Shoshone, Idaho-based Jake Bast pulls a flatbed leased to RAM Transportation, out of Brownsville, Oregon, with this 2001 Peterbilt 379, built to his own style during his eight-plus years of ownership. Bast showed the truck at the 2023 Shell Rotella SuperRigs working truck show, where it placed second in the Tractor-Trailer Division.
Bast typically hauls from coast to coast -- usually northern Oregon or southern Washington to the Southeast, New England or the Midwest -- with machinery, equipment, steel or other commodities atop his 2019 East flatbed. Running cross-country minimizes the time he spends having to load and tarp freight, he said.
Before Bast bought the 379, he said he would usually buy a truck and keep it for a year or two before getting bored with it and selling it for something else. That changed when his father told him before he passed away that he wanted to see Bast finish a truck one time. The result of that conversation you can find plenty views of in the video featured up top.
The rig was a "clean slate," still pretty much all original, when he bought it, Bast said. "I’m the one who pretty much cut it up and changed everything on a perfectly good factory truck." With some help from friends, he had the frame stretched to 301 inches and started to blend two of his favorite stylings for the rig's theme -- hot rod cars and old-school West Coast trucks. Bast fell in love with the scene and vibe growing up with his truck driver father in the 1980s, He said he took "the things those guys were doing that I was fortunate enough to grow up around and see, and the stuff that influenced me that I could carry on in myself and my own interpretation of it with a hot rod look, California truck look, kind of blend the two."
The flames on the hood and elsewhere on the truck were painted freehand by a friend of Bast's, Jack Miller, based in Nevada.
The flames painted by Miller extend down the frame all the way to the rear of the truck.
Much of the body work was done by Brent McGrath with Brent's Custom Trucks in White City, Oregon. The rig was originally white with purple fenders, and McGrath painted the fenders white to match the body and did some other work around the truck.
