This month\u2019s creation was built for Ned Vander Ploeg (60) of Lynden, Washington. Many of you might remember Ned from a previous article we did about him in January 2012 \u2013 when he bought his last truck (which was the second truck he had purchased from Clint). Thankfully, that 2012 Pete 389 was a great truck, so he decided to order another new rig. Red and black have always been Ned\u2019s colors, and this new one, like the last two, features those colors. Since his first truck was called Nedsled and his second truck was called Nedsled II, this latest \u201ccreation\u201d was dubbed Nedsled 3.89.<\/p>\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n
Turning 61 years old next month, Ned said not much has changed since his last article. He just gets up every day and goes to work (thinks the world would be a better place if everyone just did that). His family is doing great \u2013 his daughter got married and they now have two boys \u2013 Alex (2), and a six-month-old baby named Andrew. Ned said he loves it when the grandkids come visit, and that Alex always wants to ride with him on his tractor. Since the last article, he purchased a 2015 MAC 48-foot flatbed and had a Quick-Draw curtain kit installed, because \u201call of the cool kids\u201d have one. Painted to match his new truck perfectly, the trailer looks right at home behind it.<\/p>\n
The new truck is a black 2017 Peterbilt 389 with a red frame and a 48-inch flattop, a 280-inch wheelbase, a 550 ISX Cummins and an 18-speed transmission. It was also ordered with Low Low AirLeaf suspension, horizontal exhaust and small boxes. When the truck showed up, Charlie in the Service Department installed a Rod Pickett front suspension, and then the guys in the body shop installed one of Clint\u2019s visors, an 18-inch bumper, five cab lights in that \u201cold school\u201d configuration, cab and sleeper skirts (painted black), and painted Fisher half-fenders, mounted on Clint\u2019s hidden brackets. They also moved the driver\u2019s seat back a bit, for more leg room, and then Clint\u2019s dad chopped the air cleaners. The guys also painted the fuel tanks (red at first, then black, because the red just wasn\u2019t working for them), the mirror brackets, the headlight buckets and the dash panels.<\/p>\n
Back in 2012, on the Nedsled II, this was the first truck that Clint hid the urea tank. Still experimenting and figuring things out back then, Clint put the tank inside a hollowed-out end of the fuel tank. For this new truck, Ned wanted a little more available fuel capacity, so Clint had to find another place to put it. Opting this time to hide it under the truck between the frame rails, they put the urea tank behind the box and a \u201cdummy\u201d air tank on the passenger side of the truck. Hey, as Clint says, \u201cIt\u2019s not what you see, it\u2019s what you don\u2019t see!\u201d It takes a little more work to fill it (you have to lift the hood), but nobody ever said \u201ccool\u201d was easy! Thanks to Kenny and Tyler in the Service Department for all their help with this part of the build.<\/p>\n
Ned is the type of guy that prefers to do everything all at once, and although he intended to put some stripes on it when he got home, that just didn\u2019t work out. Now, he likes the fact that it\u2019s just a simple black truck with a red frame and a matching trailer. Ned has added a few things since he got the truck home \u2013 his friend Brad Powell of Outlaw Kustom Garage in Lynden, WA built him a cool rear light bar, along with a few panels for his trailer. Ned likes dealing with someone local, and from his own home town.<\/p>\n
Driving truck since the late 1970s, starting his career hauling hay, Ned has been pulling a flatbed in and around California, Oregon and Washington for the past 16 years. He bought the original \u201cNedsled\u201d \u2013 a Viper Red 2007 Peterbilt 379 with a flattop sleeper \u2013 from Clint in 2006. After putting almost 500K miles on that rig, he replaced it with the \u201cNedsled II\u201d \u2013 a two-tone red and black 2012 Peterbilt 389 with a distinct (and very cool) stripe scheme \u2013 from Clint in 2012. After running that truck for 375K miles, he ordered this third one \u2013 the 2017 \u201cNedsled 3.89\u201d seen here \u2013 from Clint in 2016. Clint has been trying to do a feature on this rig for months, but it just kept slipping through the cracks!<\/p>\n
Will this be Ned\u2019s last new ride, or will there be a Nedsled 4? Only time will tell. Until then, Ned Vander Ploeg will just keep riding in style in Nedsled 3.89, doin\u2019 what he does best \u2013 lookin\u2019 good and gettin\u2019 the job done! Big thanks go out to Ned from Clint for always being a great customer, and an even better friend!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This month\u2019s creation was built for Ned Vander Ploeg (60) of Lynden, Washington. Many of you might remember Ned from a previous article we did about him in January 2012 \u2013 when he bought his last truck (which was the second truck he had purchased from Clint). Thankfully, that 2012 Pete 389 was a great<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-clints-cool-creations"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15268,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15202\/revisions\/15268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}