Paul Rissler, owner of six-truck Paul Rissler Transportation and Overdrive's 2024 Small Fleet Champ in the 3-10 trucks division, walked us through two new additions to his fleet of mostly gliders: the green 2016 Peterbilt 389 shown above, likewise this beauty of a silver 2019 Kenworth W900, powered by a Caterpillar engine:
The 425-hp Cat-powered glider has a 13-speed transmission and 3.36 rears. The unit is shown on display at the Crossroads Truck Meet show, May 3 in California, Missouri.
Both gliders were purchased from prior owners in April this year. They tell a story of the Small Fleet Champ's dedication to and accommodation of his drivers, a big key to the Rissler family's success. The green 2016 Pete replaced Rissler's own prior Pete (a beauty of a unit given to another of his small fleet's drivers). The Kenworth, meanwhile, was picked with family-on-the-road in mind.
The 2016 389 came out of Illinois, where it had previously been used by an individual owner pulling an end dump (hence the shorter stacks, Rissler noted).
Rissler outfitted it with new shocks, airbags, and other things to get it road-ready to work LTL reefer runs with the 2025 Utility trailer it's paired to, with a Carrier reefer unit. The trailer’s remote temperature tracking and 100-gallon fuel tanks are built for long runs. As Rissler notes in the video up top, Carrier's monitoring system has proved useful for Rissler to resolve disputes about running temperature time to time.
Another needed repair? The power steering reservoir was "leaking like a sieve," Rissler said, with some corrosion. The day before the Crossroads show, he took delivery of a replacement from Peterbilt and is shown filling the system in the Detroit-powered unit. It's got a 13-speed transmission and 3.55 rears.
The silver 2019 Kenworth W9 came shortly after from a small fleet owner in Iowa, after its original driver stepped away from the road and the owner ultimately decided to sell. Rissler bought it with one purpose in mind: to give his longtime driver Wes Martin and his wife, Bev, a more comfortable sleeper.
The Kenworth's outfitted with the Studio Sleeper, with certainly more room than Wes (pictured) had previously with a 46-inch flattop Pete like Paul's. It proved simply too crowded for Bev (Wes's wife, also pictured) to comfortably come along. The 2019 KW is here matched with an unpainted trailer in the Rissler fleet. Paul planned to paint the doors silver to help complete the match.
[Related: Faith, family, friends: Crossroads Truck Meet show building community]
At Rissler's older brother John Rissler's Crossroads Truck Meet show in California, Missouri, May 3, Rissler walked us through both new-to-Paul-Rissler-Transportation units, showing how the Small Fleet Champ balances performance, comfort and loyalty/dedication to his team. Catch more of the story in the video up top and/or this recent addition of the Overdrive Radio podcast featuring our visit to the Rissler shop nearby in California. And if Rissler's approach sounds like that of your business, we'd encourage you to compete for this year's title belt in Overdrive's Small Fleet Championship -- the entry period is open through July 31.
Small Fleet Champ Paul Rissler and the 2016 389 glider, so new to the operation he hadn't yet had time to get the fleet lettering on the doors.
Though he purchased the silver Kenworth after the Pete, you can be sure he made time to get Wes Martin set up right to run, though.
Enter your fleet of 3-30 trucks to compete in the Small Fleet Championship.
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Paul Rissler: I’m Paul Rissler, owner of Paul Rissler Transportation, LLC. This one here is a 2016 glider. Got a Detroit in it. A 13 speed transmission, 3.55 rears. This one came from Illinois. I don't know. A young guy had it that was hauling logs with it or had an end dump or something. Wasn't pulling a reefer. That's why the stacks are short.
I just gave my other truck out to my driver, my truck I was driving, I gave it to a driver. And so I need another truck. And I started digging. I found this one. The only thing we really done to it is put the half fenders on the back. This is a new style fender that, Hogebuilt came out with. They come down to a gangster-style, so they match our bumpers. This isn’t the new bumper on here yet. But if you look at the Kenworth over there, you'll see that bumper, how it’s coming around. They match these and. … I know he didn't do much to it. It was pretty nice when I got it.
We have a lot to do to it yet, but yeah, it's just I had to go trucking and put it on the road quickly. I put all new shocks and airbags in there. You know, I went through the whole truck like that. Make it mechanically sound, because the bushings were out, the bolts were broken and stuff like that on the bottom, worn out. So I drove and I felt it was going dunk dunk dunk. You know how they do. And so I brought it home and did all the, just the major stuff that had to be road-worthy, you know.
And this is my ‘25 trailer here. We built it for our show last year. It is a Utility. The reefer unit is a carrier, with iBright on it. We have tracking and can tell everything that's what's going on in the reefer. In the trailer. I can monitor all my reefers where they're going, how fast they're going down the road. The temperatures in the box, inside front, back wheel. We do a lot of LTL. So if the guy has bulkheads up. At least we can know what the temperatures are in the back, you know? It's not too warm. We can print it off, we can make a print-out. And if somebody says their product was too warm or too cold. And we print it out and it shows right on. It's not our problem. Different times it happened. All my trailers have a big fuel tank. So 100 gallons or better. So we don't have to fill them up as much, you know. Right. But get the fuel the cheapest place. So we make them, you know, the whole round or whatever. So to buy an expensive fuel and pay for a reefer.
This Kenworth came out of Iowa. He had a driver in it, bought it brand-new, had a driver in it. Driver got some kind of cancer or something, so he was off the road, and I almost didn't get it. I dealt with him for three hours on last Wednesday, last Saturday. And then he goes, texts me back, goes, “I'm not going to sell to you. I'm going to give it to my driver. My driver wants it.” Sunday night, he goes, ‘the truck's for sale. You want it?’ And I said, yeah. Anyway, Monday morning we went up there. Went and picked it up. It's got a Cat in it. It's a glider also. Yeah. 2019. And it's got a 13 speed and 3.36 rears. I think the studio sleeper, you know, had the couch and everything back there. I got it for my driver that was running a 46-inch flattop and couldn't take his wife along anymore because it's such a small bunk.
And she made the comment that she'd like to go with him again. Our trucking is all about family. And if a wife or a woman wants to go along with their husband, they deserve to go along and be with them. So I said, that's fine. Another truck. We found this, I mean, here, and he's Kenworth man.
His other truck was all matching painted rails, is dark red. And I get you this trailer to pull because I had it sitting there, and they don't have no painted rail or anything. So it matches his truck. Pretty nice. And we're going to paint the doors silver. And then he'll have a nice set up. So I number all my trucks by the month year. That's a 4 and a quarter for 25 because I just bought it. And for this one I bought in 525 actually bought it the last day of [April] but we couldn't have both the same number. So I went 525 on this and have, you know, five and a quarter’s a Cummins. It's a Cat, five and a quarter. That's a Detroit four and a quarter. Four and a quarter should be the Cat, right? So that's kind of funny.
