This month’s cover should take a lot of people back over 25 years – back to the late 1990s and early 2000s – when Mike Duffy of Canada was winning many of the big shows with his head-turning 1989 International 9300 Eagle. Fast forward to now, and after a series of uncanny coincidences and several involved players, Mike’s old show truck appears on our cover in all its glory, almost identical to what it looked like when he was showing it, before he sold it off to a guy and said farewell, so many years ago. But after lots of digging and investigating over a period of three years, the puzzle was finally put together and Mike’s truck – which was the ultimate barn find for one gentleman – is now in the care and custody of a man in Salt Lake City that truly loves and respects this vehicle and its history.
This story starts out with Mike Duffy (70), who was born in 1955 and raised in the Windsor, Ontario area of Canada, just across the river from Detroit, MI. Mike’s family was not involved in trucking, as his dad was a cop, and his mom was a secretary. Being a bit of a hustler and a gangster right from the start, Mike and his father did not get along, so Mike left home at just 15 years old and began an apprenticeship program at a local auto body shop, learning the art of paint and body. The guy who owned the shop actually came to Mike’s school to recruit him, and when he told the school officials about the apprenticeship program, they “released” him from school – he was only in the 10th grade!
After several years in the industry and getting really good at paint and body work, Mike opened his own shop in 1980 called Duffy’s Collision in nearby LaSalle, Ontario, Canada. A few years later, Mike was offered a management job to run the paint and body shop at a local GMC dealership and took it. A few years after that, he got burnt out and quit, moving to Belle River, Ontario, Canada, just east of LaSalle, where he built a shop and started doing his own jobs again. In those days, he got together regularly with a group of friends for breakfast, and many of those friends were truckers. After sharing how much money they were making, Mike decided it might be a good idea to buy a truck and put a driver in it, which is exactly what he did.
The first truck Mike bought was the 1989 International Eagle seen on the cover and center this month, along with on these pages, but it looked nothing like it does today. Back then, it was faded white, bone stock, was fitted with a sleeper, had a rusty frame and about 600,000 miles on the odometer. Hiring a retired truck driver named Sherwood Parker to drive the truck, Mike put it to work hauling automotive parts from various points in the United States to a Chrysler assembly plant in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Over the next few years, Mike’s company, Mike Duffy’s Trucking, grew to include five or six trucks, and he eventually got his CDL, mostly so he could be a backup driver. Hauling for U.S. companies, Mike got paid in U.S. dollars, so after the exchange rate was factored in, he was making really good money. Doing “just in time” delivery to the assembly plant, Mike and his drivers could not be late. In fact, if the assembly line had to be stopped because Mike or one of his drivers was late, he was told he would be charged $5,000 for every minute the line was shut down! Needless to say, it almost happened once, but thankfully it never did.
Powered by a Cummins 444 engine, which at the time was considered to be a powerhouse, the driver named the International Eagle “Big Bear” because it was powerful like a bear when climbing the hills. Later, on a local run in the International, one of his other drivers let the oil go dry and blew up that Cummins 444 engine, so Mike towed it back to the shop and stuck it in the corner, where it sat for a while. Enter Dennis Bradbury of Cincinnati, OH.
Dennis was an owner operator that started parking in Mike’s yard when he was up there, and he had a black Peterbilt show truck called Star Cruiser. Dennis saw the International parked in the corner and told Mike he should fix it up and take it to some shows. Mike’s response was something like, “That 13-letter #@*! spreader? It ain’t worth 10 cents!!” But Dennis was able to talk him into it, so Mike started working on the truck, doing almost all the work himself.
At first, he had a local mechanic named Jay Sterling rebuild the engine, then Mike painted the entire truck a dark purple color. Mike had another friend who worked at International and was able to get him all sorts of brand-new parts and accessories for the truck. Always pushing the envelope and very creative, Mike made plexiglass panels and then glued them to the frame to hide the rust. They made the frame look beautiful! Dennis told him how to clean the truck and get it ready to be judged, and Mike did so good, he surprisingly got a 3rd place trophy at his first show in 1999 – and that lit the wick.
