Longhaul Survivor is a benefit truck being raffled off over the course of the next year. Find more details about the build here.In spite of a Friday-night rain-out May 3, the first night of the 2013 Midwest Pride in Your Ride event in Earlville, Iowa, at the Tri-State Raceway there, event organizer and small fleet owner-operator Eldon Jaeger reports $47,000-plus was raised for the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life initiative to support cancer research. Find a large gallery of pictures from the show trucks and other activities here on Facebook.
And: there was the attraction of the Longhaul Survivor custom raffle rig that made its debut there (I reported previously on the truck here and here). “We sold 957 tickets for the raffle,” Jaeger says. “It’s been pretty interesting to a lot of people.”
Eldon Jaeger’s late daughter, Brenda, was the inspiration for the custom 2000 Peterbilt 379, which Jaeger notified his wife of in November of 2012, marking a most-definitive beginning for the project. As word got out about the project, “we got a lot of people that immediately jumped on board to sponsor it,” Jaeger says. “We’ve had at least $30,000 worth of [aftermarket items] donated to it.”
As I’ve noted before, it’s set for a long run around the country in its likewise cancer-fundraising mission (raffle tix are $10 apiece), with show appearances scheduled throughout the rest of the year around the Midwest and farther afield. Eldon won’t be doing much trucking himself this year other than to keep on that mission — his now two-truck fleet employs a driver and himself, down from a high point of 10-11 trucks, including owner-operators leased on, in years gone by.
In any case, stay tuned for further updates, but if you want a look at the rig, you can find the most current schedule in this story. Today it’s down at the Cinton Route 66 fest in Clinton, Okla. Next weekend, it’ll be at the Wheel Jam in South Dakota.
