COVER FEATURE - MARCH 2003
What good would life be if all you ever
did was work? It’s important to go out and have some fun every once in a while,
and for the Maggini family of Riverdale, California, that certainly isn’t a
challenge. They love to have fun, and most everything they do, they do together.
Whether its running a successful hay and trucking company, taking a vacation,
going to a truck show, or just driving into town to grab some lunch - the Maggini
family does it all together. We had a great time with them and, by the end of
the day, we felt like part of the family too.
Harry Maggini was known around town for being tough. He used to wrestle at the
county fairs for money and he always won. One time, after pinning a then-famous
wrestler who wore a mask and called himself the Masked Marvel, ornery Harry
demasked him on stage in front of everyone. Another time, after winning a contest
to see who could ride a wild horse the longest, Harry woke up in Tijuana with
a tattoo on his arm of a bucking horse and the words “Wild Horse Maggini”. That
nickname stuck with him most of his life, and from some of the stories we were
told about him, it was a fitting name.
Harry made his living driving heavy duty construction equipment like scrapers
and bulldozers. And wouldn’t you know it, his son Melvin was pretty ornery too.
In fact, at the age of 16, Melvin got kicked off his school’s football team
for playing too rough - so he quit! His father told him either go back to school
or go to work. Melvin chose work and has been working hard ever since.
After quitting high school, Melvin went
to work in the local hay fields, hand loading 150-pound bales of hay onto bobtail
trucks. It was hard work, but Melvin loved it. He was never afraid of hard work.
But in his heart he knew he wanted more. After a few years of side-loading,
he decided to buy a truck and start hauling hay. His first truck was a gasoline-powered
1948 Ford 10-wheeler. At the time, Melvin was working for someone else who,
upon hearing of Melvin’s intentions of starting his own company, told everyone
in town that he’d be broke in six months and would come crawling back. That
lit a fire in Melvin’s belly - you don’t “challenge” a Maggini. That was 1965.
Today, almost 40 years later, the Maggini Hay Company is still going strong.
If success is the best revenge, Melvin showed that old boss just how sweet it
could be (and I’m sure he didn’t rub it in or anything). With a grown family
of his own, Melvin’s three children all work at the company and perform vital
functions for its existence.
Back in 1972, the now-famous Maggini Yellow was introduced to the fleet. Melvin
had a few trucks and was subhauling for two different outfits - hauling cotton
in the winter for one company and hay in the summer for another. Both of these
companies had yellow trucks. Melvin wanted to paint his trucks to match, but
he didn’t like the shade of yellow on their trucks, so he had a color mixed
just for his trucks - a brighter more vibrant yellow. All of his trucks have
been painted that color ever since. In fact, they have a patent on that color’s
paint code.
Melvin might be a rough and
tough guy on the outside, but he’s got a heart of gold (or is it Maggini yellow).
In all his years in business, he’s only had to fire a few people. And even those
few were hard for Melvin to let go - and they deserved to be fired. Recounting
some of the stories about his dad (Wild Horse) brought tears to this tough guy’s
eyes as we drove down the road in his big (yellow) Chevy truck. Harry Maggini,
in his later years, worked for Melvin as a mechanic. He worked until he died
in 1994 at the ripe age of 81. And he was still tough-as-nails.
Melvin’s son Mike, who runs the beautiful truck on our cover this month, got
to spend a lot of time with grandpa Harry and he loved it. Grandpa used to drive
Mike to school, but when Mike got big enough to reach the pedals, grandpa started
letting him drive. By the age of eight, Mike was driving himself to school every
day. After school, Mike would hang out in the shop with grandpa and help him
work on the trucks. They had a ritual they performed every day for years that
Mike remembers fondly. They would jump in a truck, drive into town, and buy
a candy bar and a Lipton iced tea, then go back to the shop and sit together
and enjoy them. This was “quality time” with his grandpa. Mike, as well as Melvin,
obviously miss old Wild Horse Maggini a lot.
