10-4 Magazine July 2024

Cover Feature: By Daniel J. Linss By the time they moved to Marysville, Rod was already ten years old, and he was already greasing trucks. He began driving at just 17 years old, right out of high school, hauling heavy equipment with a “thrashed” 1975 Peterbilt 359 with one stack, which he eventually got looking pretty good. His brother Kevin, who is four years younger, grew up in this same environment and also began doing truck stuff at an early age. They both have always had their own separate businesses, but they often worked together. The first trucks they customized were their dad’s, who had nice W900A Kenwor ths, but later, when they got their own trucks, they star ted doing “cool things” to them, too. One of the cooler things that Rod was doing when he was first getting star ted, back when he was only 19 or 20 years old, was customizing exhaust systems. Larger sized straight pipes were just coming out, and Rod had a cer tain way he liked to set them up for his customers, which included deep drop elbows bent and sized a cer tain way. At the time, he was ordering so many of these custom elbows from Dynaflex, they star ted calling it a Pickett elbow. Eventually, the folks at Dynaflex offered Rod some money for the rights to sell them to other customers, agreeing to keep the name in his honor, and he took it. In hindsight, since they still sell these “Pickett” elbows some 35 years later, he should have taken a royalty deal instead of a one-time payout. But hey, hindsight is always 20/20. Back in the early 1990s, there were not a lot of readily available accessories for trucks, so if you wanted something different, typically you had to make it yourself. For this reason, truly custom trucks were not in abundance back then (most of the accessories available were what they called “lick and stick” pieces of shiny trim). The brothers star ted building custom light bars, deck plates, and light brackets, and eventually the word got out. Rod officially star ted Pickett Custom Trucks in 1993 and began selling custom par ts through word of mouth. At the time, he There are only a handful of builders out west that truly “define” what west coast cool looks like, and Pickett Custom Trucks is one of them. The founder and driving force behind this iconic company is Rod Pickett (53), who now hails from Buckeye, AZ, after originally building his name and his business in Washington state. In addition to building his brand, Rod has also created a style that is uniquely his. This style is embraced and extremely evident in his latest creation – a totally custom jet black luxury RV, built on a Peterbilt 389 chassis, that absolutely does not disappoint, and definitely has that unmistakable “west coast cool” vibe. We were proud and honored (and lucky) to have Rod debut this amazing new rig at our charity truck show (Truckin’ For Kids) back in April 2024, and it was one of the main topics of conversation with many of the folks at the event. Over our three decades of featuring trucks, we have featured a few built by Pickett Custom Trucks on our cover (Phil Miller, Billy Ezernack of Double E, Ron Kelsey, Scott McDaniel, and Leon “Popcorn” Wheatley to name a few), but we have never featured any of Rod’s personal trucks, and he’s had a few over the years. After seeing this black beauty, we figured it was time to pull the trigger and get this deal done! Flying down to Phoenix in early June (2024), we got to spend a few days with Rod, our longtime friend and 10-4 helper Ron Kelsey (who is also one of only a few people to get his same truck on the cover twice), and see Rod’s amazing new shop in Buckeye, which is huge. We also got to spend a few days with this cool RV, shooting pictures at both Rod’s house and a local park called White Tank Mountain Regional Park near his home, which had a paved, winding, four-mile driving loop through the deser t, and provided some awesome Arizona backgrounds. Born to parents Dale and Karen Pickett in 1970, Rod came from a family of dairy farmers on his mother’s side, and construction (building custom homes) on his dad’s side. Not wanting to follow in their footsteps, Rod’s father Dale star ted trucking in 1968, hauling gas in Oregon, for Shell Oil. In 1975 he bought his first truck – nothing fancy, just an A-model Kenwor th with a standard hood, and then began building a small fleet. Not long after that, Dale got a big contract hauling for a local grocery wholesaler, pulling reefers from California and Oregon to Washington, doing that infamous (and often envied) I-5 shuffle. Relocating the family to Washington in the late 1970s, in 1980 they moved to their location in Marysville, WA where Rod (and his brother Kevin) would grow up and star t their businesses. Over the next few years, Dale built his operation up to four trucks of his own and three leased owner operators before selling out to a local guy in 1986. After working for the new owner as a mechanic for a while, he got a “real job” with the county, also as a mechanic, where he stayed until he retired in 2012. Today, he and Karen also live in Arizona near Rod, and Dale works par t-time at the PCT shop, where his specialty is wiring. 10 10-4 Magazine / July 2024 DEFINING WEST COAST COOL