Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/16968
EXIT ONLY TODD DILLS Beyond Strange Cargo Landstar owner-operator works to preserve showman Tyrone Malone’s legacy O nce upon a time, a trucker launched his career as a showman hauling the frozen, pre- served body of a sperm whale in a reefer around the country. He set up at truckstops, carnivals, K-Mart parking lots and other spots in locales across the nation in the early 1970s, inspired in part by the “Save the Whales” movement, and charged a little for viewing. If Landstar-leased owner-operator Ken Har- ris is doing what he sees as his job, you know we’re talking about Tyrone Malone, and you’ll remember him for a long time to come. Truckers News Senior Editor Todd Dills is the author of a novel, Sons of the Rapture, and blogs daily at www. overdriveonline.com/ channel19. Write him at tdills@rrpub.com or http://twitter.com/ channel19todd. a lot about promotion from him, and he was just such a character,” he says. When Malone died in an auto wreck in 1997 (head-on with a semi, sadly, says Harris), Aberna- thy was hard at work on what today is the crux of his Prizm Entertainment business, a mammoth stage trailer he tours with himself. Ken Harris, shot this pic of the 1967 Kenworth Ty- rone Malone used to pull Little Irvy, his frozen sperm whale. After three decades frozen in the reefer, the whale was buried in Tulare, Calif., by the family after Malone’s death in 1997 — no doubt a gift to the archaeologists of the future, Harris notes. 192, so we’re getting close.” Harris is the proprietor of the new www.tyronemalone. net website, which documents Malone’s subsequent adventures in dragster diesels at the helm of the one- time Bandag Diesel Racing Team, with which Malone went well beyond his sideshow whale, setting some Class 8 land speed records along the way. After answer- ing a newspaper ad in the late 1980s, Harris says, “I was in Europe hauling a custom dragster like a rock star. I’d never been anywhere, had never even been on a plane before.” The impression left by the four months Harris drove for Malone was clearly lasting. “I often wonder, out of all the guys he had working for him, why he had such an impact on me,” Harris says. “It was such an experi- ence to me that I’ve never gotten over it.” Texas-based country musician and production man Mack Abernathy (mackabernathy.com) met a young Ken Harris during that European tour. “That Europe thing was quite an extravaganza,” Abernathy says. “We shipped my tour bus, [Malone’s] bus and five trailer trucks to Europe and did it all for Bandag — 55 cities. [Harris] was just a greenhorn kid at that time.” Abernathy credits Malone with a good piece of what he knows today about showmanship. “I learned 90 TRUCKERS NEWS OCTOBER 2010 Reese owns many of the classic Malone trucks, and in September he picked up what may be the most impor- tant among them, the 1967 Kenworth and special- ized reefer trailer Malone hauled that sperm whale in so many years ago. Abernathy traded it to him for another truck, and Reese plans to restore both truck and trailer. “It’s set up pretty much just like it was,” he says, but for a flat-top sleeper Malone replaced the high-top with in the 1990s. Reese says he could eas- ily put $25,000 into a restoration. Reese’s collection of 30 rigs includes such Malone originals as For video inter- views with Ken Harris (pictured) and Mac Ab- ernathy about the 1989 Tyrone Malone European tour where they met, and more, visit www.truckersnews.com. the Superboss, Hideout and other classics. Check out his website, www.tyronemalone.net — designed with a perhaps unlikely Malone enthusiast in flash web designer Sam Calderone, of Chile — and you’ll no doubt catch some of the Malone bug yourself. Enter Gary Reese of Hastings, Minn., who might be the Tyrone Malone of today. At press time, Reese was prepar- ing a Class 8 tractor to run at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to attempt to break 200 mph. “Last year,” Reese says, “we did COURTESY KEN HARRIS