"It’s such a different world from my background in music and education.” --Artist and videographer Miss Flatbed Red, about her attraction to the world of trucking she increasingly depicts
What began as a way for a bored spouse to pass the time at a truck show has grown into one of the more well-known social media platforms in and around trucking. It features the work of Findlay, Ohio-headquartered music teacher, painter and videographer Miss Flatbed Red, including the
Her full body of work constitutes an extensive individual collection of images of and information about historical trucks. Her YouTube channel alone boasts tens of millions of video views, and Miss Flatbed Red's website offers, among a myriad of items, this award-winning gouache painting of a 1980 352 Pete and stainless cargo box, entitled “Stu at Sunset”, for $2,000.
A snappy insert on the website encourages the scroller: “As low as $97/month or interest free with Klama.”
Miss Flatbed Red
“In short, my husband’s really bad at making introductions," she said, laughing. "I’d only been to one truck show. It was a hot and unpleasant experience. I didn’t know anybody."
Her man urged she give it just one more shot, which would come in 2017 -- yes, at MATS, where everything changed. 
She got about halfway through completing the image when "someone said, 'Well, if i paid you, would you draw my truck?' And that’s where it all began.”
For Flatbed Red, with arts training in her background, it was like being thrown into the proverbial briar patch.
“I didn’t know anything about trucks, but ... my background is in portraits, pet portraits and things," she said. She'd studied classical fine art oil portrait painters, and "really what I’m doing is portraits of trucks. And, yes, other people draw trucks. A lot of people grew up sketching in the margins of their textbooks in school, et cetera. But my background is in art, and I see things differently, coming from a different world."
She's laying down what she sees, she notes, striving for realism, "portraying what someone has done in 3D in 2D," as she put it.
"The artwork came first," she said, yet at the 2021 national convention of the American Truck Historical Society (ATHS) in Virginia, "I overheard a gentleman talking about his International dump truck to someone else, explaining its story. In like a minute he told the whole story of this beautiful truck very eloquently. And I was just thinking about how cool it would be to take some videos, and you could do voiceovers.”
[Related: Rebuilt 2002 Peterbilt 379 dump truck a father's tribute to late son]
That was the genesis of the Miss Flatbed Red Youtube channel.
Perhaps my favorite video of hers is the Bill Foose interview. Foose talks through the history of his 1980 W900A -- he spec'd it out in 1979, and it runs strong to this day.
"I think a lot of people who are walking around, even if they’re drivers themselves, may not necessarily comprehend the level of work and detail that has gone into these," Red said of the trucks she profiles -- and, ultimately, the owners she chronicles. "It’s sort of hard to think about it, unless you’ve done it yourself.”
Her husband's an active ATHS member, and for that reason "preserving these stories is important to me," she added. "I guess since it’s such a different world from my background in music and education -- that also has something to do with it, the education side of things -- and of course the art, but I’m learning things. In these last eight years I’ve learned a lot about trucks. It’s about all I hear about at my house.
“I really just want to give some respect and give these drivers and builders a chance to showcase their work, give them a chance to tell their story."
I, for one, am glad she gave truck shows that one more shot.
[Related: 'No wreck is the same': CTS Towing owner-operators Clifton and Joyce Parsley]
More in Long Haul Paul Marhoefer's "Faces of the Road" series of profiles and oral histories.
