Hard work, attention to detail nets truckers $25,000 in Shell Rotella SuperRigs contest
Shown is Shell Rotella SuperRigs Best of Show winner,Canadian Ryan Danylchuk. (The Trucker/Dorothy Cox)
By DOROTHY COX
The Trucker Staff
6/8/2008
WALCOTT, Iowa — Hard-working winners of the 26th Annual Shell Rotella SuperRigs contest came away Saturday with $25,000 in prizes for rides that showed originality, a consistent theme, unique designs and colors, a blinding shine, attention to detail inside and out, and just downright awesome good looks. All entries had to be working trucks.
Ryan Danylchuk, a 23-year-old Canadian trucker from Winnipeg, Manitoba, came away with Best of Show. The trucks of 12 contestants were chosen to grace the 2009 SuperRigs calendar, including Danylchuk’s stunning and unique deep purple and coppery-orange Pete.
Danylchuck said he was “totally” shocked at winning the prestigious, overall first-place award. At first, he said, he was disappointed at not winning the tractor category, but that changed to disbelief and then joy as his name was called for Best of Show.
Darlene Swift of Taylor Ridge, Ill., also was taken aback, then literally jumped up and down with glee when she heard her name called for Best of Show, first runner-up, for her 2000 Freightliner Classic with a mural of horses running free.
“You don’t know how hard I’ve worked at this,” said Swift, meaning not only the contest but her entire 30-plus-year trucking career. “I run my truck every day; we run our trucks all winter,” she said. (‘We’ includes her husband, Wayne Baker, who also was a SuperRigs winner with his six-year-old 379 Pete with purple flames and “extended-extended” hood.)
Swift told The Trucker she was up until 4 a.m. Saturday hand-sewing curtains for the country-themed interior of her cab.
For SuperRigs winners, the hard work and attention to detail paid off in cash prizes, not to mention bragging rights.
But it also has paid off in other areas. Jerry Howard’s “Double Dog” 1953 red Mack LJ Classic, also a winner Saturday, has landed him freight.
Howard, from Fairborn, Ohio, said, “I get calls about it [the truck]. When I pull in they remember it; they probably would never remember me if I’d been in just another old truck.”
Those are some of the perks of having not just a rig, but a SuperRig.