Most giveaways top out at a gift card. This one is a 60-year-old semi-truck with a busted tilt bed, an exhaust leak, tires older than most of the people watching the video, and a backstory involving Woodstock, an acid trip, and a chainsaw sculptor. Naturally, the plan is to fix it up and hand the whole thing over to a stranger for free.
The project comes from automotive YouTube channel Big Time, teamed up with Pabst Blue Ribbon on an idea that sounds less like a marketing campaign and more like a dare somebody actually said yes to: find a vintage big rig nobody in their right mind would casually take on, restore it over two months on camera, and give the finished truck away to whoever wins a no-purchase-necessary drawing. Before any of that could happen, the team first had to survive the process of finding a truck worth saving, which did not go smoothly.
The First Truck Broke Down Before They Even Got It Home
An earlier candidate seemed promising right up until its air brakes locked up mid test-drive and the whole thing died in the road. That truck got crossed off the list on the spot, and the search continued until the team landed on a 1969 Kenworth W925, a Cummins-powered dual-axle rig running a 230-horsepower 855 small-cam engine, a 13-speed Fuller Roadranger transmission, and Rockwell SS heavy-duty rear axles.
It wasn’t pretty. The tilt bed didn’t work, the exhaust leaked, the fuel tank had visible dents, and the tires looked like they’d been mounted during the Nixon administration and never touched since. None of that scared the team off, mostly because of what they learned about where the truck had come from.
Woodstock, an Asylum, and a Chainsaw Career
According to Jack, the mechanic who knew the truck’s history, the Kenworth once belonged to a man named Robert “Bob” Hyrick, who Jack says played guitar for the 1960s rock band Canned Heat, a group that performed at Woodstock. As the story goes, Bob froze up mid-performance one night after taking too much acid, was taken off stage, and ended up in a mental health facility receiving treatment before recovering.
From there, the story gets even stranger. Bob’s family reportedly bought him a small plot of land in Big Bear, California, to help him heal, and he eventually traveled to San Francisco to learn chainsaw wood sculpting before returning to Big Bear and starting his own business, Sugarloaf Cordwood Co. He allegedly bought the Kenworth specifically to haul the timber he sold as firewood and carved into sculptures, teaching himself to drive the big rig along the way. The Big Time team is upfront that none of this can be fully verified. There’s barely a digital trace of Bob online, not even a photo, so the entire account rests on secondhand memory. Based on Google Maps history, the truck appears to have sat parked in the same spot for roughly 15 years before anyone came to move it again.
A Truck With More Personality Than Paperwork
Whatever the true version of Bob’s story turns out to be, the truck backed it up with plenty of character once it rolled into the shop. Inside the cab, the team found an old-school paper log meter for tracking hours, a Jacobs engine brake, and a stash of vintage five-cent Double Bubble gum that had apparently been sitting there since long before anyone watching the video was born. Somewhat surprisingly, the suspension and wear components looked to be in better condition than those on Big Time’s other truck, a Detroit Diesel-powered rig nicknamed Bud.
That comparison set up the day’s real stress test. Rather than just admire the old Kenworth, the team decided the only reasonable move was to hook it up to Bud and see which truck could physically drag the other one backward.
The Tug-of-War Got Ugly, Fast
Bud’s Detroit Diesel 6V92T made significantly more power, roughly 350 horsepower and 850 lb-ft of torque against the Kenworth’s 230 horsepower and 650 lb-ft, and rode on much fresher rubber. Before the match, Jeremiah predicted the Kenworth’s extra weight and dual rear axles would give it the edge, though he admitted it could go either way. The result backed up his hunch. Round one saw the old truck pull Bud backward without much resistance. Round two settled it completely, with the Kenworth bucking so violently under full power that it ripped the interior headliner clean out of Bud’s cab.
It was, by any measure, an absolutely lopsided win for a truck that had been sitting untouched and unloved for roughly 15 years before that morning.
The Real Work Starts Now
With the truck secured and its mechanical bite fully confirmed, the actual restoration is only just beginning. Over the next two months, the Big Time team plans to clean, repair, and modify the Kenworth before giving the finished truck away entirely for free, no purchase necessary.
For a rig that spent fifteen years quietly rotting in the same spot, dragging around a legend nobody can quite confirm, it’s about to get a second act that its original owner, mythical or not, almost certainly never saw coming.
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