10-4 Magazine September 2024

he took care of the equipment he was operating, so he let Chris take the truck without paying him for it up front. And after Chris spent about $40K fixing the rig and customizing it, Steve gave him a break and let him make two payments, equaling only $8,500, to buy the truck (he originally was asking $35K for it). Some may not know this, but Chris also does truck interior work including upholstery, painting dashes, doing “big openings” in older sleepers, adding insulation, and floor installs. Through the car club his parents belonged to is where he found the interest and got started in it when he was around 20 or 21 years old. He would do a little work here and there, but it didn’t really take off until he got into the truck show world around 2014. Chris has more of an original style of doing things that keeps his work period correct and as OEM as possible, which includes not using glue, but rather doing a lot of sewing and making pleats. Starting the truck rebuild in 2014, Chris planned to run the old Peterbilt part time when it was finished and then work in the upholstery shop the rest of the time. While building the truck he was driving part time for a company. Wanting the truck to look period correct, he began gathering used parts, including a 379 standard air leaf cut off (rear frame). By then, his dad had moved back from California to Missouri, so he helped Chris do the cut off. Then, they took the truck to Jay Romack’s shop south of Neoga so Chris could do the paint work. Jay and Chris went to the same school and grew up together, hanging out with their parents in the aforementioned car club they were both part of. When Chris started painting the truck, it was a bone-chilling minus 10 degrees outside, and the shop’s wood stove was struggling, barely keeping it at 60 degrees inside. Chris painted the roof caps and front and rear fenders, and at that temperature, it took three days for the paint to dry! He was scheduled to start hauling ammonia at the end of February 2015, so Chris had to get the truck done. Jay let him finish the rest of the truck build in his shop. Taking the truck out on its first load of ammonia, it did not run well at all (the timing advance needed to be rebuilt). After that, he barely worked two weeks that spring because the company that he was leased to wasn’t working him. After spending all that money buying and building this truck, Chris needed to make some cash, so he parked the rig and went to work for Bart Williamson, a friend, hauling asphalt with a tractor-trailer that summer. Everything seemed to have fallen into place because Bart had just had a driver quit so there was an open truck. That summer, Chris made enough money that he decided to get his own authority, around the end of August 2015. Bart sold Chris a dump trailer on payments to get him started until he had enough credit built up that the bank would give him a loan to buy the trailer. He ran that dump trailer for a couple of years, but didn’t really like the dump trailer gig, so he bought a stepdeck, ran that for about a year, then sold that and picked up a flatbed, that he still has and pulls occasionally, to this day. His son Dalton wasn’t sure if he would get into trucking, but somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew one day he would. While working at a body shop in 2018, Chris approached his son about working with him during the busy season, driving a truck, while still working at the body shop. Dalton agreed, and at the end of 2018, he began riding with his dad for three or four months, learning to drive, then went and got his CDL. They bought a daycab Freightliner in March of 2019, spent a month or so getting a few things done to it, and then Dalton started trucking... and never looked back. In 2019, Chris met up with our friend Arlyn Workman at the Top Gun Largecar Shootout in Rantoul, IL. Chris’ daughter Tayler had never seen a big bunk, and Arlyn’s 359 Peterbilt had a big 110-inch Double Eagle sleeper, so Chris asked Arlyn if they could look inside. Chris and Arlyn got to talking and Arlyn mentioned how he was thinking about getting a new truck. Chris told him right then and there, “If you ever want to get rid of it, I want to have first 10-4 Magazine / September 2024 11