Dickerson Custom Trucks

I'm Dustin Dickerson, owner of Dickerson Custom Trucks out of Thorntown, Indiana. We've been in the same building for about 20 years. We started out doing cars and trucks and motorcycles and t Really been catc We've been doing semis for about 10 or 11 years. Really trying to raise the bar, We've tried to always outdo the one we did before and that's what were striving to do here when were invited to the 2024 build off. Certainly honored to get that invitation. We started out with a 96-379 that I actually hauled a little bit of corn with t So it was very much a work truck. It was a nice truck. It wasn't, We put the newer 389 gins on it so it reduced the amount of rivets. So really cleaned that up a lot. We put 389 hood on it because I needed a little extra room to get t I didn't want to stretch the hood, I've seen some trucks that get a little bit long looking with the extended hoods and I wanted to cram the big engine underneath there so we got rid of all the p So it was rather large with all the dozer drives, all the auxiliary p So we had to get rid of all that but were able to get a bell housing that would fit We took all the hub and everyt It's not typical to what you would see in a truck for sure or even a dozer anymore. We moved, made headers for it, buddy of mine, Josh Wheeland out of Fresno, California came out that I went to college with and built the headers for us. We had Brad Moss and Forrest, a machine valve covers Forrest and the intake plun There's really not Well there's not a lot that's factory about any of it to be honest but especially the air induction system. The truck starts out black and the color is called bomb pop and it's from paint huffer and they do a little stuff to it and then we tweaked it a little bit beyond that just so we'd be sure and be the only ones with it. But same with the green, I forget what the green is called off hand but it starts out cowsocky green and then we have a special pearl that they mix in with some house of color stuff and then again we tweaked it a bit further than that and put the silver pinstripe around it. So my oldest daughter Kendall actually came up with the stripe design. She and I both talked about colors and we kind of settled in on t I've probably influenced that a bit more than what she would We built all of the computer operating system on t We didn't have quite enough time to get all the interior done up the way we wanted especially the dash but it's all touchscreen. So were able to have a screen built that goes side to side all the way side to side in that truck and it's basically think of So all the gauges are displayed virtually. We've wrote all the codes, done all the stuff to monitor all of our pressures and temperatures, speed, RPMs, all the air pressures, anyt All of the switches that would typically be a toggle or a rocker or something Turns all that stuff on right down to the ignition. When we get it all said and done it's going to be biometric so it'll have a th We'll fire up the computer and put it through its power up signal, power up mode and we actually hired a graphics artist to have a startup sequence that every time you fire the truck up it plays just So we've really tried to raise the bar on our own abilities, And As we walk back you'll kind of see what we had to do to the back end to get the truck to sit as low as I needed it to. What's the ground clearance on it? 17 and three quarter from the bottom of the frame to the ground when it's aired out so pretty dang low. We designed all the cross members at the shop welded those all in those are all quarter inch sheet metal they start life just a five by ten sheet of quarter inch steel and we laser cut it and the guys bend it and form it and make it into somet I knew it from a design aspect I didn't want to run a belly pan or a deck plate if were going to go to all the trouble to box the frame it's kind of silly it just gives it a different look