It’s one of the perks of my job to meet a lot of good people in the business of trucking, especially at the Mid America Trucking Show going on this week in Louisville, KY – folks that own some pretty slick iron, too. That’s the case of Rick Hitchcock out of Webberville, MI, who drives for his family’s company, MBH Trucking, hauling molasses and liquid fertilizer, to grain elevators across the Upper Midwest and into Canada.

I met Rick and his lovely wife Jennifer in 2007 – barely married one year back then – as a judge for the National Association of Show Trucks (NAST) contest. Rick didn’t win the top slot, but he’s back for another try this year.

Rick’s dad, Matthew Brian Hitchcock, is the owner of MBH Trucking (Just in case you missed it … ‘MBH’ are his initials) and he runs about 11 trucks hauling just about everything — he even has a hazmat division, too. But this isn’t a cushy job for Rick, let me tell you: it’s his hard earned dollars and sweat (and not a little from his brothers) that have made his 2005 Peterbilt 379 – dubbed ‘The Slammed Pete” – and instant modern-day classic.

Sporting a sharp white and red two-tone paint design, the 292-inch wheelbase of Rick’s rig hugs the ground, with the big wheel covers on the rear tires making his piece of rolling stock look more like hot rod straight out of a ZZ Top music video. Rick’s truck sports a 625-hp Caterpillar engine – painted white and red just like his truck’s exterior – and an 18-speed Eaton Fuller manual. He’s living proof that youngsters (he’s only in his mid-20s) can still learn to the work the gears as well as any veteran.

It took Rick six months of work to bring the Slammed Pete to life, but only six seconds for a distracted driver to put it back in the shop. Late last year a motorist hit his truck head on, in broad daylight, smashing the hood and front axle of Rick’s Pete all to hell. Fortunately, no one got hurt and as the other driver was at fault, Rick got an $18,000 check to help restore his rig back to greatness.

Rick used the money to put a new hood and front grill on his Pete – which, along with the axle and fender repairs, took two months to complete. All the road salt from this year’s harsh winter also turned his engine’s paint job to a murky brown, so he pulled the motor to giving it fresh colors – work he had to do himself, with what little downtime he could squeeze into the day.

What’s cool about Rick’s ride, though is that it’s an honest working truck, with hydraulic cylinders installed on the chassis to give it more ground clearance where needed – even one to swing up the front bumper so it doesn’t get dinged when making deliveries. “I showed up at a farm this year and the guy told me, ‘You can’t drive that truck in here – it’s a show truck – it’ll get dirty,’” Rick told me. “But my truck is used to the work.”

He even enlisted his wife Jennifer’s help polishing up the Slammed Pete for the show this year – including putting a new coat of wax on its wooden floors. “I told him I thought they looked just fine,” Jennifer told me. “But he wanted it to be perfect, so wax them we did.”

As I said in a story about Rick and his family last year, the Hitchcocks demonstrate — to me, anyway — that pride is still alive and doing very well in trucking, thank you very much. That’s going to be very important, I think, in the years ahead as the younger generation decides whether to stay in this business or not. And why not take a little pride in choosing trucking as a career? The eye-catching low-riding design of Rick’s Slammed Pete may not be to everyone’s liking, but it tells everyone he likes what he does for a living. And you can’t ask for more than that.

“Buying used trucks can make good business sense.” –Jason Cluck

Spent some time talking with Jason Cluck, branch manager for Arrow Truck Sales in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Richard Holmes, a sales consultant who is brand new to the world of trucks. Arrow – a national used truck dealership chain owned by the Volvo Group, which also owns Volvo Trucks North America and Mack Trucks – is in the midst of rolling out a new used truck program aimed at fleets for a bunch of 2005 Volvo VNL 670 tractors.

The upshot of these new offers – a group lease package or straight up sale – is that used trucks aren’t afterthoughts in the trucking business anymore. The lease deal is for a minimum of five units for fleets in business for five years or more. With the average purchase price of the fleet program truck at $60,750, the average down payment per truck is $1,251.37 with an average monthly payment of $,1,226.00 based on 48 months. Therefore for a five truck package the average total down payment is approximately $6,256.85. Buying one of these used tractors outright costs about $1,249 a month with $10,000 down.

