Owner-operator Joe Bielucki's recent tangle with a customer trying to cut his rates turned into something of a how-to guide on fighting cheap freight, and a follow up story on his 2023 International HX with an old-school custom paint job further turned heads here at Overdrive.
Bielucki's story inspired many owner-ops facing the same challenges, but showing off the truck at this publication also gave him something of a "gift" that meant a lot to the hauler of nearly four decades.
After sending in pictures of the rig, someone showed him a post about his truck on Facebook -- in the comments, he found something unexpected.
"The gift is that the guy I rode with as a kid posted a comment," said Bielucki. "I was truck sick all my life. I had a neighbor who was a young owner-operator back in the early 80s and he had an International 4300. I went over one day to look at the truck, and he asked if I would wanna tag along sometime."
Bielucki agreed while "trying to act cool," he said.
The young owner-operator was "Bruce Childs, one early badass of the steel hauling" trade, Bielucki added. "The times I got to ride with him was like going to school. I watched and made permanent mental notes of everything."
The International started with a 250 Cummins and a 13-speed, but "over a few years and some changes it ended up at 380 hp, which was what a lot of those guys did with the old NTC engines," said Bielucki. Childs added an "aftercooler, a bigger turbo and some hotter fuel injectors" to boost the 250, but the truck remained a bit of a bone-shaker.
