Trick My Truck
Trucking is not an industry where you often get to boast that something is "As Seen on TV." For us, we get to say that about our whole operation! If you're a fan of CMT or the reality tv circuit, you might remember a little show called Trick My Truck, the brainchild of a handful of producers with a love of the trucking industry that was brought to life right here in our Joplin bodyshop.
The whole thing found its roots while we were presenting at the Reno, Nevada Truck Show in 2004. If you've seen us at shows, you know how busy we get. It's one of our favorite parts of the job. At this particular show, we had the Outlaw truck displayed as well as Rod PIckett's black 359.
The producers from CMT had flown into this event to scout around for a crew to help them with this custom semi-truck show idea, and were combing through the booths looking for leads. Person after person directed them to our booth, insisting that we were THE people to see if you wanted a quality custom job.
Once they found us, the speed at which we built chemistry was pretty insane. They had a camera crew in Joplin filming us at our business within just a few days!
We get a lot of questions and interest in the years we put into the show. This page is here to talk about the experience and give you some insight into a crazy period of time for the 4-State Family.
1. How many episodes did you shoot?
41
2. How many of your employees were involved in the show?
Three of the guys were ours. Rick "ScrapYard" Stone, CB Grimes, and Scott St. Germain
3. Are any of them still wih you?
Absolutely. ScrapYard still works here at the CSM headquarters. A lot of the guys moved onto bigger opportunities after the show. For example, Rob Richardson stayed local to Joplin, but operates his own car audio shop now!
4. What was your favorite episode?
An episode called American Classic that featured a teal and white Peterbilt 379 done in the old school style.
5. About how long did one episode take to shoot?
The truck took between 4 and 5 weeks, which resulted in up to 50 hours of raw footage. Still amazes us how the CMT guys managed to reduce all of that down to 22 minutes of the good stuff.
6. How challenging was it to get you work on film?
It got easier as we went. The most difficult thing was loosening up and acting natural around all of those cameras. It also slowed down our actual working progress on the rigs to wait for scene lighting and such during shooting, which could be frustrating at times.
7. What kind of reaction did you see from your customer base?
Well, the most direct impact was how well-known Chrome Shop Mafia is now. But the real benefit of doing the show is hearing from our truckers how appreciative they are of bringing the trucking lifestyle realistically to television. Building a positive image for the trucking community is something we'll always be proud of.
8. Do you miss doing the show?
Nah. It was an amazing experience - definitely a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but it is a relief to be back to normal. We'll always love the memories of doing something so crazy, but it is faster and easier to just go about business camera-free!
