The relationship between truck owner-operators and towing companies can certainly be contentious, but Kentucky-based Clifton Parsley tries to bridge that gap with his show-quality 2024 Peterbilt 389 heavy-duty tow truck.
After winning several 2025 awards at truck shows, Parsley capped the year off in late December when the truck, known as “Heavy Hook,” was announced as the winner in Overdrive’s Pride & Polish competition in the Limited Mileage category.
Parsley, the owner of CTS Towing in Cave City, Kentucky, started his business in 1999 after 10 years hauling milk for another company with a Class B CDL. When the owner of that company closed up shop, Parsley went into business for himself, builing a garage to work on vehicles.
To take care of customers, he bought a rollback tow truck and quickly figured out that he liked the towing side of the business more than mechanicking. Ten years in, he sold the garage and went to towing exclusively.
He bought his first heavy tow truck in 2019, allowing the company to respond to truck accidents and larger jobs in the area. Today, CTS Towing’s business is about 90% heavy towing, the rest light-duty work, he said.
In August 2024, he bought “Heavy Hook,” a true heavy tow truck equipped with a 50-ton rotator that allows him to do some of the heaviest and toughest jobs a tow company is called to do. Parsley in 2025 took that custom 2024 Peterbilt 389 to truck shows all across the country in furtherance of a goal: he “wanted to do something as far as promoting the towing toward the trucking industry,” he said.
There's plenty positives in the work done by reputable companies, Parsley knows, even with all the attention so-called "predatory" truck tows have gotten in recent years.
Clifton Parsley with "Heavy Hook"
As Overdrive contributor Long Haul Paul Marhoefer reported in his “Faces of the Road” profile about Parsley and his family business, the cost of heavy towing equipment is much higher than standard truck power. “Heavy Hook” cost Parsley just shy of $1 million, he said -- part of the high prices owners see with a big tow can be attributed to covering those costs.
[Related: Towing companies dominate FMCSA discussion around predatory billing, practice]
He compared it to being delivered by ambulance to a hospital. You aren’t just paying for that one ride. You’re paying for that ambulance to be staffed 24/7, for the building where that staff stays and lives while waiting on a call. “You’re paying for that ambulance to be ready for you,” he said.
The same goes for a heavy rotator. “A rotator truck is not an everyday-use thing, and you’re paying for the availability of it,” he said.
Parsley's like any trucker who's seen a “lot of outlandish bills” in parts of the towing industry, he added. For some tow companies, the rotator's all they have, and so they might charge exorbitant rates to recoup costs on the rare occasion it gets called to a job. To avoid that with his customers, CTS stays diversified with five other wreckers in the fleet that run daily “doing everyday towing and winching, lifting trailers and stuff. We don’t rely on just work for the rotator.”
Uprighting overturned trucks and using the rotator for operations often suited for a crane are typical jobs for "Heavy Hook."
[Related: 'No wreck is the same': CTS Towing small fleet owner-operators Clifton and Joyce Parsley]
Parsley’s participation in truck shows aims to help the trucking community know there are good people in the towing industry who do things the right way.
If you’re at a truck show where Parsley has “Heavy Hook,” the truck is hard to miss, as the rotator is often extended with a large American flag flying from it.
The 389's been a hit at shows, particularly when the flag's unfurled, he said. “We have a lot of people coming up and thanking us for doing that, especially veterans and different people, different truckers and everything will thank us for doing that."
Parsley bought “Heavy Hook” when he heard Peterbilt was discontinuing the model for the 589. “I wanted one of the last 389s,” he said. The new unit replaced a Kenworth T880 heavy tow truck owned previously.
[Related: Last of the 389s goes to Oklahoma small fleet]
The truck features a custom paint job that’s unique in his fleet. “We wanted something to stand out, and it’s growing on me more,” he said. “So, that may be a new color for the fleet. I think the green went well with the black. It popped with it and with the chrome, so all three of those go together.”
The rig also features plenty of extra stainless all around, numerous watermelon and millennium-style lights, an EZ Pete interior and more. It also boasts a Kicker sound system.
The rig's button-tuck interior matches the black and green exterior of the unit.
Parsley has plans for a couple more upgrades before the 2026 truck show season really gets under way, including a painted aluminum floor to match the exterior and others he’s keeping under wraps for now.
With the truck’s limited use, it only has around 18,000 miles on the 565-hp Cummins X15, coupled with an Eaton 18-speed.
At the outset, the owner was skeptical about the reception he'd get taking a tow truck to shows. When truckers need a tow truck, it's typically "not a good situation," he knows, and the towing industry writ large has gotten so much "bad publicity,” he said. He worrried people might approach him with negative attitudes about a bad experience they had with another company.
Yet the 2024 389's yielded the opposite in many ways.
“We got a lot of attention, good attention” in 2025, Parsley said. “There’s never been anything negative, and I’m really thankful for that, grateful for that. Everybody’s been positive about it. They love it, they want to look at it, want to see the lights, want to see the interior.”
Being named by Overdrive readers as the Pride & Polish Limited Mileage champ “means everything in the world,” Parsley added. “That’s what we want. We want a positive image. I don’t go to truck shows to win trophies. I go to truck shows to meet people, to greet people, and to put us out there. ‘Hey, this is who we are; we’re not bad people.’ The trophies are just icing on the cake.”
He and his wife, Joyce, have “had a very, very warm reception" all around from the show community, he added. "And it’s just been a great ride.”
[Related: Pride & Polish: Meet the 2025 champs]
Find plenty more about Overdrive's 2025 Pride & Polish finalists via the video presentation of the category placements and winners:
