10-4 Magazine September 2024

In Memorial: By Daniel J. Linss teaming up with Dustin Dickerson at Dickerson Custom Trucks in Indiana, making all the par ts he needed for his custom builds on his machines, in a back room he rented in their shop. Things were going good until September of 2022 when Mike was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic colon cancer. He immediately began treatment/chemotherapy later that same month. Things went okay at first, so he continued to work full time during treatment. At some point, things got worse, and he could no longer work. It was not fair or sustainable to expect Dustin to keep both his business and Mike’s going, so he sold all the machines, tooling, and materials to Dustin. Mike remained involved in the business and continued to help whenever possible. Dustin was very good to Mike and his family through all this and became like family. While attending college, Mike had a class with a girl who caught his eye. Claudia was a tough but sweet, no-nonsense girl from the mean streets of Chicago, and she had no time for this quiet guy, who kept sitting next to her and trying to talk to her. One day he came into class with a broken leg, and she felt sorry for him, so she agreed to take him out to lunch since he couldn’t drive – or so he told her. Mister “big spender” The trucking industry lost another brilliant and influential person when Mike Horan (50) of Lafayette, IN passed away on August 7, 2024, after a two-year battle with cancer. Known for his almost 20 years at RoadWorks as a product designer and pioneer, Mike was also a loving husband and dad, an friendly person that could talk to anyone, and a friend to the entire 10-4 family, and so many others in trucking. He fought stage 4 cancer like a warrior, never complaining, and always optimistic that the next treatment would buy him time – and sometimes it did. Born on March 18, 1974, on the south side of Chicago, Mike was around trucks for most of his life. Some of his earliest memories included trucks. Back then, his father owned his own trucking company, and Mike could still remember one of his Freightliner cabovers. In those years, his dad owned many truck brands, but never a Peterbilt, but Mike eventually forgave him for that. In the 70s, his father took a management position with Truck-O-Mat in South Holland, IL. He was later promoted and accepted the GM position to operate Truck-O-Mat’s Council Bluffs, IA location, so Mike and his family moved to the Omaha, Nebraska, area where Mike remained until graduating from high school. Once out of high school, Mike moved back to the Chicago area and enrolled at Purdue University Nor thwest, where he studied Business Management. He worked full time while being a full time student, eventually landing a dock job at Overnite Transpor tation in South Holland, IL. Working on the dock, one night they were shor t a yard spotter, and they asked if anyone could drive a truck. Mike ended up spotting trailers for eight hours that night in a twin screw Mack with no power steering. The following day he was taken off the dock and made a spotter, which was one of his all-time favorite jobs. Leaving college before graduating, Mike thought he might want to be a plumber, and became an apprentice for about a year. Once he decided that was not what he wanted to do, he got a job at the Iowa 80 Truckstop in Walcott, IA as an assistant manager. He worked in Walcott until 1999 and then was transferred to a location in Joplin, MO. During his time with Iowa 80, he made a lifelong friend in the industry – Susan Linson of RoadWorks. Mike described their paths crossing as “divine intervention” that led to an amazing work relationship and friendship. Susan had just resurrected RoadWorks from bankruptcy and was rebuilding the fledgling accessories business, and Mike kept coming up with product ideas and sharing them with Susan. Whenever they talked, and that was almost every day, Susan would tell Mike that he should come to work for her. Finally, in 2000, while still in Joplin, they came to an agreement, and Mike moved to Lafayette and went to work for RoadWorks as a product designer. When Mike joined RoadWorks, there were only a handful of employees and maybe a thousand par t numbers, and when he left them in 2018, shor tly after Susan sold the company to a larger corporation and retired, the company had over 25,000 par t numbers. When asked how many of those Mike had a hand in designing, Susan bluntly said, “All of them!” After leaving RoadWorks in June of 2018, Mike joined the Lincoln Chrome team in Lincoln, NE. Unfor tunately, his job was eliminated during the Covid shutdowns in 2020. Later that year, he purchased a fiber laser, a press break, and a punch machine and began making private label products for a few dealers in the US, as well as 54 10-4 Magazine / September 2024 NEVER MET A STRANGER