Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/15908
Loyal to her 359 E Through an industrious career as a leased owner-operator, dispatcher and small-fleet owner, Theresa DeSantis has been unwilling to part with a special 1985 Pete. BY JAMES JAILLET ven though her company had been sold and her authority had been lost Theresa DeSan- tis says she just couldn’t bear to part with her truck. Even if she never drove it again, she says, and left it parked in her yard, “that would’ve been fi ne. At least I would’ve had something to fall back on.” But after a year as an offi ce manager and a dispatcher for Dart Trucking Inc. in1993, DeSantis put her 1985 Peterbilt 359 – Old No. 7 – back to work. “I didn’t like working in an offi ce,” she says. “I went back to driving. It’s just what I wanted to do.” She bought the truck new when she was 21, and the now 46-year-old DeSantis has driven it as an owner- operator ever since, other than her year as a dispatcher. After driving for Union Transit in Wilbraham, Mass., and Re- fi ners Transport in Cleveland, she and her husband Dean applied for their own authority in 1987, using Old No. 7 as the cornerstone for what would eventu- ally become a fi ve-truck fl eet owned and operated by the husband and wife team. D.R. DeSantis Trucking Co. hauled Theresa DeSantis started driving as an owner-operator when she was 21. lime, stone and coal nationwide, and after building the company for fi ve years, DeSantis and her husband sold it to a larger company in 1993. She says Old No. 7 was the only piece of the company they kept. Because it was her fi rst and only truck, the sentimental ties were too strong to let it go. “I just couldn’t see somebody else driving it,” she says. “It was my truck.” DeSantis says only 250 Peterbilts 34 OVERDRIVE SEPTEMBER 2010 Bruce W. Smith