In fact, Cluck told me Arrow tailored these plans – entitled the “Expand your Fleet” program – specifically to appeal to small fleets operating 25 to 100 trucks, as the company feels there’s a lot more value to be had in used trucks today than many fleets might think.

“We’re talking about used fleet trucks, with about 300,000 to 450,000 miles on them, that are set up specifically to maximize fuel economy and driver comfort,” said Cluck, a former golf pro from Texas turned truck salesman, who’s been with Arrow for almost five years now. “They’ve only used up about a third of their expected life, yet cost half the original price of a new truck. And they are fleet trucks; meaning that they’ve been on a regular maintenance program for oil changes, tire work, etc. It’s good value for the money.”

Also, as Arrow is owned by Volvo, they get first dibs on Volvo-brand tractor trade ins – meaning they stand to get the best of the bunch, Holmes told me. “Not only that, we put them through an extensive inspection and reconditioning process,” he stressed. “On average we put about $4,000 into each tractor we get in, making sure they are road ready, so the customer can put them directly into service and start making money with them.”

And it’s not just buyers in the U.S. that are shopping used trucks more frequently. European buyers are sniffing around used lots in the U.S. as well, as demand for trucks is rising overseas while, at the same time, the Euro is gaining a lot more buying power against the dollar right now. “Russia is becoming a big market in particular, as businesses over there have a ton of cash from the rise in oil prices and are working on infrastructure projects at a growing rate,” said Holmes.

Cluck noted that used truck sales have been pretty steady over the last year in the U.S., as opposed to big drop in new equipment sales – largely because those used vehicles don’t come with the pricey emission-control technology mandated by federal regulations that went into effect Jan. 1 last year. However, what used truck buyers are really after both of them say is a vehicle with good overall value – one with a low purchase price, good operating metrics, minimum downtime, and good warranty options.

“They want the complete package, not just a truck,” said Holmes, who, despite his relative inexperience in trucking, has decades of hard-won sales knowledge (he once sold a fully equipped ice skating rink to a buyer in Seoul, South Korea – now that’s a deal you don’t see very day.) “You may not be buying the cheapest used truck, but you’re getting one you know that’s been maintained well and is backed with solid warranty coverage.”

That’s the other thing going on in the used truck market – more warranty coverage options. Cluck said on this current program, buyers can get up to three years or 300,000 miles worth of coverage through warranty provider National Truck Protection.

“Look, fleet trucks like these may not have all the bells and whistles, but they’ve been well maintained and are spec’d for maximum fuel efficiency and driver comfort,” said Cluck. “We can also set the customer up with a variety of financing options, help them get plates and insurance, etc. Like Richard said, it’s all about giving the customer a complete package, not just a truck. That’s what’s moving iron in this market today is all about.”

(And being the consummate salesman, Richard Holmes wanted me to make sure I’d include his contact information – so here it is, by email at rholmes@arrowtruck.com or by phone at 1-800-827 7692.)

You’ve seen the video and the incendiary copy by now — tanker truck rollover crashes and subsequent explosions in San Francisco and Houston almost back to back this past week put trucking front and center in the cable TV news hole, on a semmingly endless loop.

It’s a horror story for the drivers in each case: though the tanker driver in San Francisco managed to escape, his exploding rig collapsed part of the freeway, guaranteeing snarled traffic for months. The driver in Houston fared far worse — he got killed, the worst possible outcome for his family.

While the details of both wrecks get sorted out, one thing is for certain: both truckers were navigating highway on-off ramps that are entirely too narrow and too sharp for tractor-trailers. That’s one of the unspoken issues behind truck accidetns today — not only are most truck-car collisions caused by the driver of the car (75% fo the time), highways are designed from the ground up to handle cars — not heavy trucks.

I’ve experienced this all over the U.S. — many on-off ramps are barely wide enough to fit my vehicle, let alone an 18-wheeler, and you can feel the G-forces even if you exit the highway at the posted speed limit on most ramps. For a big rig with a high center of gravity, if you are not driving BELOW the posted speed limit on these ramps, you could be in world of hurt.

So as these two terrible crashes are reconstructed, let’s hope the investigaors look at the on-off ramps these drivers had to navigate, for if they were wider and not so sharp, we just might prevent these kinds of horriffic accidents.