READERS AND THEIR RIGS - JUNE 2005

FIRST JOB HE EVER ENJOYED

This month’s Readers And Their Rigs comes to us from John Bowden of Bakersfield, California. After 25 years of being welder, John switched careers and went trucking. Three years ago he started running OTR (48 states) in a 3-axle truck, but got tired of not being home and seeing his kids. So about a year ago, he bought the 2000 2-axle Pete shown here and started pulling doubles locally so he could be home every night. For the last 15 years, John has mostly focused on raising his kids, which hasn’t made it possible for him to save much money. But now that they are in college at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and he has their tuition paid up for the next two years, he’s been working on his truck. Taking advantage of his welding skills, John has built many custom pieces for his truck, including his own light bars and hood trim. He also installed his own monster stacks. Most everything on his truck is one-of-a-kind. He’s not into store-bought stuff. He still has a lot of projects in the works and hopes to have those items on his rig soon. He claims that his Pete is as clean on the inside as it is on the outside - and we believe him. One of the things that stood out for us was his front bumper. In fact, it caught our attention so much at the Truckin’ For Kids Show & Drags in Famoso, California last October that we snapped a close-up photo of it (you can find it on our website in the Photo Gallery section). The bumper has flames cut out of it that are back-lit with six amber lights. It looks pretty cool - especially at night. John loves trucking and says that it is the first job that he has ever had that he really enjoyed. He wouldn’t change it for anything. We’d like to thank John for taking the nice pictures of his truck on the beach and sending them to us, along with a good letter. And if the college tuition fees don’t kill you, we hope that you can continue to trick out your ride with creative and unique accessories for us all to enjoy.