"Hard to keep something nice if you're in the hopper world. There's dust, gravel, mud, farms, small driveways. ..." --Little Z Transport owner-operator Lucas Zach, Gilman, Wisconsin
Despite the difficulty, owner-operator Lucas Zach keeps his 2017 Peterbilt 389 and matching Timpte hopper pristine as can possibly be. He's put quite a lot of custom work into it with shop and fleet partners to cut a fine picture on those dusty gravel roads in and out of farm operations, keeping his father's Tim Zach Trucking business's customer base rocking and rolling alongside his own operation.
Owner-operator Zach is here pictured with the 2017 Cat-repowered 389 and Timpte hopper.
Zach carried the striping on the 389 down the sides of the hopper, among numerous custom mods listeners will hear about in the podcast -- stay tuned for a video in our Custom Rigs series also detailing the rig we saw at the Crossroads Truck Meet in May in Missouri.
In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, Zach details the lengths to which he's gone in recent times to keep the 2017 out of the danger of those rock chips, dust and dirt with the story of a load of corn he picked up on a farm in South Dakota. Arriving for the load, the farm's owner urged him to follow the owner's pickup down a gravel and dirt road.
"We just gotta go up the road about five miles," the farmer said.
Zach continued the story: "He made it five miles up the road and I was only doing 10-15 mph, and he's long ahead of me doing 50 mph in his truck. ... He takes a right and goes another five miles to the east, then there's another five miles. ..."
All told, Zach traversed 18 miles of gravel road to get to the load point, slow and slower, as it were. "He's anxious to get me loaded," he said, yet "here I am trying not to rock-chip everything all up."
Hear much more from Zach about the truck and his operation in the podcast, along with a fellow owner-operator likewise keeping family truck-ownership traditions alive in Wisconsin.
Little Brothers Transport owner Harlan Martin was just 22 years old when we spoke to both he and Lucas Zach at the Crossroads Truck Meet in Missouri in May. Martin's the youngest of three co-owner brothers in Little Brothers Transport, with which owner-op Zach's business contracts on occasion to haul cattle, supplementing LB's 13 running units (with some owner-operators leased on) and about twice as many trailers of a variety of types to serve a diverse and growing customer base, long the province of many a successful small fleet.
Harlan Martin showed this 310-inch-wheelbase, similarly Caterpillar-repowered Little Brothers 2023 Peterbilt 389 at Crossroads, hooked to an Eby livestock trailer.
Harlan Martin and his wife, Andrea, with their 2023 389.
Hear more from both owners in this week's podcast:
Overdrive Radio's sponsor is Howes, longtime provider of fuel treatments like its Howes Diesel Defender all-weather mileage booster and winter anti-gel treatments to get you through the coldest temps, the Howes Multipurpose penetrating oil, and other products.
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