Class 8 trucks are built to be some of the most durable vehicles on the highway, hauling all manner of freight.
Yet sometimes you just want to take a trip with family and friends and bring your toys with you. The custom Peterbilt 589 featured in the video up top was built with that in mind by Brian Bourke and the team at the Semi Casual Chrome Shop in Crossville, Tennessee.
Brian BourkeVideo and photos by Lawson Rudisill
Bourke noted it'd be the “ultimate setup for hauling all your fun toys" compared to a standard pickup "because you get big horsepower” with the 565-hp Cummins X15, 1,850 lb.-ft. torque, with an 18-speed transmission.
Sitting on a 240-inch wheelbase, the rig also has a hidden gooseneck ball to go along with the fifth wheel, so it can pull any kind of trailer.
Bourke said the goal with the build was “to make a really clean, simple-looking truck that’s custom” yet “doesn’t stand out crazy.” The white paint scheme is just “super clean.”
The Semi Casual team painted the grille shell, the fender braces, headlights, emblems and breathers for an “all-white-and-chrome look … just to give it that really clean, kind of hot rod sort of appeal to it,” Bourke said.
It's got a 12 Ga. Customs front air ride kit, which lowered the front end and “gives it that stance, makes it look pretty mean,” Bourke added. There’s also a bevy of extra Legendary-brand glass lights all around.
“One of the things I really like about this truck is when you look at it from the front end, you've got the stainless grille, stainless bumper, and then we painted the visor, painted the cab lights,” Bourke said.
[Related: Pristine pair of custom 2024 Peterbilt 589s]
That visor is a Semi Casual exclusive called the Sweeper visor that the shop sells online. The team designed it when the 589 first came out and “it just fits the truck right,” Bourke said. “It covers enough of the windshield, so it keeps the sun out of your eyes, and it’s just a really cool piece.”
Moving down the side of the rig, the door handles, tanks and rear fenders are all painted to match the truck.
From the rear, the back of the cab features five lights in the center under a rear window with two lights offset on the outside. That same light pattern is also on the rear T-bar.
To help with visibility for four-wheelers maneuvering around the rig, two outside lights on the back of the cab double as turn signals. A car riding beside the truck will thus be able to see those lights with the rear signal out of view.
The truck’s interior is black with brown leather, complementing wood-grain accents from the factory.
Morel components with SounDigital amps for the stereo push around 2,000 watts. “It’s really loud but very clean,” Bourke noted. “You can turn it up, listen to it, you can't hear anything else but the radio if you wanted to, but it sounds great.”
In the sleeper, instead of a bed, the Semi Casual team added a bench seat to bring friends and family along for the ride.
The bench is wrapped in leather to match the front seats. It’s also equipped with a refrigerator and 110-volt outlets on both sides.
“It’s super comfortable,” he said. “You can go down the road in this thing for 10 hours, make a big, long road trip and just enjoy the ride.”
[Related: '81 Peterbilt 359 boasts rare 84-inch AeroStar sleeper]
For custom-equipment features and videos delivered to your email inbox, subscribe to Overdrive's weekly Pride & Polish newsletter via this link and access all videos in the YouTube playlist below.
Brian Bourke: Hey, guys. How's it going? Brian here with Semi Casual Custom Trucks. We are a truck upfitter, truck builder, part of Fitzgerald Peterbilt.
Behind me, we've got our truck we're debuting in here at MATS, which is a single-axle 589. So the inspiration behind this build really is to just make a really cool truck that has all the luxuries and amenities you would have in any of your, like, $100,000 pickup trucks, right? But married into a semi. This truck is ultimately designed to get you and your family and friends safely to your destination with whatever in the world you want to put behind it.
This is just like the ultimate, the ultimate setup for hauling all your fun toys because you get big horsepower -- 565, 1,850 torque, with the X15 and 18-speed automated transmission. Your 240 wheelbase. And it's even got a hidden gooseneck ball in the back so you can pretty much hook up any trailer you want to and go down the road. We went with white because it's super clean and we painted the grille shell, the fender braces, the headlights. We custom painted the emblems, the breathers, we painted the visor, painted the cab lights.
The visor we use is called a Sweeper visor. It's a part that you can only get through us, and it's great because the front of the truck, the visor, the curvature, everything with the way it looks, it just fits the truck right.
Kind of moving around, looking at other things, we take the door handles out. We paint the door handles to match the truck. We painted the tanks, we painted the rear fenders, and we painted the entire chassis base clear. That way when you're watching it, it washes easy. The paint on the frame lasts forever, and we've even put incorporated storage boxes in there.
Going around to the back of the truck here, one of one of the unique features I really like about this is how we did the lights in the back of the sleeper. So in the back of the sleeper we've got our five lights in the center, two lights on the outside, their fringed in to the back of the sleeper, give it like a pretty cool little custom look. And then when you go back to the T-bar, we actually copy the same the same light pattern and style with the rear T-bar, reassessing the lights in there and the spacing the same. So when it's going down the road at night and you're coming up on the truck, it looks it looks very symmetrical.
Another key thing that we did with the truck that, with these guys pulling like a race trailer, their horses and stuff like that, cars are coming up on you on your right and your left. And if you want to make a lane change, you've got your turn signals on the back, on your T-bar and on your trailer. But then going up this direction, cars may not pay attention to it. So we actually made the sleeper lights on each end, they're a running light, and they're also a turn signal, which is just a good safety feature for cars coming up on you. If you got your turn signal on, hopefully they'll see that, you know, that's kind of the idea behind it.
All right. So getting to the inside of this truck, probably my favorite thing about this entire truck is how we've done the interior in this thing. We did an all black with brown leather in there as accent pieces. You'll see here in the doors, we've done the leather stitching and diamonds. These colors work really well with the factory wood grain that's in there.
We've added a ton of speakers, so the stereos got all Morel components up front in the cab. We're using SounDigital amps, and it's a it's a little north of 2000W. Up top, we did six and a half, three-inch and a tweeter. In the doors we did a six and a half, and then we did a tweeter mounted here in the A-pillar.
It gives you a full range of audio and is centered around the driver and passenger. And it just it sounds great.
And then when you get to the back, probably my favorite thing about these trucks is what we do in the sleeper. So back here we put a bench seat. It's all wrapped in leather matching the front seats. We've got our inserts. This is actually a fridge right here. You've got 110 outlets on both sides. We've got a sub over here. More storage on this side. It's super comfortable. You can put your feet out and you've got all the room in the world. You can go down the road for this thing in 10 hours, make a big long road trip and just enjoy the ride.
One of the biggest features of these trucks is you get the big horsepower and you get you get a good braking system. When you're hauling a big trailer with race cars or horses or whatever in this, one of the biggest setbacks to guys trying to use like a Ford 550 or something is you don't have the braking power to safely stop something or maneuver in the road. With this truck and the suspension and the chassis, it does all those things exceptionally well. And then what we've done to the inside is made it just as comfortable as you would get in any of your three-quarter ton and one-ton pickup trucks.
