10-4 Magazine - For Today's Trucker

APRIL 2005 TRUCKER TALK

THEY DO WORK!
By Writers and Owner Operators Rod & Kim Grimm

The Paul K. Young Memorial Truck Show, held during the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, KY every year, kicks off the truck show season. Having been there and done that, we’re taking this year off from showing our truck at Louisville and taking advantage of our downtime by putting the truck in the shop to have some maintenance done on the engine. With 1,450,000 miles on her, we feel it’s time to give her a little extra TLC under the hood. When you show, you miss a lot of things inside and getting to do a lot of other things, so we’ll take advantage of this year to see and do things we might normally not get to.

We will be showing the model of our truck “Illusion” that Master Model Truck Builder Kuenn McClinton of De-Elegant Model Truck Fleet built us last year. Our model will be proudly on display inside the show in his booth. I’m really excited about getting it cleaned up! Wipe the plastic cover over the model and viola – it’s done!!

But for those outside, it won’t be quite that easy. As people walk around those trucks all shined up, looking like they just drove off the showroom floor, I’d like to give everyone a few things to think about before they say those old standards like, “You don’t work this truck” or, “You just drive this from show to show, don’t you?” Well, I know that’s not the case most of the time. A few of the competitors may not do as many miles as some of the others, but if they’re there, they work.

A few friends of ours were gracious enough to share pictures of their trucks when they were less than show-ready. While driving what seems like a salt block that we try to wash every week ourselves, we know exactly what goes into getting a rig clean for this first show of the season (not only the trucks that are featured in this story, but all of the trucks in the show). Think of the “before” and all the work that goes into bringing you to the “after” as you walk around them at the show.

Just imagine getting a measly $10 an hour for all the hours put in on all these trucks together. You could nearly retire. Why do they go to this extreme? Is it just to have people walk around their truck and enjoy looking at it? Maybe. But they mostly do it for the pride and the love of it. Trust me, you don’t do this kind of work just for fun – although while polishing, I have a friend that still teases me saying, “Kim says this is fun.” And all the while, competitors are taking the chance that when they leave the rain or snow may be coming down and all those hours of work are gone in 60 seconds!

While running across Nevada with Russ Brown (and finally getting to see his new “American Thunder” truck) we encountered freezing fog. Both of our trucks were frosty and dirty. Time to take a picture (photo of headlights). Its okay, Russ and Debbie will have her ready for the show. I’d like to put in here that after leaving the show in Louisville this year, they will again be a team and Russ would like to welcome his wife Debbie back on the truck. After taking time off to stay home for awhile and babysit a beautiful little granddaughter, she’s ready to get back on the road! Helping Russ clean and working magic on the inside, she is a great tire letterer! Lettering the tires takes an enormous amount of time; especially those who choose to get really fancy with different colors and do all those little letters. Too close to one curb and presto, all that work is GONE!!!

Russ remembers a time after leaving Louisville with “Razors Edge” (they’re last truck). He had to cross Donner Pass, snow and all, and someone actually said to him, “You just do that so you can say you work it.” Russ replied, “You bet. I did all that work and brought a LOAD out here, just so I could trash all that work and say that I work my truck!” Last year, Russ ran 120,000 miles as well as creating the truck you see today, which in its first life was a Swift truck. Talent and imagination can take any truck a long way. He usually tries to run south more now, but still gets to play in the snow in the Midwest and got stuck in a huge ice storm in Atlanta. Yes, it works, and yes, it gets dirty!

Harvey and Karen Zander’s “Icy Blu 2” is another example of a truck that plays in the snow! Karen isn’t a driver; she’s a stay at home superwoman!! All the positive truck things the Zander’s do make you proud to be a driver and call them friends. Harvey ran 123,000 miles along with all the talks he does with trucker buddy classes, driver’s education classes (this should be a drivers ed requirement) and trucking association things. With all this on his plate, he still has time to go out and get sand, salt and calcium everywhere! Running the Northeast with an occasional load to Texas, you know he’s been in some nasty weather and on some awful roads this winter. The back of Harvey’s truck says “Roaming for Snow” and he finds it! And just think; after the winter you get the bug season, when we all turn our trucks into giant bug-catchers!

