Tyler Pyke, a company driver for Appleton, Wisconsin-based JMW Transfer, is a third-generation truck driver, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, father and uncle, who owned and operated a family business up until the Great Recession.
“We kind of lost our own little gig that we had back in 2009, and I’ve been trying to get the dream back up and going again ever since,” Pyke said. But that’s proven “kind of hard to do,” with the current economy and trucking market.
“Can’t find the right prices and get a deal on a truck nowadays,” he added.
Pyke himself has been behind the wheel officially for the last seven years, but growing up around trucks, he's spent most of his life in and around them. “It’s in my blood, you know, third-generation driver doing it,” he said.
Tyler Pyke
Making the leap from company driver to owner-operator is possible now, “but it’s gonna be a headache,” he said. “It’s not gonna be like how it was back in the day. So I kind of was waiting to see what happens in the next few months here,” after the election, to see how the market shakes out. “That will be my big determining factor if I just stay with these guys or if I do go off on my own in the future.”
[Related: Roads through the dark clouds of a very tough market: Owner-operator limitations, possibilities]
Pyke was on-hand at the 2024 Waupun Truck-N-Show -- the 35th and final edition of the show -- earlier this summer showing the 2016 Kenworth T880 he hauls in for JMW. He’s part of the fleet’s flatbed division and pulls a step deck hauling a variety of freight, including “fire truck cabs, steel, lumber, anything that involves a flatbed, pretty much,” he said.
Starting with JMW back in March, Pyke said he’s the third driver behind the wheel of this truck, which at the time of the show had just shy of 450,000 miles on the odometer.
He said it “was kind of a pig when I got her,” but he’s worked to make it his own to the extent he can with plans “on making her a little bit better and giving her the facelift and stuff that she deserves.”
Pyke has been attending the Waupun show for years as a spectator, but he never had the opportunity to show a truck himself until this year. He approached his boss ahead of the show and asked if he could take his truck there, especially since this was to be the “last ride” of the long-running event.
“This is my first time ever” showing a truck at Waupun, “but I’ve been coming to the show since I was 12 years old,” Pyke said. “I always dreamed about putting a truck in the show and didn’t have the opportunity” until this year.
He got the OK, and the week of the show, he had a haul to make early in the week. He did that run in another of the fleet’s trucks, as shop personnel went to work on the T880.
When he got back to the shop after his run, the headache rack and deck plate were off the truck with the JMW crew working on polishing, touching up paint on the rig and much more.
“We pretty much had 80 hours of work that we did in 42 hours to get it here,” he said. “We checked in an hour before registration was closing.”
Pyke said the truck is one of maybe three in the fleet that has a unique barbed-wire stripe down the hood, but otherwise is mostly a standard fleet truck for 35-truck JMW Transfer.
It’s powered by an X15 Cummins with a 10-speed.
Inside the rig, the wheel and shifter are color-matched with the exterior.
[Related: 'Less is more' with James Churchill & Sons' custom 2023 Kenworth W9]
Find plenty more views of the rig in the video up top, and for more videos and custom-equipment features delivered to your email inbox, subscribe to Overdrive's weekly Custom Rigs newsletter via this link.
Tyler Pyke: My name's Tyler. I work for JMW Transfer out of Mackville. We mainly have three divisions. We got drive van, flatbed and Lowboy, and I'm more on the flatbed part of it. So I haul anything from fire truck cabs, steel, lumber, anything that involves a flatbed, pretty much. Grandpa had a truck, dad had a truck. Uncle had a truck. Kind of lost our own little gig that we had back in '09, and I've been trying to get the dream back up and going again ever since. But kind of hard to do. Can't find the right prices and get a good deal on a truck nowadays.
So, alright. Here I got a 2016 Kenworth T880. She's got 446,000 miles on her. I'm the third guy to hop into her and she's running a 10-speed with the X 15 Cummins in her.
Pretty much all of our trucks have the blue with the gray. My truck is one of, I do believe three that we do have this cool barbed wire that runs along the hood. But other than that, it's pretty much just plain Jane blue with gray and all the way across the board for all the divisions that we got.
I've been in this truck since March. I have no problem. She's got excellent horsepower. Nothing too much that she can't haul. Never have a problem climbing hills or anything like that. So out of the few trucks I've driven in the last few years at companies I've worked for, this is definitely one of the better ones that I'm going to take pride in representing a company with and making sure I could get her up to being pretty, give her a little TLC, and I kind of plan on making her a little bit better and giving her the facelift and stuff that she deserves.
