth bought a 1959 single axle Ford truck and started buying and selling lumber. Don would purchase a load of lumber in Moyie Springs, ID, and then head east across Montana, toward North Dakota, selling the lumber along the way. Once he sold it all, he would return, get another load, and then head east again, peddling the lumber. Around 1963, Don bought his first diesel truck – a nearly new 1962 Kenworth. Driving past all the grain elevators along the way to North Dakota with the lumber, Don eventually switched to hauling grain, using a flatbed equipped with grain sides.
Picking up grain from various elevators in the area, the grain would be taken to Pasco, WA, where it would then be loaded on barges. Over the next few years, Don grew to four trucks hauling grain. In 1967, Don purchased a new Kenworth with a sleeper and log rigging and began working on a pipeline project in Louisiana. The pipeline was going from Louisiana up to Michigan, and the log truck worked perfectly for transporting the pipes from the yards to their necessary locations along the route – much of which was off road. After a few years, Don began working on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, hauling pipes and construction materials on a flatbed, from Seattle, WA to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
In 1976, Don left Alaska and began hauling for a neighbor back in Idaho who owned a shake shingle mill. The following year, Don partnered up with the mill owner and they expanded the operation, forming a company called Bonners Ferry Shake. Eventually, the mill had three trucks – a 1967 Kenworth, a 1978 Peterbilt, and a 1969 KW log truck. Delton Amoth (59), Don’s son and Blayne’s father, was born in 1965, and at just ten years old he was already working at the shake mill. Growing up around trucks, Delton started driving at 14 years old, running a 1955 International, hauling firewood to Spokane (a 100-mile drive each way). At 21, Don needed an over-the-road driver, so Delton filled that role. At this point, they decided he should probably get his chauffeur’s license, to be legal, which only required him to fill out some paperwork and pay a small fee (no training was needed)!
Running all over the country in the 1978 Peterbilt 359 previously mentioned, hauling shakes and other wood products on a flatbed for Bonners Ferry Shake, Delton did this for five years, until he was 26 years old. Then, in 1990, he bought his own truck – a 1963 B-model Mack log truck – and began running that. Three years later, in 1993, his mother was diagnosed with cancer, so his father Don put Delton in charge of the mill so he could be with his wife while she fought the disease. Ultimately, she beat cancer, but after that, Don wanted to slow down, so he sold the trucking portion of his business to Delton, and then closed the mill in 1996.
Delton formed his company Aamodt Inc. in 1996 (Aamodt is the Norwegian spelling of their Amoth last name). Don worked for his son until he retired in 2004. “The Don” is now 93 years old and living in an assisted care facility in Buhl, ID. Over the next decade, Delton built the company to its peak of 12 trucks (five company-owned trucks and seven leased-on owner operators). But around 2005, after the housing bubble burst and other factors triggered the start of the Great Recession in 2007, Delton began downsizing the operation to just six or seven trucks in total. Today, Aamodt Inc. has one company-owned truck and eight leased owner operators.
Delton’s son Blayne was born around the same time that Delton bought his first truck in 1993. Now 31 years old, Blayne grew up in the shop. After school, he would head straight into the shop – he was fascinated with the trucks. Blayne never really dreamed of driving a truck but enjoyed working on them. By the time Blayne was old enough to go out on the road, his dad was already working in the office, so he did not get to go out driving with him very much. He did, however, go out with a driver named John Adams a lot. John was a grouchy old man, but the two got along fine. Blayne was driving trucks around the yard at a very young age, and then at around 13 or 14 years old, while out on a run with John, they switched seats, and he drove for the first time out on the open road. But Blayne still wasn’t sold on driving trucks.
During high school, Blayne drove a grain truck part-time for a local farmer, and then, after graduation, he moved to North Dakota and worked in the oilfields, hauling belly dumps and building pads for the drilling rigs, for about two years. After getting caught one too many times by the DOT for not being properly licensed to do the work he was doing in the state he was doing it in, he went back to Bonners Ferry and worked as a mechanic in the shop. He also did a little local log trucking, but again, was still not sold on driving a truck for a living.
Once Blayne turned 23 and was able to get on the company insurance plan, he jumped in his dad’s 1994 Peterbilt 379, which he had bought new, and began doing a regular run of hauling lumber down to Denver, CO, and then steel back, with multiple drops along the way. And with that, everything changed. Blayne realized he had never gone anywhere in a truck, and that all his driving had been local, but once he got out on the open road, he loved it. And just like that, he got bit by the trucking bug and was all in!