Over the next three years or so, Mike made many changes to the truck and won many awards, included being featured on a Shell SuperRigs calendar. Back in the day, that was the pinnacle of success for a truck on the show circuit. At some point, Mike removed the sleeper and plugged the hole, making it a daycab, completely re-did the interior in purple, and then added dark metallic red ghost flames to the sides of the hood. Meeting photojournalist Bette Garber at one of the shows, she apologized to Mike for not being able to get those ghost flames to show up in her pictures, to which Mike replied, “Don’t worry, you’ll see them next time!” At the next show, his hood was covered with bright metallic violet flames that could not be missed on top of those ghost flames, that were still peeking out from behind, as well.
Most of what Mike did was a reaction to something that happened or something he saw at a truck show. Case in point – the engine. After losing that class to a fellow competitor named Neil Holsomback, Mike looked at Neil’s engine and thought, “I can do better than that!” Once he got the truck home, he pulled the engine, painted it purple, polished the turbo, and then covered the entire motor and engine compartment with chrome and polished pieces, pinstriping, and lights. He even lined the underside of the front fenders with plexiglass panels with flames and mounted eight purple watermelon lights, four on each side, under there, too. And guess what, he started winning trophies for his engine.
Remember, Mike was doing all this in the late 90s and very early 2000s, and he was doing it to an International Eagle, which nobody made custom accessories for. At a time when wood floors were getting popular, Mike installed a 5/8” thick plexiglass floor with flames underneath, and then surrounded the edges with purple neon tubes, that shined through the thick plexiglass and lit it up. He also modified chrome KW bezels to fit around all the gauges on his dash, modified and replaced the stock switches with toggle switches out of a Peterbilt, and painted and pinstriped everything, including the ends of the doors (I don’t think I’ve ever seen that).
Working closely with Bernie, the son of the man who started Dieter’s Accessories back in 1976 in Canada, Mike would design something for his truck and Bernie would make it. Bernie even offered him a job once or twice, but Mike never took him up on the offer. All the custom stainless on the truck including the visor, deck plate (which swings up on a hinge), light panels and more were built by Dieter’s (this company, which also owns Panelite, is now owned by High Bar Brands out of Minnesota). For the shows, Dieter’s also made Mike a set of stainless and louvered mudflaps and a stainless fifth wheel cover with lights underneath! Almost everything under the truck, including the suspension and rear ends, were either painted and pinstriped, chromed or polished. To get the front lower, Mike removed a few leaf springs and then hammered the rest flatter. Mike also installed polished external breathers, with lights inside, which were not available on the Eagle in 1989.
And speaking of lights, did we mention that this truck has a few of them? With 24 across the bottom of the frame on each side, 16 along the bottom of the back of the sleeper, 18 along the bottom of each fuel tank, 10 along the bottom of the cab on each side, another 5 on the front and back of each air cleaner, 12 up on top of the cab, and even a string of 16 across the firewall, under the hood, to light up the engine, there are lights all over this thing – 478 of them in total!
For me, the single coolest thing on this truck are the blinkers on the front fenders, mounted just above the dual square headlights. Mike took bullet-style cab lights with watermelon lenses, cut them in half, and then mounted them atop the fenders, replacing the ugly square ones that were there originally. Mike and his old Eagle were both way ahead of their time.
A few years later (Mike could not remember all the exact dates, which is why I have been a little vague on the years in this story) Mike sold his company and moved to a new place that did not have a shop. The International was the only truck he kept, but it had to be outside, and after seeing it sit through a cold and harsh Canadian winter, Mike decided he had to let it go. Listing it on ebay, the truck quickly sold, and then the buyer came to Detroit to pick it up and drive it home. That was around 2003, and the last time Mike saw the truck. Mike does not remember the name of the person who bought it. Typically, the story would end there, but this one doesn’t.
Enter the next player in this story. Craig Thornley (74) is the owner of National Equipment Services in Hyrum, UT, which specializes in the sales, service, transportation, and rental of construction and other heavy equipment. Back in the day, Craig did repossessions for some of the larger banks, and he got a call around 2009 to pick up an old International in Bountiful, UT. When he got there, the truck had no stacks, no front bumper, and what he described as “three inches of dust” on it. But it was dark inside that storage shed it was parked in, so he got out his flashlight, opened the driver’s door, and then immediately realized this truck was something special. Many of these repos he ended up buying, and this one was no different, so Craig became the International’s next owner.
