Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/85450
CUSTOM RIGS America's finest S Four take top honors at Pride & Polish National Championship finale. By James Jaillet Great American Trucking Show Pride & Polish and its coinciding National Championship series. eventy trucks showed up for the bout, but just four left as the champs in August at The The four previous Pride & Polish events – the Truckin' for Kids show and the Charlotte Diesel Super Show in late 2011, the 75 Chrome Shop Show in April and The Great West Truck Show in June – crowned four Best of Show winners each in Working Combo, Working Bobtail, Limited-Mileage Combo and Limited- Mileage Bobtail categories. Those winners were invited to The Great American Trucking Show to compete in a final round of judging, along with the three Best of Show winners from the GATS preliminary Pride & Polish round, to determine the four national champions. Here are the national champs. WORKING BOBTAIL Show Me the Money Jerad Wittwer's 2006 Peterbilt 379 The owner of Performance Diesel Inc. in St. George, Utah, said the work done to his engine performance shop's '06 Peterbilt 379 came with two goals: to give Wittwer's crew some bonding time and to show potential customers what his shop was capable of producing. Check mark for both, he says. He now uses the truck to haul customers' trucks to and from the shop. His team made custom- fabricated light bars and front and rear bumpers, stripped down and reworked the truck's 58 | Overdrive | October 2012 PDI owner Jerad Wittwer says he and his crew wanted "true fire" style flames on Show Me the Money, and they decided to go with a "blue base with white flames com- ing out of it," Wittwer says. interior and added "ghost flames that carry inside and out," Wittwer says. PDI's own Jeb Howard paint- ed and clear-coated the truck's base color, and an artist for PPG painted the flames. Wittwer's truck won Best in Show at The Great West Truck Show in Las Vegas in June to qualify for the Pride & Polish National Championship series. He didn't know what to expect in terms of the level of competition in Dallas, but didn't want to slack off. "We cleaned our butts off for three days," he says, and the rest is history.