10-4 Magazine February 2024

10-4 Magazine / February 2024 31 man’s work ethic, Brian was prepared to bring Jonathon on-board and make him part of the Brian Dreher Trucking family. At 19, Brian had intended to have Jonathon running within the state of Wisconsin for him, but a devastating shop fire – that included destroying one of Brian’s show trucks, a cool 1998 Freightliner Classic XL named “Sho Anuff Pink” – put that on hold. While this catastrophe was a setback, two years later, after turning 21, Jonathon began driving over-the-road for Brian. “I finally got my shot,” Jonathon told me, as he fondly remembered his first truck, a Kenworth T2000. “I was pulling a reefer and ran that truck for a couple years, and then Brian upgraded me to a newer truck, and I finally got a big hood Kenworth W900L.” While Jonathon loved that sweet W900L, and he ran that truck for a couple of years, little did Jonathon know, but he was soon going to get the keys to his dream truck, an award-winning 2000 Peterbilt 379 named “Top Shelf” from Brian (the truck featured here). And when I say “award-winning” this Peterbilt truly is. Earning top honors as one of the best trucks in the country in 2010 at the Shell Rotella Super Rigs competition, this truck was also the featured rig for the month of February in the 2011 Shell Rotella Super Rigs calendar. As a little boy, Jonathon remembers when Brian ordered Top Shelf. “I fell in love with this Peterbilt the first time I saw it,” as Jonathon explained with excitement in his voice. “I was seven years old when Brian purchased it in 2000, and any chance I had to be around this truck, whether helping Brian wash it, clean it, or polish it, I was right there.” Painted in a beautiful two-tone purple paint scheme and sporting a 310” wheelbase, riding on a Pete low air-leaf suspension, Top Shelf is all largecar from front to back. Under the hood, a Cummins Signature 600 mated to an Eaton-Fuller 18-speed pushes power to 3.36 geared rear ends, and its polished Alcoa 22.5 aluminum rims are wrapped in tall rubber. Pulling a matching 2018 stainless steel Utility refrigerated trailer with a sliding 10’-2” spread, “I can get heavy with my loads at times, and the truck will get up and run when I need it to,” said Jonathon as he laughed a bit as he told me about the rig’s driveline. Not only does Top Shelf have a big wheelbase and impressive running gear, the truck is completely customized everywhere you look. With WTI fenders over the steers, drive axles, and trailer axles, Double JJ headlights and brackets, a 20” Texas bumper, stainless drop visor, 8” exhaust, dual 150-gallon polished fuel tanks, and no lack of chicken lights adorning this rig, it will light up the night, too! Featuring eight lights up on the cab roof, another eight on the top of the 70” sleeper, and another eight on the back, along with stainless panels with lights under the cab and sleeper from Panelite, then more 4” lights mounted in a stainless panel at the rear of the Pete, Top Shelf looks as good glowing at night as it does shining in the sunlight during the day. One of the most “fun items” on the truck is one you can’t see. As we all know, a lot of trucks have train horns stashed away somewhere underneath their cabs, but Top Shelf doesn’t have train horns, it has a train whistle. As impressive as the exterior of this truck is, the Pete’s interior is just as nice. Equipped with a Peterbilt gray American Class interior with hardwood floors and Bostrom Wide Ride seats, the cab also features wood accessories from Eagle Interior Accents, a dashboard fully dressed out in custom gauges, switches, and other miscellaneous parts from Rockwood Products, and several other cool custom goodies. One of the most unique and cool accessories mounted on this truck isn’t the lights or the chrome, but rather three polished beer kegs mounted to the deck plate of Top Shelf behind the sleeper! “Yeah, I get a lot of truckers who think that’s cool,” said Jonathon. “From time to time I get someone who will holler at me on the radio and tell me that they saw an orange Peterbilt with a beer keg mounted behind the sleeper on the deck plate.” As Jonathon started laughing and continuing with, “Yeah, I tell them that guy copied me!” Little do those other truckers know, but the orange truck they are referring to is Brian Dreher’s 2016 Peterbilt model 389 show truck named “$$$” (which was featured on our cover back in September 2019). At 24 years old, only two drivers, Brian Dreher and now Jonathon, have operated this truck. When Jonathon was given the keys to Top Shelf, it had 1.5 million miles on it and now it currently has just over 2.2 million on its odometer. In order to keep an older truck like this