America, land of the free and home of the brave. Have you ever stopped to consider the freedom and opportunities we take for granted? I thought I understood them, until I met Raiko Graveran at the Semi Casual Truck Show in Crossville, Tennessee, back in August.
Cuba, 2008: A 27-year-old Raiko Graveran is fighting the current and the waves risking it all to cross the sea on a wooden raft toward his dream of American freedom.
We sat in his truck, a beautiful 1995 Freightliner FLD Overdrive previously featured at this link. He openly admitted he’d once illegally immigrated from Cuba dreaming of choice, freedom and opportunity. The risks were great -- he could be immediately arrested at sea or landfall, get lost or, worse, be swept out to sea and drown. He focused on Florida, and the land of opportunity. He reminded himself that once he arrived on the shore it would all be worth the fight.
“When you make that decision,” Graveran said, “you have two choices: live free, or die.”
The smile on his face, the sparkle in his eyes -- I recognized something else: fierce drive, determination. Raiko (pronounced Rico by many of his friends) has a fighting spirit and exudes American patriotism I have not seen in many recently.
“I was born in 1980, and I grew up watching my father drive trucks in Cuba, yet he was not allowed to own one for himself,” he said. “He worked on the truck after hours, the one he did not own, and performed all the maintenance and repairs out of pocket just so he could continue to drive each day earning a living to support our family.”
No video games as a child in Cuba, he noted. “I played outside. I grew up within a poor farming family raising pigs and chickens to earn enough money to buy my first bicycle at age thirteen.”
He always liked trucks growing up. His dad often left out at 4 a.m., with son riding along. On those days, Raiko Graveran would be “dressed and waiting for him by 3,” he said.
A memory from the time: “Sitting on my Dad’s lap holding the wheel,” he said. “Once I became a teen, he would let me park it, because I had learned to shift since I was tall enough to clutch. I wanted to be a trucker myself, even though my father urged me to do better in life than being a driver just like him.”
Graveran focused on engine mechanics in school in Cuba, absorbing all the knowledge he came across like a sponge in water -- fabrication, electronics. When he made his leap of faith and set out across the water, he would be coming to land owning nothing but his knowledge. The young Graveran had a few family members in Orlando, Florida, who had immigrated in the '60s and '70s, but it was certainly hard to leave behind the family he loved in Cuba.
At the same time, he said, “Cuba was no life, no options, and no freedom.”
After his 36 hours on the water saw him hit shore, he was able to pick up work in construction, working Monday-Friday and then pressure-washing houses on the weekends. He took any job that would pay, and worked with a perfectionist outlook, ensuring he always gave his very best.
The United States' “Wet Feet, Dry Feet” immigration policy for Cubans at the time allowed those who reached U.S. soil (dry feet) to stay and apply for residency, while those intercepted at sea (wet feet) would be returned to Cuba. (The policy was ended January 17, 2017, meaning Cubans now entering the USA illegally would be removed.) Within a year and a half of his arrival, Graveran obtained a green card, allowing permanent legal residency in the U.S.
[Related: Independent's stunning 'Little Blue' 1995 Freightliner FLD]
He saved $4,000 cash and earned his CDL, and along the way ran into a friend with a worn-out 1995 Freightliner FLD with fading white paint and a serious water leak. He looked the truck over, all 1.7 million miles of it, and saw something special.
He offered to buy it, with his friend asking for $6,000. They agreed on the cash he had, plus four payments of $500 to follow. It's pictured here during Graveran's long ownership tenure, before a big transformation.
Graveran limped the old truck away, feeling proud and positive that this was a new beginning.
“My truck saved my life,” he said. “He is a part of me. We work together.”
That’s right, Graveran uses the male pronoun in reference to the rig, rather than the she more typical among owners.
“He is my home on the road, my office, and my friend,” he said. “Since he has a 12.7 Detroit with only 500 horses, I call him ‘Little Blue.’” He turned his phone around to reveal a picture of ocean-blue, churning waters from the back of a boat. “I took this picture on July 2, 2020, while spreading my uncle’s ashes into the ocean, as he requested, and I knew that was ‘my blue,’ the blue I wanted to paint my truck.”
