Jake Arment is a fourth-generation truck driver and has been behind the wheel himself since 2015.
Based in Elkhart, Iowa, Arment today drives for Veenstra Trucking, a seven-truck fleet owned by Larry Veenstra in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Arment hauls a variety of livestock in a custom 2026 Kenworth W900L that Veenstra bought last year to put Arment in.
Jake Arment
Growing up, Arment rode along with his trucking dad during the summers and other vacations from school. When he was in high school, he tried to pull away from trucking a bit and wanted to go into coaching sports but “found out school wasn’t really for me,” he said.
Just more than a decade ago, he found a gig pulling a hopper bottom hauling feed to hog barns in Iowa. He worked his way into more regional work, then all over the country, with the hopper, yet pulled back to local work as a transition to livestock hauling hogs.
As of February 2026, he’s been hauling livestock for six years, with Veenstra Trucking since September 2024. He was at first in a “flattop glider that was a little bit older,” he said. Larry Veenstra wanted to put him in a new unit.
Arment comes from a line of Peterbilt fans, but by the time Veenstra was buying the new truck, the narrower 389 cabs had already been phased out. Arment's not so fond of the new wider cab of the 589, so they started looking at Kenworth W900s.
Veenstra gave Arment free rein to spec out the truck the way he wanted it. He worked with a friend who was more familiar with Kenworths, Brock Gouge, to help him design it the way he wanted it. “I spec’d it out, sent it to Larry in an email, and he’s like, ‘that looks good,’” Arment said.
After the truck came in, Arment worked with Cody McCandless and Mike Loveland at Geis Peterbilt in Kansas City to finish the build.
About a month later when Arment was back in Iowa, he and Veenstra went to MHC Kenworth in Des Moines to pick out the paint color. Arment’s favorite color is purple, and Veenstra had previously owned a truck painted a shade of purple called Hawaiian Orchid. Veenstra said the Kenworth would probably be the last new truck he bought, so Arment thought he'd honor the history with something close to that color.
They settled on Prowler Purple, popularized on the late-‘90s Plymouth Prowler hot rod-style cars.
“It’s just a cool color,” Arment said. “It changes color all the time. Like, it’s black, it kind of looks black cherry…” When he gets weighed loading livestock, the scale ticket will often say “black” or “black cherry,” but rarely purple, he noted.
In customizing the truck with Geis Peterbilt, “We didn’t do a whole lot,” Arment said. “I was kind of wanting to just get it on the road and show Larry, ‘Hey, this is a good idea doing this,’ make some money with it.”
He ordered the truck without cab lights and added the style he prefers, some breather lights, J.W. Speaker headlights, bumper lights, a Jimmy Ferrell air ride kit, half fenders and a Merritt deck plate painted to match the truck.
The deck plate has a boot box in it where he can put his boots and coveralls without getting the inside of the cab dirty.
The rig’s interior is Kenworth’s Seattle package with button-tuck upholstery -- black button-tuck with dark purple buttons to more closely match the exterior.
Behind the cab are California hookups, so the air lines and electrical cables come out of the back of the frame rather than the back of the cab for a cleaner look.
He's got a few more plans for the truck -- stainless battery boxes, two-inch stainless drop panels, glass lights and some other additions.
“As I’ve gotten older, less is more,” he said.
His goal is to buy the truck from Veenstra down the line, he noted. “Owning this is a goal of mine. I’ve always wanted to have my name on the side of the door, and so I’m in a pretty good spot, especially with a truck that you ordered yourself and spec’d it out how I wanted it. So, really fortunate to be able to do that as a company driver.”
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Jake Arment: We haul a lot of sheep and goats and do a lot of four-deck work, and just everything livestock basically. I'm actually fourth generation to drive a truck, and just being born around it and going with my dad during the summer all the time and anytime I had school vacation and things like that.
My name's Jake Arment. I'm from Elkhart, Iowa. Drive a truck for Larry Veenstra, Veenstra Trucking out of Oskaloosa, Iowa. Haul livestock. We actually pull a trailer for Nathan Deacon out of Lexington, Virginia. It's a Wilson livestock trailer. It's a four deck. So when we haul cattle, it's just two decks, and you can have these aluminum boards that are removable that we can store on our roofs so we can slide in and split that floor in half. So you can haul a three-deck load of pigs or you can haul a four-deck load of sheep or goats, whatever. We do a lot of sheep and goats.
Right now it's only got, I got my nose deck up, one compartment in the nose and then the four and on the back. But actually you can put three levels in your nose and four in the centers. And then your tail is, as big as it is, it's a full dog house. So you can basically add the same amount of floor space as what is on the tail right above it. So you can haul a lot more with it. And it's a 52-foot spread axle.
When I started for Larry, he had a flat top glider that was a little bit older and didn't get ran as hard much. And so then I started driving it while we load down in Texas, go out to Pennsylvania and you just kind of go, go, go. And so I had a couple problems with it in the beginning. And right from the get go, my boss, Larry had said, "Well, you need a new truck. Need a new truck." And I was kind of like, "Well, I wanted to buy that truck." And so he kept talking about it. And so we decided just get a new one. As much as I'm gone, I stay out for a month and I come home for a week and just go all over the place. And we ended up getting this one.
