Ingrid Brown's storied trucking career has graced the pages of Overdrive at various points time and again, but now with 45 years' driving experience, grandkids, and a brand-new ultra custom 2025 Peterbilt 589, the blood, sweat and tears of her hard work has finally paid off.
Brown runs for 25-truck Blackjack Express LLC out of West Memphis, Arkansas, pulling the fleet's custom color-matched trailer, just the second reefer in an otherwise all-open-deck company. Brown not only drives for Blackjack, but runs the burgeoning "small reefer division" as an operations manager.
"I run all the reefers now, hire drivers, inspect the equipment and work with my shippers," she said. Those customers come with her, after decades as an owner-operator.
Brown, 63, took the company job after a brush with cancer took her off the road. She's better now, and certainly landed on her feet after showing the rig at Peterbilt's Pride & Class invitation-only parade in Denton, Texas, in October and getting back out on the road.
[Related: Pride and Class: 7th-annual Peterbilt parade event in the book]
In the days before the show, Brown was under the impression she'd be taking an all-black 389 for Blackjack. Brown had just returned to company headquarters after "hauling back home" in North Carolina with supplies to help the disaster relief effort following Hurricane Helene.
"I came in on that Friday to get ready and clean everything up to go to Denton, and there's a new truck and trailer" sitting in the lot with Bryce Carlson, Blackjack's owner, and some of the other fleet staff standing around suspiciously. Carlson had flown from Arkansas to the Tulsa, Oklahoma, Rush Truck Center to bring in the all-red 589.
"They had hidden it from me when they built it and surprised me with it," Brown said. "I had no idea. They got me on that for sure."
Since that day, Brown has put 15,000 or so miles on the truck, but also a name. Carlson, she said, sweated mightily arranging the build and delivery, as well as the new reefer division of Blackjack. Company general manager Allen Small apparently worked his hands bloody and raw preparing the trailer with its color-matched custom touches.
Brown's 589 in line during Peterbilt's invitation-only show and parade in Denton, Texas, right after she got it from her fleet, Blackjack Express LLC.
When Brown finally realized the extent to which fleet personnel had put thought into it, how far she'd come, and what the 589 meant, "all I could do is just sit in the dirt and cry," she said.
Thusly, "Blood, Sweat and Tears" became the rig's name. Thankfully for Brown, there's been little in the way of blood, sweat or tears since she put it to work.
"I love it," she said. "I’ve had 359s, 379s, 389s -- all of them." Brown used to be a judge for Overdrive's Pride and Polish truck beauty contest, so she knows a thing or two about outstanding equipment. This 589, she said, stands head and shoulders above the rest.
[Related: Ingrid Brown’s 2007 Peterbilt 379]
"It drives exceptionally well," she said. "Some of the points on this amazing truck are its better turning radius," even with a 300-inch wheelbase. "It usually takes quite a bit of room to get out of some of these produce sheds in downtown Los Angeles, but this thing is just wonderful."
As for the divisive, undivided single-piece windshield, Brown has become a devotee.
"Now we’ve gone to the one-piece windshield, I say I'm blessed because I didn’t realize what you couldn’t see in that split windshield," she said. "It just completely opens up, like night and day," also noting she thinks it will improve the safety of the rig. Yet when she looks out of the windshield, she's comforted by that long hood. "It still looks like a 389 or 379 to me," she added.
Her rig specifically has the "spaced-out car hauler front end air ride" that she said "just glides."
The quiet, roomy cab further gives her that first-class feel. "This doesn't have any road noise," she said. "It's really quiet and very tight. Our doors before," on previous rigs, "you'd have to crack a window to shut a door. Now, you barely pull a door and it's like boom -- shut."
For Brown, the tradeoffs between the 389 and 589 are negligible, hair-splitting differences she doesn't think twice about.
"The outside design of it is still not that much different" than a 389, she said. "The main difference is in how the sleeper attaches to the top of the cab."
[Related: Listen: Channel One-Nine Special from Over the Road -- Mechanics, with Ingrid Brown]
As for how she likes the interior, "it's unreal," she said. "I'm getting older so I want some more room in the truck."
Here comes Brown's only real gripe with the truck -- cabinet design. "The space is not the greatest, because the microwave deal is above my head.... I'm short," she said.
As for the "gaming shelf where you can put a 27-32-inch TV with all your outlets," she said, "that's cool but not for me. I'm an old grandma. I don't play games." Brown has been in touch with the folks at Peterbilt, telling them the 389 cabinet package could likely fit in the new ride, but overall she's still a fan.
"The openness is just really nice," she said. "It feel like you have room to be gone for two, three or four weeks at a time and it's comfortable."
The windows help, too, she said. "They opened it up. It's more airy. It might sound crazy, but it's more cheerful. That's an old-lady term, because you do have a lot of daylight."
Furthermore, she loves the sleeper door.
No longer does she have to drag everything in over the passenger seat, she noted of that sleeper door.
"Now you open the sleeper door and do like we used to in our older models and chunk it right up in the truck," she said. Overall, it's the "exact same Peterbilt they've been building since the 389," just with a "new cab and body on it."
Well, not exactly. The 589 has a digital dash, something not everyone loves, but Brown has a word of advice for them after 45 years driving trucks. "If you don’t adapt in this industry, you’re not going to make it," she said. "Adapting to this model has been really easy for me, really enjoyable, I'm still in the honeymoon stage with it."
Brown said she's had no trouble with the digital dash, and loves the quiet comfort of the 589's cab.
It helps that this isn't her first experience with the digital dash, she said. She's had them in the Peterbilts she's driven since they came out in 2020, and has never had a problem. "They're more accurate and there's more gauges."
Custom touches on the rig include plenty of Lincoln Chrome. "They’re my go-to," she said of Lincoln. There's also a painted visor that's custom, painted tanks, breather lights, lights under the cab, deck lights, and so much more.
The metal work at the back of the frame features Blackjack's name and logo, as does the paint.
"The cool part about it is the jack and the ace," Blackjack's logo, "the 21," she said. "We have it on the front of our reefer, but we also have it on top of the trailer."
The top-of-trailer view shown here.
"Whenever you go by traffic cams or go through downtown Los Angeles and there's helicopters for the five o'clock news, they pick that up," she noted of the jack-and-ace logo. "People flying drones love it, or out at a truck show. It's just a really neat thing. Also, if anyone steals your trailer, hello, we can find it -- warning to the not-so-wise."
Performance-wise, the truck's powered by the Cummins X15 with 605 horsepower, 2,050 lb.-ft. torque and an 18-speed transmission turning 22.5 tires. She can change those gears "in my sleep," she said. No problems with the DEF yet.
Overall, Brown understands the nostalgia for older Peterbilts. She lived it. But today she says the guys that say they "won't drive anything besides a 379, 95% of the time didn't even have their driver's license back then." She loves the way the 589 looks, but at the same time she doesn't care how people think it looks at this stage in her distinguished career.
"I've had a great safety record and I'm lucky to be accident-free," she said. "Why would I want to go and subject myself to something uncomfortable to me?"
Luckily for her, after all the blood sweat and tears, she gets to look great and drive great hauling for Blackjack.
Brown makes a delivery to a familiar place for reefer haulers.Ingrid Brown
