10-4 Magazine / February 2025 13 Along with this 1999 Peterbilt seen here, Mason has two other trucks, which doesn’t include the first one he purchased. The current three include a driver behind the wheel of one of them and the third truck is just a spare. Back on July 17, Mason and Esther found out that Esther was pregnant with their first child (recently announced it is a boy) and he is due to arrive March 28. When time allows for some fun, it will be spent out on the lake with family and wake surfing, while waterfowl hunting is abundant during the winter months, as well. JDK has quite a variety of different trailers including seven livestock trailers, a stepdeck, a hopper bottom, a belly dump trailer, and an end dump. With this in mind, the commodity they haul for profit is cattle within the Midwest. The original 40 x 60 shop the company had (where Mason did much of the work on the restoration of his truck) caught on fire in August 2023. Plans were put in motion, and now there is a beautiful, new shop that is near completion that was erected. The new shop is 60 x 125 feet, which includes a 30 x 50 office. It is mainly a shop for all their trucks and farm equipment, as well as the headquarters for all the businesses, too. For just a little insight into what has to be dealt with living in the area, I asked Mason to tell me about the winter storm that came through just before I interviewed him for this article. Being from Wisconsin, this isn’t something our farmers deal with, and an unknown for people outside the ranching community. They knew the snowstorm was coming, but there is only so much you can do to prepare for something like that. The evening of Thursday, January 2, it started to get cold and foggy, then the freezing rain started, accumulating a half inch of ice on everything. Friday brought 40-50 mph winds, knocking down power lines, dropping the temps down into the teens with zero visibility, and then six inches of snow fell, covering that original ice. By Saturday, the continued wind caused large snow drifts to form and ended up pushing much of their cattle through the fences. It was a fight to keep the animals fed and keep the waterers clear of ice. The storm finally cleared out on Saturday night, and with the blowing wind, no tracks were seen from the cattle, of which there were about 80 unaccounted for. Sunday was spent doing damage control, which included fixing the downed fencing and making
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