Owning and running an 800-hp Massey Ferguson tractor with an inline six Detroit and three turbos, Delton has competed in tractor pull events for over 35 years. While traveling to one of these events in 2018 and hauling the tractor with his 379 Peterbilt, Delton blew the engine up (that’s the story Blayne tells but Delton might beg to disagree). While at the tractor pull event, Delton began asking if anyone had a truck to sell, and one man said he might have a 362 Peterbilt cabover available. Delton was interested, but the guy later came back and said it was needed as a spare truck and not for sale. End of story.
A few months later, in March of 2019, Blayne bought his first truck – a 2016 Peterbilt 389 with a 36” flat top sleeper – and became an owner operator (leased to Aamodt, of course). About six months after that, the guy with the cabover called Delton and said the truck was now available, however, the Cummins N14 Celect it was equipped with, had recently quit working. Because of that, the truck was offered for dirt cheap, and because Delton had shown interest in buying it before, the owner gave him first dibs. Not knowing exactly why, Delton agreed to buy it, and then told Blayne to go pick it up in Lynden, WA, and bring it back to Idaho.
All the trucks Blayne ever drove were sort of attached to someone else – they were either his dad’s trucks or the previous owner’s truck, but either way, none of them seemed to be “his” trucks. Blayne wanted something that was his, and after he found out how much the cabover was going for, he went to the bank, took out $5,000, and then headed to Lynden, but not to pick it up for his dad, to buy it for himself. When he got back with it and told his dad what he had done, Delton was okay with it, saying, “I probably didn’t need another project anyway!”
Although the truck didn’t run and nothing on it was shiny when Blayne brought it home late in 2019, it was still in pretty good shape. The 1996 Peterbilt 362 with a 96” cab still had its faded but original factory five-color paint job, a drop axle, a blown-up Cummins N14, an 18-speed, a long wheelbase, and a Pete Low Air Leaf rear suspension. The truck was originally bought by MCM Construction in Sacramento, CA to haul bridge beams, so it was ordered with a 265” wheelbase. After changing hands a couple times, Blayne became the rig’s fourth owner.
After finding a new engine and getting it ready to install, Blayne took a week off in December 2019 to make the swap. Replacing the dead Cummins N14 Celect with a 500-hp Cummins N14 Celect Plus, many thought it would not work. Blayne was prepared to change out the computer, if necessary, but he didn’t need to, because it worked. However, the truck was still not roadworthy, so Blayne spent the next few months working on it, licensed it in the spring of 2020, and then hit the road. He probably should have waited a bit longer to drive it full time, because that first year was kind of tough, with a lot of roadside repairs being done along the way – and so began the “rolling restoration” mentioned at the beginning of this story.
Over the next few years much was done to the truck to get it to where you see it now. Some of those things include lots of buffing and polishing, repairing and repainting the roof cap, relocating and replacing the horns and cab lights, and repainting the frame. He also added a stainless steel 8” exhaust, mounted to a custom bracket made by Selkirk Fabrication in Bonners Ferry, and fitted it with a custom bead-rolled pleated stainless steel plate, mounted in the center, to look cool and hide the hole in the back of the cab for the engine. This piece, which puts off a starburst glare and reflection, was made by Ron at Allen-Jac Inc. in Sandpoint, ID – a welding and fabrication company that makes and repairs aluminum fuel tanks and straps for trucks.
Some of the other modifications Blayne made to his cabover include installing all glass LED watermelon lights, an 18-20” tapered bumper from Valley Chrome, a custom steel deck plate with a recessed connection box, made by Selkirk Fabrication, with a light box mounted on top with three lights facing back and one facing forward toward the pleated stainless steel plate. The fuel tanks, air tanks, battery box, spotlights, visor, and fans (mounted in the cab) are all stock and original. Stainless Hogebuilt half-fenders cover the drive tires, but Blayne modified the brackets to make them fit better around the wheels, which also allowed for a watermelon light to be mounted on each bracket.
