While the defending Mid-America Trucking Show Big Rig Build-Off champions Davis Brothers Designs did not repeat in the 2025 competition, as the video above makes clear, their entry was no less impressive.
As was the case for 2025 Build-Off champ Luke Rethwisch, Davis Brothers' canvas for the competition was a 1987 Peterbilt 359. Yet it's one with some custom-rigs notoriety, given its owner is fellow builder and 4 State Trucks leader Bryan Martin.
Davis Brothers’ Kevin Johnson said Martin has owned the unit since he was 24 years old, having bought it in the early 1990s as a wrecked unit. Martin never worked the truck himself and, while he intended to give it the full treatment himself through the years, he continued to prioritize his business at 4 State instead of working on his own truck.
“He has so many irons in the fire that he just never took the time to go ahead and get it finished,” Johnson said. “And there’s been so many people ask why he would bring his truck to Davis Brothers to get built, and I’ve always said I think it’s just so that it wouldn’t take away from their business and all the things that they need to be [doing] at their shop."
The "Bossman," as Martin is known, Johnson said, told him himself: "'There’s two words that come to my mind instantly that describe why I brought it to you.’ And he said, ‘Complete trust.’ And that was a huge honor for him to say that about our team.”
The truck’s nickname speaks to the dynamics at play with the Pete classic: “Workin’ Man Blues,” a nod from Martin to his own inability to commit to build himself, Johnson added. "He worked so much, and he had to go look at this truck that was just sitting in pieces” after he'd taken it apart so many years back.
There's plenty history there around the juggernaut that 4 State Trucks has been as time's gone by.
[Related: Big comeback for this cabover, one of 550-plus trucking stories at Guilty by Association]
"It was ‘Workin’ Man Blues,’" said Johnson, "because he was bummed out because he never had the time to complete this.” He added that Martin said if he hadn’t brought the truck to Davis Brothers, “I probably would have never got this done before I was gone.”
While the truck may keep the "Workin' Man Blues" nickname, Martin's own blues are surely gone now.Matt Cole
The rig was already on-site at Owensville, Indiana-based Davis Brothers Designs before the team there knew they'd be returning to this year's MATS Big Rig Build-Off. Last summer, though, Martin approached them and asked if they wanted to use his truck for the 2025 competition.
Up to that point, Davis Brothers had never “fully built a frame-off 359, ever,” Johnson said. “So it was going to be a challenge.” Shop owners Brian and Tom Davis and team rallied to the challenge. "We take a challenge on, we take it very seriously,” said Johnson.
Martin’s goal for the build “was to try to keep it as close to what it would have looked like” back in the early 1990s when he bought it, as if he'd been able to do what he wanted to at that time, Johnson said.
The truck itself is unique before even considering all the work put into it over the past year. The ’87 Pete 359 is considered a flat-top stand-up, featuring a flat-top cab with a stand-up sleeper. As far as he’s aware, Johnson said, 1987 “was the only year that they made the flat-top stand-up.”
As Johnson details in the video above, a lot of the parts on the truck that would commonly be chromed today are polished on this build to be more true to the truck's origin time period. “When this truck would have been period-correct and guys were customizing them, they wouldn’t be chrome-plating a lot of things like we have the availability to today” easily, he noted.
In the engine bay, the valve covers on the Cat 3406B are polished, along with hose clamps. The engine itself is painted Caterpillar Yellow, pieces painted dark blue to match the frame. It's got a stainless steel radiator shroud made by 4 State and much more. The engine’s coupled with an Eaton 13-speed.Video and photos by Lawson Rudisill unless otherwise noted
With the hood down, intricate paint work that Davis Brothers Designs is known for stands out, with two different shades of blue, along with black and gold striping.
Down the side of the hood, striping both subtly hides and also accentuates the louvers, Johnson noted.
The custom interior package by Oregon-based Two Bee’s Upholstery is similar to a stock interior, Johnson said, “but everything’s just done up a little nicer than stock like they would have done back in the day.” The throttle and brake pedal bases are polished, along with the hinge and mount for the steering column.
The dash, and many other parts of the truck, feature hand-pinstriping from Darin Bean. The truck also still features the original steering wheel.
At the rear of the rig, Martin got his wish for an on-frame deck plate which, despite some pushback from the fab shop, “looks great on this truck,” Johnson said. Davis Brothers wanted to put full fenders over the rear axles “because we didn’t want him throwing rocks at the back of the cab,” but Martin’s vision for the truck included half-fenders, so that’s what it features.
Rear-facing lights on the truck are lollipops with red lenses and blue dots in the center. The forward-facing lights, including the cab and breather lights, are Legendary glass lens lights from 4 State Trucks.
