Princeton, Kentucky-headquartered Chad Howton, owner of 30-truck Chad Howton Trucking LLC, has been running with his own authority since he started the business with his father in 1988.
The pair bought their first truck that year, a 1986 Peterbilt 359, when Howton was still a junior in high school “and built it from there,” he said. Howton’s fleet today hauls primarily flatbed freight, logs, wood chips -- “there’s not much we don’t tackle,” he said.
Over the next nearly four decades, Howton has seen the trucking business go “from manual to electronic in every way,” he added, noting that he’s the only driver in his fleet that runs an ELD. All of the fleet’s trucks are pre-emission gliders and are at this point still ELD-exempt.
Yet, in Howton’s estimation, “I know it’s coming down the line one of these days -- the ELD is going to be mandatory” across the board.
Chad Howton
After having started his career in that ’86 359, he and his father traded it in 1994 for the fleet’s first brand-new unit. Since then, Howton said he'd “always looked around for an old 359 that wasn’t worn out.”
He was browsing Truck Paper one Thursday night and happened to see this beauty of a 359 listed there.
“I called the dealership that had it the next morning,” he said, Jordan Truck Sales in Georgia, owned by Ronnie Jordan, about a six to eight hour drive away. Hold on to that unit to Saturday, Howton asked of Jordan, who agreed.
When Howton pulled up he found a lawn chair sitting in front of the 359 near the end of the lot. "I kind of wondered the deal on that,” Howton said.
Turns out, the truck attracted so much attention sitting out by the road that the dealership had “customer after customer pull in wanting to look at the truck, and they wanted to pop the hood open,” so they ended up posting a salesman by the truck, Howton said, to make sure no one damaged the unit trying to open the hood. “He told me that day, he said they had 60 people stop and look at this truck.”
There’s a good reason for that, even beyond its impressive exterior looks.
The rig happened to have been ordered new by NASCAR legends Junior Johnson and Darrell Waltrip back in 1983. Ronnie Jordan had the original paperwork to prove it, and gave it to Howton upon purchase of the rig.
The paperwork shown here shows “D. Waltrip & JR. Johnson” as the customers of Peterbilt of Nashville for the purchase.
And with a purchase price of $123,980 (in 1983!) -- that's more than $400,000 in today's dollars.
As Howton tells it, the rig pulled Waltrip’s racecars for Johnson’s race team for several years in the 1980s. The truck was originally white from the factory, then painted red when Waltrip raced a Budweiser-sponsored car.
It ended up with its current paint scheme before Waltrip garaged the rig for the next 20-or-so years.
A neighbor ended up buying it, and Jordan purchased it at an estate sale after that man passed away.
“The truck is kept mainly original,” Howton said. “It’s still got the AM/FM cassette player in it, original interior. … Hasn’t been modified or nothing like that.”
That original interior still looks basically brand-new.
Howton's kept the truck for 10 years in a climate-controlled building, bringing it out to events like the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, where Overdrive caught up with him.
“If it wasn’t bought by Darrell and Junior and had all the documentation, I’d be throwing the chrome to it, more than what it’s got,” Howton said. “They actually put all this on it when they ran it. So I haven’t modified or changed much at all, besides doing a lot of cleaning and polishing.”
What makes even more of a unicorn of sorts is what’s under the hood. It boasts a factory-installed Cummins KTA 600, which Howton said was only available from the factory for a couple of years in the early ‘80s.
A 600-hp engine at that time, he said, “was unheard of.” Most trucks of that day were putting out between 300 and 400 horsepower.
And as far as he knows, it’s still original to the point that it’s “never been overhauled. ... You can pretty much tell because, I mean, the original paint was on the motor up until three weeks ago, and the bolts on the motor, you could tell they hadn’t been turned. So the turbo’s original, everything. ...
"We touched up the paint on the motor just to make it look good.”
And that big $123,980 price tag? A big chunk of that is because of this engine, which according to the spec sheet added a whopping $23,523 to the purchase price.
Howton’s not sure how many miles the truck has on it today because the factory odometer only had a five-digit reading, so when the truck hit 100,000 miles, it rolled back over to zero. But Ronnie Jordan “figured around 300,000, something like that,” he said.
[Related: Son's 'Thumper' 1980 Kenworth K100 matches father's '79 model]
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Chad Howton: This is a '83 359 that is pretty unique. This one was actually ordered brand new with Darrell Waltrip and Junior Johnson. It pulled a race car.
Chad Howton, Chad Howton Trucking LLC. We're out of Princeton, Kentucky, which is about 175 miles from here. We do primarily flatbed, logs, chip hauling, low boy. There's not much we don't tackle. We've been in the business since '88.
Overdrive: You know, what drew me over here, of course, was the unique paint scheme on this truck. And, you know, looking around, obviously, it's got a really cool story behind it. So could you kind of tell me, you know, what this truck is and how you came to own it?
Chad Howton: This one was actually ordered brand new with Darrell Waltrip and Junior Johnson. Put it in the race team in '83. The truck was originally white and then they ended up painting it this color here, which I kept. That was the last team they run for, which I think was Lowe's. But the truck is kept mainly original. It's still got the AM/FM cassette player in it, original interior.
If it wasn't bought by Darrell and Junior and had all the documentation, I'd be throwing the chrome to it more than what it's got. They actually put all this on it when they ran it, so I haven't modified or changed much at all, besides doing a lot of cleaning and polishing and to that aspect.
Overdrive: What kind of engine and transmission does it have in it?
Chad Howton: That's what makes this truck unique, that this one was ordered factory with a KTA 600, which was only produced a couple of years for stock trucks. But it was a factory 600 horse back in '83, which was unheard of. Back then, they were getting 300 to 400 horse motors, and if you had a 400 horse, you were really top dog.
Just to get this factory 600 KTA was an additional $25,000, and that's in '83. If you calculated that up today, it'd be over $100,000 just to get that motor. This truck actually listed back in '83 for $123 and some change, which was unreal. But in today's money that would be $440,000 for a new truck. Now, can you imagine going to Peterbilt and saying, I want a $440,000 truck?
Overdrive: I'm sure they'd figure out a way.
Chad Howton: Yeah, probably would, probably would. This truck was only used a few years in the NASCAR, running the summer months of the year, so it never seen ice and snow. The frame is still original, hasn't been modified or nothing like that, had no rust. Most of them do. The colors that they painted it was the last race team they pulled for, and then Darrell put it in the building, supposedly for 20 years in a climate-controlled building.
We've kept it in a building since we bought it 10 years ago. We had bought it for the intentions of doing this, bringing it to the shows, letting people look at a piece of history.
