Cover Feature: By Daniel J. Linss Kevin Robinson. Kevin was only supposed to be involved for five years, but 25 years later, he’s still there. At the larger facility, the herd quickly grew to 1,600 cows. Jason eventually began buying land around his original dairy there in Dexter, which now encompasses over 600 acres, and has 2,800 cows. Today, he also has a second dairy with another 2,800 cows, along with a 3,300-acre farm, 160 miles southwest in Dell City, Texas, where he grows all the feed for his dairies and some outside customers. From 1993 until 2007, Jason did not have any trucks, but that changed when he bought a new 2007 extended hood 2-axle Peterbilt 379 with a sleeper. After that, he just kept adding trucks and various trailers. Currently, Jason runs about 15 trucks on a daily basis and probably has another ten (or more) that either don’t run regularly or are awaiting restoration. The working fleet is all Peterbilt trucks, comprised of 2-axle Hay haulers are a unique group of people in trucking with very specialized equipment and skills. Out west, where these rigs are a bit more common, you’ll find some old school truck and trailer setups, typically cabovers, but more often these days you’ll see 2-axle configurations, with short wheelbases and oftentimes small sleepers, pulling sets of hay doubles. This month’s cover feature, a 2018 Peterbilt 389 hooked to a set of cool matching hay trailers owned by Jason Flores (54) of DanDee Dairy in Dexter, NM, is a perfect example of one of these modern hay-hauling combinations – and boy is she a dandee! Growing up in a family with dairy farming and trucking on both sides of his lineage, Jason was the first to have both – dairies and trucks. His grandfather Sam Visser was a dairy farmer in Southern California in the city of Cypress, not far from Artesia, which was well-known for its dairies. As the Los Angeles area grew, the dairy farmers got pushed out, including Jason’s grandfather Sam, who moved northeast to Chino, CA in 1962. In the late 1980s, one of Jason’s uncles moved to New Mexico, and then two years later, another uncle moved there, too, as the dairy farmers who had relocated to Chino from Los Angeles, were now being pushed out once again by the ever-expanding urban sprawl. Born in 1970 in Upland, California, Jason grew up around dairy cows and trucks. Jason’s dad Gary drove a hay truck his entire life (55 years), and Jason spent a lot of time with him in his Freightliner cabover hay truck and trailer. In 1990, shortly after graduating high school, Jason bought his first truck – a 1984 Freightliner cabover. Featuring a dark red paint job with cool gold and brown stripes, this was a slick little 2-axle rig that pulled hay doubles. Freightliner changed the headlights on these cabovers from round to square midway through that production year, and Jason’s was the latter version, featuring the square headlights. The license plate on that truck read “WTADNDY” (what a dandy). A few years later, in 1993, one of those uncles who had moved to New Mexico (Tommy Visser) began encouraging Jason to come out. Apparently, there was a small dairy available for rent, and he thought Jason should start his own deal there. Jumping in head-first, at just 22 years old, he sold his truck, and then he and his buddy Billy moved to Roswell, NM. With help from his uncle, Jason and Billy formed DanDee Dairy (the name was inspired by that license plate), and shortly thereafter they were milking about 280 cows at the 20-acre facility. Unfortunately, Billy didn’t last long in New Mexico, and after just a couple years, Jason bought him out and he moved back to California. Over the next few years, the dairy grew to 700 cows and was flourishing. Needing a bigger place, in 1999 he bought a 160-acre site in Dexter, NM and took on another partner named 10 10-4 Magazine / April 2025 WHAT A DANDEE!
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