After replacing the bumper, adding some 6” stacks, and cleaning it all up, he started taking it to a few local car shows and parades. Along with a few other things, the batteries had to be replaced, and when Craig opened up the box, he was shocked to find that even the batteries were painted purple with flames! Every event Craig took the truck to he drove it there, and it always ran perfectly. That old Cummins 444 may have been rebuilt way back in 1999, but it probably has less than 10,000 miles on it to this day. Craig had planned on keeping the old truck, but he got tired of polishing it and needed the space in the shop, so he decided to sell the Eagle.
Enter the next player in this trilogy – Don Fisher. Don is the owner of Donald C. Fisher Construction, Inc. out of Hyde Park, UT. Don is a general contractor, and his company builds commercial and residential properties. Don, who has four work trucks of his own that he uses to haul his own equipment, thought about buying the truck from his friend Craig, but he really didn’t have the space for it. He did, however, know someone that would be the perfect person to take care of this special vehicle – our next player, Wes Johnson (62) of North Salt Lake City, UT. Don and Wes have been friends for over 30 years, and Wes is well-known for his amazing collection of cars, so Don put Craig and Wes together, and Wes became the next owner of the International in 2014. Wes started calling the truck “Purple Haze” even though it still says “Big Bear” on the exhaust heat shields.
Not knowing how to drive a truck and not having a CDL, Craig gave Wes a quick lesson on how to drive the truck, equipped with a 10-speed, and then Wes drove it home. Snaking through a notorious stretch of highway known as Sardine Canyon, Wes said he grinded more gears that day on the short trip home than he has his entire life. And once he got back to his place, he parked it amongst the rest of his stellar collection of cars (and a few trucks), where it sat for almost ten years, hidden away, more or less, from the trucking public.
A very interesting character in his own right, Wes Johnson has a good story, too. His parents, Carol and Bill, opened a Dodge dealership in Bountiful, UT in 1958, adding a Toyota franchise a few years later in 1965 (one of the first ones outside of the west coast), with help from Carol’s father, Roy Menlove. Together, along with Wes later on, they built a family business that became one of Utah’s most successful auto dealerships, Menlove Dodge Toyota, with the slogan, “The last of the little guys” – which is still used today in the current operation called Menlove FreshStart, which sells and finances quality used cars to people with no credit or bad credit (the Dodge franchise was sold in 2007 and then the Toyota franchise and facility was sold in 2011).
Creating a character named Hank as a sales and marketing gimmick some 25 years ago, Wes puts on a “surfer dude” wig and “Billy Bob” teeth and goes into his Hank character. He started doing this at the Toyota dealership during sales meetings, and the joke just kind of stuck. Today, Hank’s Garage, as Wes calls it, has become a high-end, one-of-a-kind event venue in North Salt Lake that utilizes his extensive car collection as a backdrop. This 20,000-square-foot space blends vintage automotive charm with modern sophistication, making it the perfect setting for weddings, corporate events, private parties, and more. Surrounded by over 60 classic and muscle cars, Hank’s Garage offers a stunning location that creates an instant impression that elevates any event. Even if you’re not a car enthusiast, you’ll love this place (check it out at www.hanksgaragevenue.com). And this is where “Purple Haze” now calls home!
The incredible collection of cars at Hank’s garage, which is located in a quiet industrial park unbeknown to most who drive by it, includes about 75 cars, with a focus on Plymouth, Dodge and Chrysler muscle cars from the 60s, 70s and beyond. But with Challengers, Chargers, Vipers, Cougars, Cudas, Coronets, Impalas, Camaros, Bel Airs, Corvettes, Mustangs, Road Runners and more, the diverse collection has something for everyone and includes custom and original muscle cars, classics, limited editions, restomods, and a few modern hot rods, as well. On the wall it says, “He who dies with the most toys friends wins!” Which brings us to one of our last players in this story: Wes’ friend Mike Burdick.
