Wanna Talk EPA? Yeah, I Didn’t Think So

Nearly 20 years ago Sports Illustrated did a feature on sports superstitions including the infamous SI cover jinx. It was a cover feature (must have been a slow news week) with a black cat on the front and it was titled, “The Cover No One Would Pose For.” I remember thinking it was kind of odd to put just a cat on a sports magazine cover, but I can’t blame an athlete for passing on the opportunity to be on the cover for a feature talking about the SI cover jinx. (Teams or players featured on the cover have been known to lose or play horribly the week after being on the cover.)

The magazine reached out to several current players at that time including Kurt Warner who wore jersey number 13 for his career – a number many superstitious people feel is unlucky. After many rejections, the sports publication ended up with the black cat on the cover, which I’m guessing frustrated the editors.

Almost every diesel enthusiast can pinpoint what got them to become the modified diesel pickup owner they are today. Rarely does someone wake up one day and decide, ‘Hey, I want to pump thousands and thousands of dollars into my truck.’ More likely, it’s a passion bred from a young age. For 47-year-old Jake DeBruler from Leslie, Mich., it started with go-karting as a kid.

While Jake didn’t end up competing for wins in the Monaco Grand Prix like seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, he hasn’t lost his racing spirit. Every year his competitive family heads to Silver Lake Sand Dunes in Michigan with their eight or nine trucks for some sunshine, relaxation and yes, truck races up the dunes.

“We all get busy with our careers,” Jake said. “We all get busy with our jobs and our own families. We just don’t get a ton of time to spend together. It makes for a nice peaceful trip and doing what we all love to do. We all love building our trucks and running them because we’re all competitive. Drag racing each other or climbing the hills faster, whatever it may be.”

From large industry events to a backyard show and shine, everyone remembers their first truck show. Devin Walsh remembers his: the Texas Heat Wave in Austin, Texas. A friend asked to include Devin’s 2006 Ford F250 6.0L Power Stroke in his booth at the show and Devin was honored.

He loved connecting with new people while at the show, learning about their diesel builds while answering questions about his own and truly embracing the camaraderie that comes with immersing yourself in the diesel industry. Texas Heat Wave would be just the first of many shows for Devin.

An Open Door

Devin’s uncle worked at a Ford dealership, which helped plant the seed that would eventually get Devin hooked on diesel pickups. In the summer of 2017 he started the search for a diesel of his own. He was looking for something a little newer, but had his eyes on a 2005 Chevy 2500 with a 6.6L Duramax turbo diesel engine or a 1999 7.3L F250 Power Stroke.

In the blockbuster film Interstellar, Matthew McConaughey plays a space cowboy who sacrifices himself for the sake of science. “Newton’s third law,” he says, in an attempt to save Anne Hathaway’s character’s life. “You’ve got to leave something behind.”

Erin Millage isn’t a movie star, nor is she in space resigning her life for the sake of all humanity, but she does understand the concept of leaving something behind in the interest of something better.

Erin is on her fifth truck. She sells her old trucks to buy new ones, learning how to work on them along the way. Not bad for a 25-year-old who didn’t get her first truck until she was at college.

Warranty Savers

TWO UPGRADES THAT WON’T VOID YOUR WARRANTY

While waiting to turn onto a busy road in his 2016 RAM 3500 truck, Dave Friedli became impatient and decided to “shoot the gap,” which shocked his family who didn’t observe the situation the same way. Dave mashed on his pedal while his wife Kris gasped, and the truck…well, the truck hesitated. The Cummins diesel pickup is new to Dave and up to this point he hadn’t really had a need to stomp on the pedal until now as he tends to baby his trucks. The horrible lag time was a real eye-opener for him and his family as they safely merged into traffic but all agreed it was a lot closer than anyone was expecting.

“I saw a gap and as I pulled out I noticed the truck wasn’t going as quickly as I wanted it to go,” said Dave with a smile. “It made my wife a little nervous and this led me to doing a little research to see what was out there.”