Herein, perhaps a little diversion for this fine Thursday, or something to add to a wish list, as it were. Longtime owner-operator Steve Bixler — lately off the over-the-road runs, partly stemming from complications he shared more than a year ago in this linked edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast — got an early Christmas gift he shared a couple pictures of with me yesterday.
Yep, that’s a quarter standing next to the unit.If the truck looks familiar, that’s Steve and Doris Bixler’s long-running 1989 Freightliner Cabover, the Lady in Red, as a scale model that Bixler’s sons had made for him with hopes of giving it to him at Christmas. When the expert hand who custom-crafted the replica got the job done — complete, Bixler says, with taped-off, hand-painted car on the cab, among other detail work — they upgraded the mini-rig to a birthday present. Bixler’s birthday, though, isn’t until September.
They “then decided to give it to me early so it wouldn’t get broken before I got it,” he said with a laugh. The builder, he said, “started with a frame, a cab and bare trailer and made everything else by hand or with a 3-D printer.”
And in case you’re wondering …
… I’m pretty sure the rig does’t have a working engine, but at least it’s serviceable in this version, as in the real one.At the time of this writing, Bixler was working on hunting down potential referrals for us to the builder — your next question, I’m sure. Stay tuned.
