This is the second part of a two-part series highlighting the top 10 Custom Rigs stories of 2024. If you missed part 1, catch it here. Of the 10 trucks that made the list, nine had accompanying videos, which can be seen in the YouTube playlist above. Here, find the top 5 Custom Rigs stories that appeared in Overdrive in 2024, and weigh in with your favorite among all 10 in the survey at bottom.
Louisiana-based Jarrett Landry showed off his “oversize dually” ’88 Pete at the 2023 Peterbilt Pride & Class parade and truck show at the OEM’s manufacturing home base in Denton, Texas, last fall. As he told it then, the truck was more or less a “flower pot” when he found it. As detailed in the story, it’s come a long way under his ownership.
At the 35th and final Waupun Truck-N-Show this summer, one of the newest trucks among the more than 500 on-hand for the event was this ’25 Kenworth W9, owned by Dabney Trucking and shown by Dabney driver Brian Emshoff. At the time of the show in August, it was fresh out of the custom shop, coupled with a likewise brand-new 2025 Wilson Commander hopper. The smoky gray paint with orange fenders and custom pinstriping give the truck a one-of-a-kind look.
Harmony, Pennsylvania-based Damian Minteer operates his own custom truck and antique restoration shop, Crooked KW Services, and used his expertise to rebuild a 1955 Kenworth needlenose that he found sitting in a field more than 25 years ago. He showed off his work at the 2024 Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky. Minteer is just the second owner of “Popo,” with the original owner having sold it to him for $1,000 after more than a year of trying to convince him to sell.
While MATS judges may have chosen the Davis Bros. Designs 2024 Peterbilt 389 custom build as the winner of the Big Rig Build-Off this year, Overdrive readers seemed to favor the ultra-custom 1996 Peterbilt 379 built by Dustin Dickerson and Dickerson Custom Trucks. Dickerson and his team reskinned the whole truck with 389 styles and under the hood outfitted the truck with a Cat 3412 pulled from a D11 bulldozer.
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Finally, the most-read Custom Rigs story on Overdrive in 2024 was this feature of Iowa-based Conrad Shada’s 2020 Peterbilt 389, “Class of the Past.” Every nut and bolt on the truck was swapped out during the rebuild in which Shada “completely rolled back the clock as close as we could” to the late-1980s-era 379 style that he grew up loving. The Violet Effect base paint color with black and gold stripes draws attention to the truck, then all the fine details Shada added to it really pull people in. For this story, Shada was showing the truck at the 2023 Guilty By Association Truck Show in Joplin, Missouri, last fall.
