One-truck independent Scott Huber has been behind the wheel since the turn of the century, starting out in a dump truck he bought from his grandfather, hauling under his own authority as S and V Trucking in and out of his father’s rock quarry operation in Kansas. Three or four years later, he bought a 1994 Peterbilt and started pulling an end dump trailer in the same operation through 2008, when Huber followed his brother to a local grain facility, where he spent eight years.
In 2016, he branched out again, this time into belt and walking floor trailers, moving feed and other commodities to local dairy farms, getting up to nine trucks as of a couple years ago. Today, though, S and V is back to just his own rig on the road.
“I’ve actually made more money with the one truck than I made with nine,” he said.
While his daily worker today is his 2017 Peterbilt 389, paired with a a 2019 Wilkens trailer, he also recently ran a 2006 379. He bought the 379 in 2021 and put a full year into rebuilding it. It’s a beauty, for certain, recognized by Overdrive readers, too. They voted the 2006 379 as the winner in the 2024 Pride & Polish Working Bobtail category.
[Related: Best of the best: 2024 Pride & Polish champs revealed]
New
Overdrive’s Load Profit Analyzer
Know your costs? Compute the potential profit in any truckload, analyze per-day and per-mile breakouts, and compare real offers on multiple loads or game out hypothetical rate/lane scenarios. Enter your trucking business’s fixed and variable costs, and load information, to get started.
‘Might as well go all in.’ –Owner-op Scott Huber
When he bought the 379 three years ago, it was in pretty rough shape, as shown in this picture from around that time.
Huber’s initial plan when he picked up the 379 was just to get the truck in decent order and put it straight to work. Yet he soon discovered it needed a new motor. “The motor was shot, and it was all rusted,” he said. “So I ended up putting a crate motor in it,” a Cat C15 Acert, “and then once I had that, I was already $65,000 deep into it.”
That far down into it, he thought, “Well, might as well go all in. And that’s how it became what it is today.”
Huber knew he wanted to swap out the 63-inch sleeper for a 48-inch stand-up — a look he’s always liked on Peterbilts. He tracked down a 48-inch sleeper, gutted it along with the interior of the cab of the truck, then stretched the frame and “just started working on it little by little,” he said.
The hood when he bought the truck was cracking across the top, so he replaced it, adding Talladega Fiberglass front fenders and a lift bumper — plenty of body work otherwise, too.
The truck is shown here in Huber’s shop in the midst of his rebuild.
Triple S Diesel in Cimarron, Kansas, did the interior work for him, installing ostrich skin seats and a new floor. Triple S also “did most of the work finishing it out,” Huber said. “They put the pipes on it for me — seven-inch straight pipes — and all that good stuff.”
He added double hump rear fenders, more than 200 Dual Revolution lights and an audio system that would make just about any audiophile jealous.
“I’ve been into audio systems since I was 18, and I figured if I’m gonna do it, I might as well do it big,” he said. “I put the best of the best in there.” The system pushes 10,000 watts with six subwoofers. “It’s loud; you definitely hear it,” Huber added. “I’m surprised that it hasn’t popped the rivets off the sleeper yet.”
A portion of the 200-plus lights Huber’s added to the rig can be seen here.
As far as the look of the truck, the owner-operator built it exactly the way he wanted it — no plan for any notable changes in the near future. “If I want a new truck, I’ll just put a new paint job on it,” he said. Mechanically, though, he’s eyeing a 13-speed swap for the 10-speed transmission that it’s in it now.
Scott Huber’s always liked purple on a truck, so he added the purple stripe. When he took it further with an orange accent to the stripe, “it just popped off,” he said.
[Related: ‘Paradise Express’ at 3 million miles and counting: Stunning big-bunk ’03 Pete 379]