Reporting from ground zero Wednesday night at the Paul K. Young Memorial Truck Show and Stars & Stripes National Championships in Louisville, Ky. Right now and on through the night, truckers are putting the finishing touches on their rigs
for what some participants are calling the "Super Bowl" of truck shows.
Many truckers in the show have brought their families along to help with the polishing, lettering and detail work. At this event, nobody rides for free.
Brian Dreher, vying with 30 other truckers for Stars & Stripes' biggest cash purse in truck show history, brought an all-girl pit crew: his four daughters and their friends. "I let my wife Theresa come along too," he joked.
Hip-hop music rocked from a purple radio that coincidentally is the same purple as the rig the girls are polishing. The youthful curls bounced along with the beat as their hands blurred into action on metal.
The young ladies, all under 16 years old, put 72 hours into lettering Dreher's tires in their Butler, Wis., kitchen. "It's so cold in Wisconsin we let them do it inside. We're lucky the kitchen floor is linoleum," Dreher says.
His father Earl, himself a retired trucker currently "filling in" on one of his son's trucks, gives the orders to the team, calling for metal polish and paper towels, assigning the girls to their jobs and judging their work with a critical eye.
"I got home from Miami with the truck and trailer last Wednesday," said Dreher whose rig operates under lease to WisPak Transportation. "We've been working on the truck ever since."
"It's hard work, but the whole family is involved and they like it. Besides, the girls get out of school."
0 Comments