Among the many cabovers at the recent Mid-America Trucking Show, one of the best-looking was Jeff Shawhan’s 1990 Kenworth K100E, which he calls Obscene Gesture.
“I bought it out of a junkyard,” recalled Shawhan, of South Charleston, Ohio, which is near Springfield. “I jumped in, turned the key and it started, so I bought it.”
Jeff Shawhan still uses his Kenworth K100E on his Ohio farm.That was in 2005. Since then he’s put in a Cummins N14, a neighbor did the paint job and Truk Guts of Joplin, Mo., installed a diamond-themed interior. Shawhan used to use the truck for his hauling business, which he still has, but in recent years has used it for hauling on his grain farm.
He picked the Obscene Gesture name because of the large pipes, visor and bumper, all of which were dramatic for the time, especially on a cabover.
“When we did this nine years ago, nobody thought of having 10-inch pipes on a truck,” Shawhan said. Also, instead of the usual stainless pipes, his are a rich power-coated black. “It was just big and bold, an expression nobody did on a cabover.”
The truck also bears “Remastered” on the back of the cab and “Pimpin Aint Easy” on the front. A former driver of the truck used the “pimpin” phrase, Shawhan recalled, meaning “that it takes a lot of work to make it look that good.”
Being a 1990 model, the KW was barely old enough to compete in the Antique category of the PKY Truck Beauty Championship at MATS. That category’s winners were: first place, Jeff DeFazio, 1984 Peterbilt 359; second, Farrell Smith, 1987 Freightliner FLC; and third, Kevin Halvac, 1988 Kenworth K100.
