At the 2025 Mid-America Trucking Show back in March, Overdrive’s 2024 Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber caught up with trucker and singer-songwriter Tony Justice to talk about the recently-customized “Purgatory” 2006 Peterbilt 379, a unit that's been a huge part of Justice's trucking career.
He'd driven the truck since he started with Everhart Transportation back in 2011, putting about 2 million miles on the rig himself. While he no longer works the truck, as detailed in a pre-MATS edition of Overdrive Radio, Justice has been working with a variety of suppliers to build the truck into the custom showpiece he’s always wanted it to be.
“It’s been a dream for a long time to be able to get it fixed up a little bit,” he said.
When Justice moved to the Bennett Family of Companies in 2024, he and the Bennett team “started talking about it, and I started calling around to some different manufacturers and stuff and started getting sponsors together,” he noted.
The frame was stretched to 300 inches by C&W Repair out of Savannah, Georgia, then Talladega Fiberglass in Alabama added fenders, T-bars, the frame cover, light panels -- “all the really cool stuff,” Justice said.Video and photos by Lawson Rudisill
Finally, the truck was taken to Brandon Carpenter with the Mayberry Chrome Shop in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, who led the process of “finishing it up,” Justice said. Carpenter and his team did the body work, installed the lights -- plenty of Trux LEDs, with more to come -- and put on the stacks, along with the grille and bumper from SH Tube.
The visor came from Jacob Bonham with HaterMade.
Carpenter and team also handled the paint work.
The fifth wheel cover, shown here, features a nod to Justice's "Last of the Cowboys" track, from his 2017 "Stars, Stripes and White Lines" album.
On the rear of the deck plate, a nod to his "War Paint" song -- written as a tribute to his wife, Misty, during her battle with breast cancer. "War Paint" featured on his 2021 "18 Gears to Life" album.
“There’s a lot of people who made it possible,” Justice said. “We appreciate all their support.”
While plenty of work’s been done, there’s more yet to come, including about 50 more lights to be added, along with mods to the interior and the engine compartment. He hopes by the end of 2025, it will be “all dialed in.”
Under the hood is a 600-hp Cat 6NZ with a 10-speed. Justice is considering converting the transmission to an 18-speed.
As noted in the video up top, Justice said the truck has 4 million miles on it in total -- a figure that Kitzhaber is more than familiar with himself. As detailed previously in Overdrive, Kitzhaber put 4.1 million miles on his 1995 Kenworth T600, which he’s driven since it was new.
[Related: Owner-op's '24 Pete 389 radiates hot-rod vibes]
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.
Alan Kitzhaber: Hey, guys. This is Alan Kitzhaber. I am the Overdrive magazine Trucker of the Year for 2024. We're here at MATS 2025 with Tony Justice. And this truck you see behind us is his truck that he had specially customized.
So what can you tell us about this, Tony? How did this start and how did it evolve?
Tony Justice: Well, you know, it started when I first got in the truck. I started driving this truck in 2011 when it was with Everhart Transportation. And then last year, we we changed over to Bennett Family of Companies. And so I've been it's been a dream for a long time to be able to, you know, get it, get it fixed up a little bit, you know, and it's got over 4 million miles on it.
It’s a 2006 379 with a600 Cat. So we just start talking about it. And, I started calling around to different manufacturers and stuff and started getting sponsors together. And C&W Repair did the stretch with stretch to 300 inch wheelbase. From there, we took it down to Talladega Fiberglass. They, you know, the fenders, t-bars, frame cover, all the panels for the light.
And then from there we went to Mount Airy, North Carolina. Brandon Carpenter up there kind of headed the finishing it up, you know, get it sanded down, the bodywork done, the paint job, getting all the lights installed. You know, the Trux LEDs. We didn't get all the lights on, so we're probably 50 lights short still yet. We're going to finish putting them all when we get back. We just ran out if time.
But they got everything put on, the stacks, the grille. Thanks to SH Tube, they come up with the grille and our bumper for us. Jacob Bonham with the Hatermade sent me that visor. And of course, Bennett Family of Companies, you know, played a big role in it. So there's a lot of people made it possible, appreciate all their support.
This is the, this is what she looks like for now. But we still got to do the interior. We still got to do the motor compartment yet. So it's still, each truck show, it's going to have something else to do done and something else to, hopefully by the end of the year we got it all dialed in and probably haul some freight in between all that stuff in it too.
Kitzhaber: So what year is it?
Justice: 2006
Kitzhaber: 2006. Have you owned it since it was new?
Justice: I've always just been the driver of it.
Kitzhaber: And you've put on more than 4 million miles?
Justice: Between the miles that was on it before I got it. And what I put on it. I've got over 2 million miles in that truck.
Kitzhaber: I’m familiar with 4 million miles.
Justice: You know all about it, don't you?
Kitzhaber: I’ve got a T600 Kenworth with 4.1 million on it, so I can relate to that.
Justice: Yeah, a lot of miles.
Kitzhaber: Yeah. What do you got for transmission?
Justice: It's a 10-speed. We've been talking about an 18 in it. We might do that. But right now it's just a stock.
Kitzhaber: Well hey, Tony. Thank you a lot for spending some time with us.
Justice: Yeah. My pleasure. Congratulations on the Driver of the Year. Overdrive Driver of the Year 2024. That's pretty big accomplishment, something to be proud of.
Kitzhaber: Very much so.
Justice: Congratulations.
Kitzhaber: Thank you very much.
