There are vehicles that get a person where they are going and there are vehicles that find a way into the heart and memory, changing the person they serve. Chuck the truck is one of those vehicles.

The truck came into Brent Skogsberg’s life after he graduated from Eastern Illinois University in 2003 and began working on a paving crew. It didn’t take long for Brent to realize that his convertible Camaro wasn’t cutting it as a work vehicle; he needed a heavy-duty truck.

One day, opportunity came knocking. “A guy in our apartment complex had a new 3/4-ton truck,” Brent said. “I asked him what he was going to do with his old 1989 GMC truck. He said he was going to sell it.”

The gentleman was asking $200 for the truck and added that if Brent was handy, this could make him a good truck. But, the owner thought the engine was shot.

“I drove it,” Brent said, “and it seemed to run perfect, but it was leaking a bit of oil.”

A good look under the truck and Brent found the oil filter had two gaskets on it and was dripping oil like crazy. This was easily rectified: “I put a new $3.50 oil filter on it, paid $200 for the truck and cleaned it up.”

The truck also got a new seat. “I went to a graveyard of trucks and pulled a seat out of one.” Next, he took care of the logo. “It said MC on the tailgate instead of GMC. The G was in the glove box.”
Brent glued the G back on, but came to the conclusion that the truck needed a name. He told his fiancée, Carrie, “The truck needs a name that is like a good buddy, someone that is reliable, someone that is always there.”

She mulled it over, then came up with the perfect handle. “Carrie said, ‘Chuck – Chuck the truck.”

“The name stuck better than the G of the GMC,” Brent joked.
When Brent bought a house, Chuck moved furniture safely from apartment to house. Brent and Carrie got married, and Chuck held up to the needs of Brent’s construction job. With the exception of being a gas hog, the truck ran like a top. The only thing the truck was missing was the requisite cup holder – so Brent created one of his own for Chuck.

“After we remodeled the house I had some spare oak and made a box to hold my stuff, since it didn’t have any cup holders,” he explained.

A couple of years down the road, Brent switched gears and became an insurance agent. “Well, when I got my new job, I was driving back and forth and since Chuck is geared real low with a top speed of 60 miles an hour, he wasn’t real handy getting back and forth – so I bought a sedan that got good gas mileage.”

Chuck was still loved, but not needed. “He sat on the pad next to
the house and I knew Chuck had some more years left in him,” Brent said. “I knew one day if it sat, I would go out and it wouldn’t start.”

Carrie grew up on the farm and Brent found the perfect solution for Chuck: He could move him to the farm and have a new life as a farm truck rather than a construction truck.

“I knew Keith, my father-in-law, could use Chuck and I liked the idea of retiring it to the farm. When I bought Chuck, I needed a truck with just liability and figured I had gotten as much out of Chuck as I could ever ask for,” Brent said.

He told Keith that it was like having to give up a beloved dog that one can’t keep anymore.

The truck was driven three hours south of Brent’s and Carrie’s Byron, Ill., home and now works on a grain farm. The truck is a mainstay used during the farm season and for hauling farm items around the countryside.

“Everybody that knows me knows Keith and Chuck,” Keith explained. “I have used it rather than my new truck. When we are farming it is funny; every morning, there is a job for Chuck.”

Chuck hauls fuel to the tractors in the field during the fall and spring and carries the heavy-duty tools needed on the farm. If it has a downfall besides the gas issue, it would be that the truck is a little warm in the summertime – but that doesn’t bother Keith much.

“Chuck doesn’t have air-conditioning and he is geared so low that he doesn’t go fast enough to stay cool, but what Chuck lacks in air conditioning he makes up in heater,” he said.

When they come to visit, Brent usually tries to get in a chance to drive Chuck and check his progress on the farm. It is like seeing an old friend.

“It is kind of cheesy, but I kind of think when I bought Chuck it was like the best deal in my life and it was at a time when we needed the best deal of our lives,” he said. “I sold my convertible Camaro and was getting married. It moved us into two homes and hauled our new kitchen.

“We have all had cars that were just cars, but Chuck was a good luck charm. Chuck was a ‘good luck’ truck.”

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication.

December 31, 2008