Dane Wisniewski, owner with his wife, Heather, of Mosinee, Wisconsin-based HDR LLC (Heather Dane Rigs LLC), started his trucking business with one truck -- the 2007 Kenworth W900L featured in the video above. The year was 2016, and HDR's establishment followed a stint in law enforcement.
“It’s been lights out" since, he said. "We’ve been nonstop grow, grow, grow." The now three-truck fleet hauls open-deck freight on RGNs, step decks and flatbeds. In addition to the company-owned trucks, Wisniewski said he also has owner-operators “up and down every once in a while we get [leasing] on with us.”
Business picked up so much by 2022 that Wisniewski launched a brokerage, HDL LLC (Heather Dane Logistics LLC), to help meet the needs of customers.
“It was a lot of our customers that, they had a lot of issues with other trucking companies not being able to meet the demand, or they say one thing and they can’t give them what they tell them,” he said. “So we ran into that a lot, and we outgrew our company tenfold. We just could not keep up. So we started a brokerage to help them.”
In its first year, HDL handled more than $1 million in freight with direct customers. As of August in the brokerage’s second year, it was on track to pass $2 million.
While Heather handles most of that side of the business, Dane juggles a lot himself, “being in the truck, running drivers down the road, trying to help her with the brokerage with the quoting and doing things like that.” Wisniewski noted three-quarters or more of his three trucks' freight comes from direct customers, the remainder from the boards.
On top of that, he’s also moving into maintenance and custom work, including paint, custom builds, insurance work and more.
“So there’s a lot going on," he said, with all the moving pieces. "In today’s economy, we kinda gotta be a well-rounded company because sometimes trucking is just not that busy."
We caught HDR's flagship rig on display at the 35th and final Waupun Truck-N-Show in Waupun, Wisconsin, back in August, where it picked up a second-place trophy in the Working Truck 2005 and Newer, Flat/Step Deck category.
He bought the 2007 W900L from the previous owner out of North Dakota -- it'd been originally custom-built by 4 State Trucks in Joplin, Missouri. The previous owner handed him receipts from the original owner detailing “about $300,000 worth of stuff that he did to it,” Wisniewski said. Dane's done plenty to it since.
“It needed some love,” as he put it. The truck had been working the oil fields and had sat idle for quite some time.
The can’t-miss orange paint scheme on the rig is a one-off color, Wisniewski said. He mixed a cream color in with orange to get more of a “sunflower dull orange to it, and then a white stripe that runs through it that is actually that cream color.”
He also “had an ‘oops’ one day,” he said, when he was messing around with metal flake for a pickup truck he was working on (see more on it below). That gave him the “dumb idea that, let’s just put a bunch of metal flake in this truck.” It's been a challenge in the aftermath when something needs to be repainted, as it’s difficult to match, but he likes the result with how it pops in the sunlight.
He very recently put a 6NZ ACERT Cat C15 in it, set at 600 hp. He’s had trucks “turned up to almost 800 horse” in the past, he said, but he’s “done with the game. It’s a 600 horse, and that’s all we need” to ensure reliability and “see a million miles on it.”
Inside the cab, “the only thing original in this truck from when we bought it is actually the floor,” he said, though it’s starting to show its age.
All told, the truck had around 1.7 million miles on the chassis and the motor around 20,000 as of the truck show in August.
[Related: Ohio-based Linn Acres Farm's custom 2025 Western Star 49X hauls dry bulk freight]
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.
Dane Wisniewski: So my name's Dane Wisniewski. We're based out of Mosinee, Wisconsin. We started in 2016. We started with one truck. We're up to three now. Owner ops, up and down every once in a while we get coming on with us. This is our maiden voyage truck that started it all. It's a '07 W900L. It started its life with a factory frame. It is a 296. I don't get into the whole ball game of how you measure, where you measure, not my thing.
We've done a lot to it. It needed some love and it went into the oil fields and that's where it sat for how long. And I got it and I brought it back to life. We stripped it, repainted it. Everything was new. Down to the Jones hood. We do a lot of work with those guys. We, everything fenders, you name it, we've gone through.
We just put a ACERT bottom end C15 Cat in it. It has a 6NZ head on it, all the stock and internals on it. We've had trucks that have been turned up, almost 800 horse. And I am done with the game. It's 600 horse and that's all we need. We do put some drivers in it every so often, so it's something that needs to be reliable and I'd like to see a million miles out of it. But I also got my hands into it. I helped my buddy do it. He talked me into it. So we did it. It's a work in show truck if you want to call the show truck. I personally don't, but it's a work truck. It runs down the road. It pulls, it's got scratches, it's got a little dings dents here, but it works. It is a lot of work to keep 'em up and bring 'em into this stuff and not bend this, not bend that.
Interior, dash, floors. It's got two-piece 12 Gauge aluminum flooring. So all paint match wrapped to the truck. It is the original flooring in it. I've never touched it. I kind of just, I liked it. I didn't have a need to touch it. It's starting to see its age. It's got wrapping, so it's starting to peel a little bit here. It's got a 12 Gauge twin stick combo set up in there. Freaks people out when they see it. They love it, but you drop it off at a shop and 90% of the time I'm getting a phone call going, how do I drive this? What's this stick? They get confused. I grew up outside a little farm helping my family and stuff. And I grew up with a 1965 international with a twin stick in it, a true twin stick. So when I had the option of something like this, it was pretty neat.
And it's a selling point for us. We get a lot of people that come in here and look at that and they see that it is a working show truck and they realize that, hey, I can do that to my truck and I can still take it to work. It doesn't have to just come to this kind of stuff. There's a place for it.
I've always had a thing with orange and I like white. This is a one-off paint code. I've had people ask me for it, and you can put it next to a different orange Kenworth color or a Pete color. And it is very similar. But there's a truck next to me that actually has more of a whiteish Peterbilt color. And we have a paint code that is almost as identical to this truck. And I mixed that into this orange to get more of a sunflower dull orange to it.
And then the white stripe that runs to it is actually that cream color that's running through it. And then I had an oops one day and I was messing around with some metal flake on an old pickup that I was doing, which is actually on the trailer back here. And I really like it. It's just when the sun comes out, it pops. It actually gives it a different colored look. You'll never notice it when it's cloudy out, but when the sun comes out, you really see it. So I just had a dumb idea that let's just put a bunch of metal flake in this truck. I did and I kind of regret it because now when I go to repaint something, it's almost impossible to paint match that metal flake dump. But we get it close and nobody ever really notices it except for me.