Karen may be a stay at home superwoman while Harvey is trucking, but when he’s showing, she’s there – lettering tires, cleaning under, over and inside of the truck. I’ve seen her, like so many others, working all night before judging. She says those nights are over – she’s going to get some sleep now. When I talked to Karen about this story, she was kind enough to say she would share a picture of their first “Icy Blu” truck (photo of snowy International) and was kind enough to volunteer “Tanker Dave” Marcotte to do the same. What a friend! She knew of a rare picture that Dave’s wife Diane had scrapbooked of Dave’s truck dirty (photo of nasty red Pete).

Dave doesn’t run as many miles as some of the rest of us, but he puts his truck and trailer in places I wouldn’t want to go! Out in the field, going through mud and who knows what. We had lunch with Dave once in Plainfield, Illinois, when the weather was bad and the trucks were dirty. It was the first time I’d ever seen his dirty, so I didn’t feel so bad – ours was too. I will tell a secret he has to keeping his rig so clean: he has his own shop that he can pull in and wash it himself. How lucky can you get? With the truck washes you get most of the time, do it yourself sounds pretty good!! Dave won’t be showing in Louisville this year, it falls during the time to get the farming done. While showing it up and down the road, he has to have the coolest truck in the field as well. Dave’s rig is one sweet flat top Pete for sure. Can you imagine how neat that truck would look with a stainless spread-axle reefer behind it?

Talking to another friend one day, Tod Job was in a produce yard in Yuma, AZ. At the time he was there, the yard was doubling as a mud hole! You can’t go check in and walk back to your truck without dragging some of that in with you. Tod and I joked while talking that, “We just drive around racking up miles so we can show. Fuel is so cheap now!” Putting on 120,000 miles a year, Tod mostly runs from the Midwest to California. Running down south along I-40 over Flag in the snow, cinders, salt and magnesium chloride, creates a nasty black goo that covers his truck and trailer. The magnesium chloride, being the worst of the mix, eats up wiring, brakes and aluminum (got to get it buffed out again). I heard that the state of Virginia was going to ban magnesium chloride because it was eating up the blades on their snow plows. It does a great job on an icy road, but it’s not worth the extreme damage it causes.

Another long-time show trucker is Darian Stephens with his “Keystone JR” Freightliner (photo of filthy Freightliner). I remember a day in Kingman, Arizona, when we stopped at the Petro to get fuel and there was Darian, with his hood rolled over, wiping off chrome. If you’ve ever seen Darian’s engine, you know how impressive it is. After doing all that cleaning, he attempted to leave the truck stop, but as he started heading up the entrance ramp, his turbo blew. What an oily mess! But hey, those things happen to working trucks. After running the Midwest and West Coast, putting on about 140,000 miles a year, he now runs from the Northeast to Texas and back every week. His truck is ten years old now and has over 1.4 million miles on it, but I’ll bet in Louisville you’d never guess that by looking at it.

So why do we clean our trucks up to this degree? It’s so we can go out, get them dirty, then come back and get together and clean them up again, of course. And we also do it so that people might get a chance to get to take home a new perspective of trucks and truckers. Go out and look at all the trucks on display outside of the show and think about just how dirty these trucks were before they got so clean! And stop with all the mean comments and accusations. Most of it just isn’t true! I can personally tell you that the trucks I mentioned in this article – trucks that you might see at the show or out on the road – work their stacks off every day. Maybe they’ve taken clean to the extreme – maybe they get their trucks too clean. Maybe they should leave a little bit of dirt to prove that they actually work. Naaa, just look at the pictures and the odometers for the proof. As usual, their trucks will be spotless at the show!

In addition to checking out the trucks outside, I would also recommend that you stop by Kuenn McClinton’s booth (#6064) and check out our “easy way out” this year. Be sure to stop by 10-4 Magazine’s booth as well (#471) and get some neat stuff from them. As for everyday, enjoy your truck for that brief moment while it’s parked in front of the wash bay, because as soon as you leave it’s going to get dirty!