Old-school hangers with cow mat mud flaps and Iowa Customs mud flap weights on the bottom to give the rig "that long mud flap look of these old trucks," Johnson said. The clear-lens lights in the center of the rear light panel are aviation landing lights, also a common touch on rigs of this era.
When the build was complete, and Martin saw the truck for the first time, Johnson said Martin told them, “This is what I would imagine a brand-new 359 would look like on the showroom floor, except better.”
“We didn’t even know what to say to that,” Johnson said. “That was something that was really huge to us because, if they think it’s better than factory, that’s really cool. We just tried to do a lot of different things that we could to just upgrade and make it nicer.”
The Davis Brothers team even got in contact with Bryan’s wife, Sarah, to ask her some questions about Bryan “to do a few things that he wasn’t expecting,” including putting the names of some of his favorite songs on the back of the visor (“Somewhere Down in Texas”) and on the heater box in the cab (“Wichita Lineman”).
See much more of the intricate detail put into the truck by Davis Brothers Designs in the video up top.
More from MATS 2025 at this link.
[Related: Built to win: Wheels-off '87 Peterbilt 359 triumphant in Big Rig Build-Off]
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.
Kevin Johnson: Okay. I'm Kevin Johnson with Davis Brothers Designs out of Owensville, Indiana. The truck you see behind us is a 1987 359 owned by Bryan Martin from 4 State Trucks. It's not a 4 State truck, it's literally Bryan's truck that he bought when he was 24 years old. The intention was for Bryan just to finally get his truck built.
And then over this last summer, Bryan was like, hey, what would you guys think about building my truck and using it for the Build-Off? We're like, okay, we've never fully built frame off 359, ever. You know, we take a challenge on, we take it very seriously. And we were all like, oh, let Bryan's truck and build for the Build-Off? Yeah, we'll do that.
So first of all, one of our main things that we're known for at Davis Brothers is the, the paintwork. Our paint and body shop, in my opinion, is just second to none. And I can say that with all honesty, because I don't do any work in that. I just see what's done. I see the process. I see how they do it.
And as you can tell by the paint on this truck, there was a lot of thought went into all the colors. Bryan had the ideas of what he wanted to do as far as the primary colors, and he knew he wanted some kind of stripe. There's two different colors of blue that are on the frame and the chassis, but all the stripe colors were designed to kind of hide the louvers on the hood.
A lot of people don't like louvered hoods. Some do, and Brian loves his louvered hood. All of the stripes and everything even continue all the way through the body, on the the teardrops around the breathers, the inside of the air cleaner bracket is even striped, so it's even detailed inside that bracket. And the frame, as you can tell, has been totally smoothed down clean.
Obviously, he had a freshly rebuilt -- about 12 years ago -- 3406 B Cat motor and we got that all painted up. Tried to just do highlights in the engine bay, like polishing the valve covers because back when this truck would have been period correct and guys were customizing them, they wouldn't be chrome-plating a lot of things like we have the availability to today a lot, easily anyway.
But like the spike mounts down here for the cab, those are all polished. The spikes on the hood are all polished out. Upper hood mount up here where the hood rests against, polished that piece out. Even the all the hose clamps in the engine bay are all polished, and it's kind of dangerous. You can tear an arm off doing that, I about did.
But, then the guys in the body shop again painted all the engine up. Really good. Cat yellow. And the guys at 4 State Trucks made this really beautiful stainless shroud. And even on the harmonic balancer, we wrapped that with a thin piece of stainless steel, which was relatively simple, but it just give a little extra, give a little extra shine in the engine bay.
So on this side of the engine bay, same typical deal. Obviously this was a stock turbo for it, but we Cerakoted the hot side and also the compressor. And there again to kind of follow what we did was a lot of the aluminum pieces, instead of chrome-plating we would polish that. So we've got this polished up, got some chrome work on the exhaust where it disappears underneath the truck.
So now moving on to like the rest of the truck and the interior, there's things like we got some period-correct Vortox air cleaners that would be on the truck when it was new. And we even put the factory mirrors back on the truck. We just polished them really well. And like, the old-school guys would take the right-hand mirror and put it on the left side and so forth and swap them because there's a little down sweep on the mirror.
And they love that. Keeping the bottom of that mirror flat and having that sweeping down and give them kind of like a lower, more sleek look. So we did that, got some old-school looking President antennas that go right in the the factory holes. And they call these lollipop lights. And it's even got the, blue dot on it with the red lens.
And we followed that theme on all the rear facing lights on the truck. I guess moving on to the interior, this whole interior was stitched up by Two Bees in Oregon. And, they did just an absolutely outstanding job on this truck, but we found good period-correct carpet in the truck. It's a real nice, tight loop carpet like it would have had from the factory.
