The truck that was put into service in 1997 was used very little over the next 18 years, and mostly just on fires. The 318 Detroit in it always had a high-idle issue and it never ran right, so it was replaced in May 2015 with a 3406 CAT engine. Unfortunately, an inexperienced driver over-wound it coming down off a hill and blew it up almost immediately. From there, it was parked again, and in January of 2018 the water tank was removed and put on another truck. Then, in June of 2020, Lee Kinzer bought the truck – which only had 4,200 miles on it – and a blown motor! An interesting guy himself, Lee Kinzer (69) has a bit of history with Siller Bros. that dates back to 1969. Born in 1956 and growing up in Tennessee, Lee got into some trouble when he was 13 years old, so his dad sent him to a reform school for boys in Dobbins, CA. While there, he would see the Siller Bros. trucks driving past, and he always liked the way they looked. After spending a year at “Mr. A’s Boys World” getting reformed, which he did, he went on to attend schools in West Virginia and then Florida, but at age 16, he decided to drop out and go to work with his father doing construction. But, what he really wanted to do was drive a truck. Since nobody would hire him in Tennessee to drive a truck because of his age, Lee decided to move to California in 1976 and try his luck there, saying, “That’s where all the Peterbilts were!” And, as luck would have it, he got a job the first week there, driving an orange 1957 cabover Peterbilt lumber truck with a big bore 250 Cummins and a 4+4 set of sticks, for a man in San Bernardino, CA. Later, he switched to driving a 1977 Peterbilt transfer in Southern California, then he went log trucking for Golden Bear Logging, and then he pulled an end dump with a ‘67 Peterbilt. Then, for the next ten years or so, he drove for 10-4 Magazine / February 2026 21 Antonini Enterprises in Stockton, CA, hauling various commodities. In 1990, he found himself at Siller Bros. where it all began when he was a teenager. Driving for Siller Bros. until 2004, shortly after co-founder Andy Siller died in 2003, Lee was feeling a bit burned out. Lee actually drove one of the water trucks in 2003 – the one he
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