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| The concept was simple. Bring big rigs and NASCAR racing together for a terrific day of gleaming trucks and an exciting evening of fast cars. It seems the idea of “fun” truck shows is really taking off. After years of “hard work” truck shows (which have seen a sharp decline of entrants), truckers are
embracing the concept of a show where they can actually have a good time. And that obviously was a factor at the first-ever truck beauty show held in the parking lot of Irwindale Speedway on Saturday, September 1st. With over 80 big rigs entered into the show, “Trucker’s Night” was a huge success.
Put together by the folks at the speedway, Ricardo Long of
Los Angeles Freightliner and 10-4 Magazine, the 1/2-day show
featured trucks from as far away as New York, competing in four classes for awesome trophies donated by APP Forged Wheels
of Santa Ana, California. The trophies were 22-inch miniature
versions of APPs cool one-piece aluminum wheels mounted on
a stand that looked like the wheel’s center cap. The top 16 finalists got to take a few parade laps around Irwindale’s 1/2-mile oval, zig-zagging up and down the track’s banked corners while
blowing their horns, before lining up in front of the grandstands to receive their awards in front of the cheering masses.
With the wide variety of trucks in attendance, almost every facet of the trucking industry was well-represented. With 3-axle tractor trailers, tankers, dumps, antiques, fire engines, 2-axles,
mixers, fleet trucks, specialty rigs, tow trucks, roll-offs, auto haulers and more, there was something for everyone. Best of Show went to Mike Humphries of Bloomington, CA for his bright yellow 1980 Pete (top center photo); Best Working Truck was Bob Doyle’s
2000 Pete tanker (lower left photo); Best Vintage Truck was
presented to Al Freilich of Riverside for his clean 1928 Model-A Ford UPS delivery truck (photo on Contents page); and People’s Choice went to Guillermo Hernandez for his 2001 Freightliner, adorned with exciting and
colorful graphics (lower right photo).
After the winners were announced and all the
trophies were handed out (and a few
autographs were signed), the track was cleared and the evening of exciting NASCAR racing began with racers running their qualifying laps.
It was nice to see all the truckers just park their rigs and come back to watch the races. Starting around 2:00 PM and finishing by 7:00 PM, the truck show portion of the event was short and sweet. After that, it was time to relax and hang out with family, friends and fellow truckers. And that’s what most did. Very few trucks left without watching the car racing action, which occurs every Saturday night through Thanksgiving and was free that
night to all who entered the truck show.
The feature race of the evening was NASCARs Featherlite Southwest Series Food-For-Less 250, which saw many thrills and spills throughout. Also racing that evening was American Race Trucks and Ultra Wheels Super Trucks. Due to the smaller size of the track and the large numbers of cars and trucks competing,
there was a lot of bumping, spin-outs and wall slamming (nobody was hurt). Irwindale Speedway is considered one of the finest small ovals in the west, and, along with the parking lot’s palm trees and grass, was an ideal spot to hold a truck show.
Thanks go out to everyone who attended and helped make this a really fun local show. We’re sure many of the race fans are now also truck fans and that a few truckers out there will now be seen regularly in Irwindale Speedway’s grandstands.
