Four kings of chrome crowned at culmination of inaugural Pride & Polish National Championship Series.

Perennial Pride & Polish competitor Bill Sandvik says his Best of Show victory in June at the Great West Truck Show’s Pride & Polish in Las Vegas was something of a surprise. He shows alongside one of his small fleet’s drivers, Isaac Aguilar, and mostly pulls for him.

Working Bobtail ­— GATS This 2003 Peterbilt 379, shown by Bruce Smith, won Best of Show, Working Bobtail, at the Great American Trucking Show Pride & Polish. Smith says the truck’s paint scheme emulates that of a King Ranch Ford F-150.

The success in Vegas, though, won Sandvik an invitation to compete in the inaugural Custom Rigs Pride & Polish National Championship series in Dallas at the Great American Trucking show in August, where his 2005 Peterbilt 379 was named the first national champion in the Working Bobtail category. “And there I was,” Sandvik says, “surprised again.”

He says he hasn’t done much to the truck “except keep it clean.” After he bought the truck in 2009, he added 8-inch stacks, half fenders in the rear and painted the tanks and fenders burgundy. “It’s basically my work truck,” he says. “I didn’t want to go too crazy.”

Working Combo — GATS, NCS Jonathan Eilen’s 2010 Peterbilt 389 and matching Mac trailer won Best of Show at the Great American Trucking Show, moving them into the national championship series judging round at the same show.

He’s been showing trucks in Pride & Polish since 1999. The truck Aguilar shows, a burgundy 1992 Peterbilt 379, won Best of Show in 2009.

In the Working Combo class, Jonathan Eilen’s 2010 Peterbilt 389 and matching 2007 Mac trailer won the national championship prize. It also won Best of Show in the preliminary judging – marking back to back years the black and orange combo was named such.

Eilen bought the truck new in 2009 and immediately began stripping the interior and rebuilding the truck. The trailer belonged to his late brother Jake, and Eilen says he painted the truck black and orange to keep his brother’s show-truck legacy going.