I've always been a Peterbilt guy. And my dad's been a big Peterbilt guy. And so I, like him, Peterbilt's a cool thing. And so you couldn't get a 389 anymore. I like the narrow cabs. I don't need all that room in there like they have now. And so we were talking and he asked me if I liked the new Peterbilts. Larry did. And I said, no, not really.
And I said I kind of want to do something else. He's like, "Well, we'll try to find a 389 with low miles on it or something."
And he said, "Well, are you against a Kenworth?"
"No, no, I'm not against a Kenworth."
"You want to do one of those?"
I said," Yeah, I mean, you can still get the narrow cab and brand new truck." And so we went ahead and he told me just go ahead and order it. And so I talked to a salesman, James Jurdy up at MHC in Des Moines Kenworth. And a good friend of mine Brock Gouge. They order Kenworths all the time and he helped me figure out how to get this thing set up how I wanted it. And so I spec'd it out, sent it to Larry in an email and he's like, "That looks good." And about a month later when we could finally both get down there or when I was home, we went up and picked the paint out on it.
But yeah, owning this is a goal of mine. I've always wanted to have my name on the side of the door. And so I'm in a pretty good spot, especially with a truck that you ordered yourself and spec'd it out how I wanted it. So really fortunate to be able to do that as a company driver.
Well, I went with the mid-roof bunk. I like those. It's got a lot of room in it. Kenworth bunk kind of gums down, and did 565, 1850 torque because I wanted the AG400L suspension and 18-speed transmission, 3.36 rears, 295-inch wheel base. All the other trucks I drove are been like 280 inches. And last guy I worked for, I got to order a truck there and I went with the shorter wheel base just because hauling sheep and some of the places we get into out West, that's what I kept thinking.
And this one I was like, "I'm just going to get a long one. I want a long truck, so I'm going to get long and low." I did the Seattle package, all the bells and whistles you can get basically from the factory, we did it. Ordered it with the California hookups outback and we actually got the truck and had the fuel tanks painted up in Des Moines. And then I was trying to figure out who was going to put the rest of the stuff on. And I had talked to Clint Moore. I called him about a deck plate, like the Merritt-style deck plate that they had on my last truck. And he asked me, he was like, " Well, who's putting the rest of it together? "And I said, "Well, trying to figure it out right now, and I don't want just anybody around home putting it on or something like that."
And he's like, "Well, we can do it." And he actually works for Kansas City Peterbilt. And so this thing, when it was brand new, we took a brand new Kenworth down to Kansas City Peterbilt and they went ahead and put everything else on. We didn't do a whole lot. I was kind of wanting to just get it on the road and show Larry, "Hey, this is a good idea doing this, make some money with it." And so from the get-go, I didn't order cab lights. I don't like the Kenworth-style cab lights, so I went with that. I liked the three tight in the middle and actually didn't put a visor on it. It came with the factory fiberglass one that's painted so that way we could run the wire up there to the cab lights. And I just put the factory one on it.
As I've gotten older, less is more. And so we did that, put a light underneath the breather. We did some breather lights there and then JW Speaker headlights, bumper lights, and put a Jimmy Farrell kit, air ride kit on it. And then a set of half fenders and a Merritt deck plate that's all painted to match the truck and the edges are polished, and it has a boot box in there so I can keep my coveralls and my boots in there, not the truck. And then they redid my airlines on the back and it's actually got a Peterbilt crossmember back there. So that's how we did that.
Purple is my favorite color. And the last truck I drove, it was cream with a purple frame, Casino Purple. It was more of a brighter purple. And I was trying to come up with an idea for paint for this.
I was kind of thinking like a really dark gray that kind of looks black, but it's not black and it's not gray and have the metallic, the flake in it and do a purple frame. And my buddy Brock told me that James at Kenworth in Des Moines, he's got these special paint books or whatever. He brought them out. We started looking at them and it was crazy. There was greens and I mean blues, I mean all sorts of colors that I thought would look cool. And I kind of waited because purple, like I said, I'm kind of biased towards purple and waited at the end. I said, "What do you got for purples?" And he brought this whole big stack out and we started looking at them. And my boss Larry, he had a truck that was Hawaiian Orchid, and it's really close to this, but it's not ... I think Hawaiian Orchid's actually a little lighter than what this is.
He kept saying this was going to be the last new one he bought, and I thought it would kind of be kind of cool, do something close to something he had. And so we started looking at the darker purples and we saw the Hawaiian Orchid. Well, then he gave us this one. I was like, "Oh wow, that looks really good right there." And my boss Larry's like, "Look at that one." We both saw it at the same time. And so we went towards it and it's actually Prowler Purple is what it's called. The Plymouth Prowler car that was like in the early 2000s, this is the purple they used. It's a cool color. It changes color all the time. It's black, it kind of looks black cherry. And a lot of times when we weigh somewhere, they'll write on the ticket like the color of the truck, like say there's five trucks loading cattle out of one place and I'll get my scale ticket, it'll say black or it'll say black cherry.
It's hardly ever purple, but most of the time we're not clean so it doesn't look the greatest out there, but I absolutely love it. I love this truck. I got some things I still want to do to it, but it's getting there.
