Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Batman villain The Joker in the 2008 film "The Dark Knight" has been a pop culture mainstay throughout the nearly 17 years since the film’s release.
The Joker character himself's older than that, of course, and has shown up in trucking in the form of Joker-inspired paint schemes on numerous rigs -- including a 2019 Overdrive’s Pride & Polish winner and a more unique take on the comic book villain. At the 2024 Stars, Stripes and White Lines Truck Show, hosted by the Bennett Family of Companies at Atlanta Motor Speedway last fall, another fleet showed its impressive take on a Joker-themed unit.
Woodstock, Ontario, Canada-based Skillex Inc. runs heavy-haul with the truck, moving steel coils from Canada down to parts of Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, and back. In the U.S., the rig hauls up to 80,000 pounds, and up to 96,000 pounds north of the border.
Skillex company driver Daryl Koch showed the truck at event. Koch's been trucking for a quarter century, the last four years with Skillex.
The truck -- a 2024 Peterbilt 389 coupled with a 2024 Mac outfitted with a conestoga kit -- was built for the 2024 Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky.
It features a Plum Crazy Purple and Sublime Green paint scheme on both the tractor and trailer. The beam on the trailer is painted Sublime Green to match the truck, and the conestoga kit from Titan Tarps was printed in purple with green stripes to match the power unit.
Most of the custom work on the rig was done in-house at Skillex, with just about every member of the Skillex team working on the truck at one time or another. Company owner Mark Gunter “sat on a stool for three months polishing bolts all day,” Koch noted. “Everybody kind of helped build it. Somebody had their hands on it somewhere.”
The front end of the truck features a Peterbilt 379-style grille and 379 headlights with Double J brackets “just to give it a little bit of an old-school look,” Koch said.
The hood ornament was swapped out for one that features the Joker.
Under the hood, the rig boasts a 565 Cummins turned up to 605 hp, with an 18-speed and 3.36 rears. The truck sits on a 280-inch wheelbase.
The truck’s interior was done by Kendra Calleja, owner of Deadly Kustom Upholstery.
It features green and purple button tuck, a green and purple dash and much more.
All of the lights on the truck are Grand General watermelons with smoke lenses.
On the back of the cab, Ledger’s Joker is prominently featured with his iconic “Why So Serious?” quote.
The front of the conestoga is polished, so the artwork reflects onto the trailer, as well, as shown below:
Koch said there wasn’t really a plan to go with the Joker theme, but with the colors of the truck, it fit.
“We kind of took it and made it kind of cartoonish,” he said. “Kind of faded, blended a lot of color. … Some of the pictures that we got were almost too realistic, so we kind of cartooned it up a little bit.”
The 2024 Mac trailer is a five-axle unit with an 80,000-pound beam.
[Related: AN Transport 'Never Satisfied' with heavy-haul '08 W900L]
Find plenty more views of the rig in the video up top, and for more videos and custom-equipment features delivered to your email inbox, subscribe to Overdrive's weekly Custom Rigs newsletter via this link.
Daryl Koch: So my name is Daryl. I work for Skillex outside of Woodstock, Ontario, Canada. And, basically we just we haul steel coils. We do, we do some flat steel, but most of our stuff is all steel coils down to Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and that's that's it. We're coils back home. We do, we do two trips a week, about 2,800 miles.
We built this for Mid-America last year. Took us three months to build, get a 565 Cummins in it, turned up to 605. 18-speed. We did a Plum Crazy Purple, Sublime Green. We painted everything at home. Painted the beam of the trailer. All the undercarriage is painted, the T bars. Jeremy's built all the T bars to match the fenders.
We shortened up the back of the frame eight inches so all the fenders bolt to the T bars. There's only one bracket down in the middle, so there's no bolts. You see one polished bracket, that's it. All the lights are from Grand General. Every light is the same. They're all watermelons. They're all smoke. The kit we did from Titan Tarps is printed to match.
The interior is all done by Kendra. She builds hot rod interiors back home, so she's done all that. We turned our button tuck, it's supposed to be straight up and down. We turned it sideways to match our diamond. Just different, different things like that. Everything was at our shop. Jeremy, Doug, myself. We had help from a bunch of our drivers.
Everybody kind helped build it. Somebody, somebody had their hands on it somewhere. Mark's our boss. He sat on a stool for three months, just polishing bolts, all that stuff. So all the little tedious work, you know, and there's little things too, like, we took the glass out of the hood emblem. We put the Joker in it.
We took the 379 grille, matched it with the 379 headlights. Then we put the JJ's on it, just to give it a little bit of an old school look.
Matt Cole: Where'd the idea for the Joker theme come from?
Daryl Koch: I don't really know that there is actually an idea or, you know, it was kind of thrown out there because obviously the purple and the green and, we did a bunch of looking around and we found that. We kind of talking and made it kind of cartoonish, kind of faded, like, you know, blended a lot of color. Our graphics guy did that. He did a really good job on it. Some of the pictures that we got were it was almost too realistic. So we kind of cartooned it up a little bit. It turned out pretty good. I don't think there was a real reason to it.
Matt Cole: What's the model on the trailer?
Daryl Koch: It's a 2024 Mac, a five-axle. It's got an 80K beam in it. We haul heavy, so we haul 80,000 pounds down south, and then we can do up to 96,000 pounds back home. Our trailer kind of speaks for itself. You know, not a whole lot being done to it. Lots of lights on it.