During the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, that’s exactly what he did. “I fashioned a paint booth from industrial sheets of plastic in my driveway” in Orlando, Florida, he said, “since I don’t have a shop." And he got to work. Repairs to the body, updating wiring one step at a time over a four-to-six-year period, interior fabrication work. He did all of it himself, with friends’ help -- pulled and painted the engine, frame, laid on body primer, too.
“The only thing I did not do myself was the welding and painting of the topcoat,” said Raiko. He showed me picture after picture of the truck out there in the driveway during each step of the process. The transformation was simply amazing to see.
The end result in some ways speaks for itself.
“Truckers have been good to me. Before it was just an ugly shaker and people looked the other way. Sometimes I felt embarrassed,” he laughed. “But now they ask me questions, and I show them the pictures.”
I walked around the “Little Blue” Freightliner -- electric-blue paint gleaming, plenty chrome reflecting sunshine, overall a clean flawlessness. It was hard for me to believe all the miles put down with it.
As of October 2025 that’s 3 million miles in total. It was certainly among the highest-mileage working trucks at the Semi Casual show where I saw it in August.
The black, classic interior is now trimmed in blue, appearing as new as when it first rolled off the assembly line. He added custom switches trimmed in red to offset the black and American flags on the brake knobs. He installed a refrigerator and microwave for more creature comforts of a home on the road.
“This is my office,” he said. “I do all my own paperwork, invoicing, permitting and my bookkeeping. I have my laptop here,” Graveran indicating a spot in the bunk with a pull-down desk, “and my printer is under the bunk.”
I asked him if he was aware how many owner-operators and other truckers hire a bookkeeper and a CPA. He laughed and nodded yes.
“When you come here on your own and you have nobody to help, you figure it all out and you make it work,” he said. “I only pull flatbed. I am out on the road from coast to coast four to six weeks at a time until winter, when I focus on the Southeast to avoid the salt. I shop once a week for my food, cook in my truck, and take care of myself.”
I asked if he was married.
“When do I have the time?” he said, laughing. “I am married to the road right now, and I sleep in the truck.”
He doesn’t miss much work to get to the shows he increasingly participates in. “I work my way to the show, I drop the trailer, work the show, then hook back up afterward and I work my way on down the road,” he said. “I drove to the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, with a load on the trailer. Once I dropped it and cleaned the truck up, it was ready to show.”
A fellow trucker walked by and stopped. “We saw something under his truck, some light in the dark, and we thought somebody was trying to break in,” he said. Yet turned it was “Raiko at two o’clock in the morning, rolling from front to back, a towel in each hand wearing a head lamp and wiping it all down underneath getting ready. Craziest thing you ever seen.”
Raiko Graveran ended up winning Second Place in Custom Antique at MATS that year (2023) and then in 2024 winning the Walcott Truckers Jamboree Trucker’s Choice Award. 2025 People’s Choice & Best in Show at Old Town Rig Down, 2025 Best of Show First Runner Up at the Shell Rotella SuperRigs event, and many, many other awards. He’s been showing the Freightliner four years now and has won more than 50 awards. Now his truck is a custom diecast model.
“They didn’t have an FLD 120 flat top, but they got pretty close,” he said as he handed the small version of the rig over to me. “That is one of the reasons I made the fiberglass painted door panels here,” he said, pointing out interior fabricated paneling. “You couldn’t just buy interior door panels for this truck online. Freightliner is harder to find parts for.”
I shook his hand and felt better for just knowing him. I felt proud of what he had accomplished.
“This truck is a part of me, I will never sell it,” he said. “One day I hope it will end up in a museum when my working days are done.”
I asked him what message he wanted to share with his fellow Americans.
“Don’t take the freedom here for granted,” he said.
More people walked up eager to meet him, and I shot a final few pictures and studied the “RGT Transport Inc.” lettering on the side of his award-winning sleeper. I never felt prouder of my country, our people, and the all-American dream.
[Related: Roadside war stories, camaraderie, ownership advice: Small Fleet Champs deliver]