Mike Burdick (57) of Draper, UT has been friends with Wes for decades – he even worked at the dealership with him at one point. For the past 30 years, he has had a commercial and residential window tinting and paint protection film business, and he was once tasked with the job of “exercising” the cars in Wes’ collection (meaning he got to drive all of them) – what a tough job! For years, Mike, who back in the day was a local truck driver, saw the International just sitting there, and for some reason, it called out to him in 2022 to get it outside for some love. Asking Wes if he could take it the Great Salt Lake Truck Show that year, Wes said, “Of course!” So, Mike took the truck to the show in August 2022, where our contributor, Stephanie Haas, got a picture of it. The truck got a lot of attention, but nobody dug any deeper after that.
The following year, as I was preparing to attend the Salt Lake Truck Show personally, I began reviewing the photos from the year before, looking for something I might want to shoot while there for a feature or a cover. I came across the picture of the International and started to get intrigued. I am always looking for the odd ducks or unique trucks, and a custom International Eagle, which for some reason seemed familiar to me, really stood out. I called the show promoters to get a contact name and number, and ended up getting Mike’s number, who in turn gave me Wes’ number. After some calls, I planned to go check out the truck after the show and possibly do a future feature on it.
Heading over to Hank’s Garage in 2023 to meet Wes, I was blown away at the truck, and at his car collection. Since Wes couldn’t legally drive the truck anywhere, we went ahead and did a quick photo shoot inside the garage, with the cars all around it. The shots turned out nice, but I wanted to find out more about this truck – and so did Wes! Doing some more digging, I found out that Bette Garber had put this truck in one of her books, and I just happened to have that book, so I found the pictures and I read a bit about the guy who built it – Mike Duffy. Now, the story was getting really interesting.
From there, I went into a full deep dive into the truck and Mike Duffy, but nobody had Mike’s number or knew how to get hold of him. This went on for months. Finally, sometime in 2024, Mike Duffy found out that his old truck had made an appearance at the truck show in Utah, and from that, he was able to get Mike Burdick’s phone number and call him. The two talked for well over an hour, and Mike (Duffy) got really emotional, reliving his glory days with the International. He could not believe that the truck still existed – and that it was nearly in the same shape as when he had sold it 20+ years prior.
From this point on, we were all in contact, but we were still hitting snags. In June 2024, I had plans to go visit Wes again and re-shoot the truck properly for the cover, but our entire 10-day trip to that area to go to a couple truck shows, do some photo shoots, and visit our daughter in Montana, was all canceled at the last moment because a wildfire was bearing down on our house here in Central California, so we could not leave. We postponed the trip a year, and then did everything we were planning to do in 2024 in 2025 – we even got to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary in Park City, UT!
Meeting up with Wes and the truck at Mueller Park in Bountiful, UT (which just happens to be the city where it was originally found by Craig), a popular hiking and picnicking location in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains just a few short miles from Hank’s Garage, Mike Burdick drove the truck there for Wes. While shooting the pictures, a few visitors showed up, including Craig Thornley, Don Fisher, and his wife Patience. The only person we were missing was Mike Duffy, who wanted to be there, but couldn’t. It was quite the reunion, and quite the photo shoot, and I could not have been any happier with how all the pictures turned out.
So, after three years, we finally put all the pieces together, got the pictures, and talked to everybody involved, which was a lot of folks. The only thing we were never able to figure out was the name of the person who bought it on ebay from Mike. Otherwise, we got the entire life and pedigree of this 1989 International Eagle. And what you see here is the culmination of all that work. I want to thank everyone who played a part in getting this together, as I could not have done it without a lot of people (you know who you are). I especially want to thank Wes Johnson for his patience and hospitality through all this – you are an amazing guy, with an amazing collection of cool vehicles, and a nice human, as well.
I know this story went longer than most, but there was a lot of story to tell. And, honestly, there was a lot more I kept out for the sake of space. Not every cover feature comes together quickly and easily – some take time to develop, and this was one of those, for sure. But I truly believe this ultimate barn find was worth all the work, because even after 25 years, Mike Duffy’s ideas and creations are still relevant and cool. And this old show truck is proof of that!