Inside the cab, in addition to the ceiling fans, the dash and gauges are all original, but much of the interior has been modified and upgraded. All the interior upholstery pieces were replaced with new black leather pieces with red stitching, including the entire sleeper portion of the cab. The low-back seats were also covered with new black and red upholstery, and the tops of the seat backs have the Peterbilt logo stitched into them. On the floor, Blayne wanted red shag carpet, but nobody sells that anymore, so he found a red shag rug on Amazon and bought that. He and his uncle Jerry then cut the rug up and covered the floor with the pieces. It’s a pretty cool old-school touch, along with the pair of red fuzzy dice, hanging from the ceiling.
When he purchased the cabover, Blayne had the option of switching out the one-piece windshield and triple wipers with a split glass version and just two wipers, but he wanted to keep it as original as possible – he also, like me, digs the triple wiper setup. To finish it up, at least to this point, Blayne brought in an old pinstriper (now retired), who has lettered trucks for his dad and grandfather, to add the AAMODT, Inc. to the doors, along with a “tired old Cummins” logo down on the battery box. Typically hooked to the 53’ Reitnouer 4-axle “maxi” flatbed seen in these pictures, which has been all polished out, Blayne hauls various building materials all over the Pacific Northwest.
As mentioned before, Blayne only runs this rig in the summer and fall months. Once the weather turns bad in early November, he parks the cabbie and jumps in his other truck – a 2000 Peterbilt 379 – which he bought in 2021 after selling his first truck, the 2016 Peterbilt 389. Blayne’s 379 is burgundy and tan and features a Seminole-style paint scheme. Powered by a 6NZ Cat hooked to an 18-speed and 3.36 rears, this truck, with a 48” flattop sleeper, is a rig Blayne loves to drive, so the winter and spring months are still fun for him to go trucking, as well.
Obviously, like many, Blayne is a big fan of Peterbilt trucks. One reason might be a story he and his dad told me while doing the interview for this feature. Back in 1994, Delton and his wife Anna were invited to the Peterbilt factory in Denton, TX to watch their 379 be built (the one they still have). Blayne was just a baby at the time, but the three of them jumped in a truck together and drove 1,800 miles to the factory. Once they arrived, they were told a baby could not be in the factory, and Delton was not happy about it. Hearing the scuffle, the vice president of Peterbilt at that time (presumably) came out of his office and offered to babysit Blayne while his parents went into the factory. So, Blayne was spoiled by Peterbilt since he was in diapers and has been a fan of the brand ever since!
And speaking of diapers, Blayne has a few kids of his own, now – two sons, Korey (3) and Klyde (six months). Blayne met his wife LaCee in 2017, and the two got engaged at the Brooks Truck Show in Oregon in 2019 when Blayne “popped the question” in front of his truck while there. Our friend Colby Williams snapped the perfect shot at the perfect moment! The two got married in Montana in 2020 during the height of the Covid pandemic, and with over 100 in attendance, nobody got sick. LaCee went to Cosmetology school and cut hair for a while, but now that they have two small boys, she stays home to raise them. Blayne knows that being a trucker’s wife is hard, but LaCee has always been patient and supportive of his trucking habit.
A few years ago, they started putting on a truck and tractor pulling event in their hometown of Bonners Ferry. This year, Blayne decided to add a truck show to the event and was happily surprised when about 50 trucks came all the way up to North Idaho to attend (see the full show report by Layton Henderson in this issue). Some of the “show” trucks even participated in the truck pulls. It was a great time in a beautiful location, and being held in mid-September, the weather was perfect, too. Look for this event to be held again in 2025 around the same time of year, and in the same location, as well.
Not one to ever pass up an opportunity, Blayne is happy he bought the cabover, saying, “Anything is possible if you stick to it. Don’t let opportunities pass you by!” Blayne has had a lot of opportunities over the years from his family and other trucking connections, but nothing has been handed to him. The way his dad put it, “Blayne is stubborn enough to do stuff on his own, too!” And from what I have seen and heard in the short time I have known him, Blayne seems like a very resourceful and hard working young man with a bright future ahead of him.
With Blayne’s dad Delton still running the day to day operations at the company, he is hoping to start slowing down soon. These days, when Delton and Anna want to take a few days off, Blayne goes into the office and fills in for his parents. He wanted to thank them for all the support they have given him, and especially his dad, who taught him everything he knows about trucks and trucking (and a whole lot more). Blayne is being trained as the next generation to eventually transition into the office – but not anytime soon. He’s not done driving yet, and still has a lot more to do on his “rolling restoration” of this cool Peterbilt cabover, which he gets to cruise around in all summer long.