Growing up around trucks
and farming, Mike was driving big rigs at an early age. At the age of 12 he
covered for a sick driver and ran two 50-mile trips, and at 14 he got his first
ticket. Luckily, being from a small town, the judge knew him and let him off
the hook with a warning (actually, the judge just laughed). Now 25 years old,
with several years of trucking already under his belt, Mike is being groomed
to take over the company someday - but nobody is in a real big hurry. Melvin
still loves to work and says he feels like a teenager (he sometimes still acts
like one too).
Mike oversees all the drivers and dabbles in buying and selling hay, but he
mostly just drives. He’s in no hurry to chain himself to a desk. At the local
truck shows, Mike is always the “guy to beat” in the backing competitions. It
seems that all those early years of driving have trained him well.
Not only is he the guy to beat in the working competitions but, quite often,
his truck is the truck to beat in the beauty contest. Unit #13, featured on
our cover and centerfold this month, is a super-clean 1998 Pete 379 painted
Maggini yellow (of course) with metallic green flames. Power is supplied by
a “turned up” 550 Cat (which is painted yellow with a green pearl cast and surrounded
by chrome), a Super-13 transmission and a 3.70 rear-end.
To give the rig that “California”
look, Mike added 7-inch stacks, LED lights with clear lenses, single round headlights,
lots of chrome and stainless, and mounted the mirrors upside-down (which lowers
them a bit). The interior of the truck features a booming sound system, billet
aluminum switches, a custom wood steering wheel, low-rider seats, and five green
neon tubes, hidden under the dash and on the sides of the seats. The truck pulls
a set of yellow 2002 Utility trailers which also have a lot of chrome and stainless,
and four green neon tubes mounted under each trailer. At night, the rig glows
bright neon green underneath and in the cab. Once again, at the shows, Mike’s
truck is usually the one to beat in the light show too.
Mike wanted to give credit to the hard work of Bobby Lloyd, Maggini’s mechanic
who they stole from the local Peterbilt dealer. Bobby keeps the truck running
great and helps Mike with all the custom stuff and accessories. He also wanted
to mention Dale Lysdahl. Dale has been painting all of the Maggini trucks for
over 25 years. Mike simply said, “He’s the best!” A few other thank you’s go
out to the guys at Excelsior Metals in Clovis, Western Chrome in Fresno and
his buddy Terry at Soundwaves for his stereo and neons.
Considering how hard this
truck works, it’s amazing how good it looks. This truck runs down dirt roads
and drives in muddy fields on a daily basis. Maggini trucks work too hard to
shut down for a week to compete at the big truck shows, so they mostly just
attend local shows in California. But Mike never travels alone - he always has
an entourage of local youngsters that come with him to help out and just hang
out.
The Maggini fleet has grown to 21 trucks. Currently, they have three units pulling
containers out of Oakland, one pulling a live-floor trailer, another pulling
a tanker hauling liquid fertilizer, two running heavy haul and the rest hauling
hay. Melvin was getting bored, so he ventured into other areas of trucking and,
so far, it has worked out pretty well. Melvin’s daughter Annette handles all
the taxes and billing, his daughter Barbara runs the heavy haul division, and
his brother Felix buys and sells hay. Jessie, Melvin’s wife of 35 years, still
helps out too - she’s the glue that holds it all together.
Lunch is a pretty big affair
with the Maggini’s. We went into town and had a great banquet-style lunch at
their favorite watering hole, the Santa Fe Basque Restaurant & Bar in Fresno.
Once again, we felt like part of the family - we even let our hair down a bit!
After “lunch” we resumed our photo shoot, but now it was a sunset shoot.
Mike is looking forward to eventually taking over the company and continuing
the business his father worked so hard to build. Melvin and Mike Maggini, like
Wild Horse, might be a little rough around the edges, but they are good people
who simply love to have fun. And what would life be if you couldn’t have fun
every once in a while?