Darin Bean did all the pinstriping on the truck just to bring that old school feel to it. And then it's basically a stock interior, but everything's just done up a little nicer than stock like they would have done back in the day. We polished all the throttle pedal base, the brake pedal base and the hinge and the mount for the steering column and the original steering wheel's still in it. We just cleaned it up really well, and it's got a, billet aluminum piece in there that our machinist made for us. It says Martin Livestock. And you can even see on the step boxes it says Martin Livestock. And even on this door right here, we made sure that it had the Bossman. Because back in my truck days, that's what they referred to him, was the Bossman. So this time he was the Bossman, but he was the customer.
We got some of his Vendetta seats in here. It's just things that he, you know, once that he had, even his Cobra CB with the Wilson external speaker that's mounted off the bottom of the case, just like it would have been back then. So on the back side of the visor, we had one of his favorite songs Somewhere Down in Texas, lettered by Darin Bean again on the back side of the visor, and then even on the heater box over here, we had the Wichita Lineman. That's one of his favorite old classic songs.
Another thing we did on the whole truck is we put bus glass on all of it, which, you know, a lot of the guys that they got to like and have on the bus glass on the bottom. So it's a blue tinted strip along the bottom of all the windows. It's even in the passing window on the other side of the truck, and the rear glass as well.
And then he's got some of his six-inch pipes on here that they sell there at 4 State. And, you can tell that everything's just nice and neat. Even the hangers are all new and look just the way they should from the factory. But even inside the bunk, we made sure and got all this refurbished. And, Davis brothers is known to also for their stereos, but this one's got a pretty mild stereo system in it.
It's just got six speakers and 1,400 watts. But, we kind of highlighted the amplifiers in here, and, and all of this has the tight loop carpet, even under the bunk has a matching carpet to the doors, a little bit of vinyl work, and then, it's the factory light that we've got an acrylic and billet aluminum that's polished, that says Peterbilt on it, just address those factory lights up. So just a little upgrade.
But moving on back, we just followed the theme of the blue dot lights, the truck lights that were always on the back of the bunks on these. Even underneath the sleeper, we flat paneled the bottom of the sleeper just to make it more slick and smooth. Easier to clean, but it also just looks a whole lot better. And it's painted with the same beautiful quality paint that's on the outside of the truck.
One thing that Bryan was really, really wanting that Cody in the fab shop there at 4 State and myself was kind of fighting him on was an on-frame deck plate. I've never been a big fan of them, but Bryan's demand kind of worked out great because I think Cody and I both said, okay, he was right. It looks great on this truck.
So it actually has a nice shape here on top that looks great with the top of the frame, but also to go with the aluminum tread plate step boxes, we've got that all the way running down through the middle of this upper on frame deck plate and the airline box. So we just tried to kind of follow that theme through the truck back to the fifth wheel.
And Brooks in our body shop decided that he thought some stainless pieces in front and rear of the fifth wheel would really have a nice accent, and it would reflect and show that the bottom of this fifth wheel is painted with the same blue that's on the frame. So it's just another another added detail.
And then we wanted full fenders because we didn't want him throwing rocks at the back of the cab, but he said in my mind, I have it pictured to want half fenders on it. So these are some Vendetta 4 State half fenders. I believe they're Vendettas. Don't quote me on that. But. And on back we have an in-frame deck plate, so we kind of won a little bit of the battle there, but we've got an in-frame section back here, but on the deck plate, then, Darin came in and did pinstriping on the truck, and it just painted the Workin' Man Blues on the back of the bunk there. That's the name of the truck.
Back here on the rear stainless drop panel 4 State made, we even use the truck light lights with the blue dot lens. One thing that he really, really wanted, and I had to figure out how to make it look great, were these aviation landing lights. So those are literally landing lights off of an airplane. And a lot of guys use those back then. And that was just kind of a fad. And they really liked using those.
So another thing that I didn't realize was really popular back then were these swing master mud flap hangers. He said, oh my gosh, if you guys have a pair of those, I would love to have them. And we used actual cow mat, which is a real thick, heavy rubber with some Iowa Customs mud flap weights on the bottom. And it just has that long mud flap look of these old trucks.
But we just wanted to make sure and have a lot of polished stuff on here, because a lot of guys, if they didn't have the money to wrap stuff in stainless or whatever, they would polish it.
So polished out all the ends of the fuel tanks and the air tanks, and also polished up these old fuel caps too.
One huge compliment that Bryan had for us is he, he came up and he said when he first saw the truck and he had never seen this truck complete. And I think I even mentioned he's never driven it since he bought it when he was 24. And he come up and he said, this is what I would imagine a brand new 359 would look like on the showroom floor, except better.
