In mid-2015, Omar Ruiz out of San Antonio, Texas, owner of TOC Trucking & Transports, approached the team at The Texas Chrome Shop with a new project. Ruiz’s first truck, the one he had started his successful business with, was in need of some TLC and, because of the sentimental value he attached to it, he wanted the job to be a little extra.
He had three requests as regards the final product: that it be blue, that it be named TOC, after the initials of his three children, and that it be awesome. The Mendez family / team delivered on all three accounts, or as Roland Mendez explains in the video at the bottom of the page, they made sure to make it “simply badass.”
Meet Project TOC, which was unveiled in 2016 at the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas and went on to win all the major industry awards that year. It’s a beauty of a truck, inspired by the lowrider and hot rod cultures, that is also still very functional. In building it, the Mendez family aimed to keep it as functional as possible, so that it could still be taken out when need be.
To this day, Project TOC remains one of the most modified and stunning rigs out there. Considering this, and the amount of time and money that went into building it, chances are Ruiz hasn’t been using it for hauling that much in the years that passed since.
Project TOC is a 2000 Kenworth W900 L truck that was taken apart and re-built, with an eye out to extreme detailing, excellent craftsmanship and, last but not least, performance and comfort. The lowrider influences for it are apparent in the truck’s “sunken” features, the one-off painted steel bumpers, and the filigree that’s present both on the body and the wheels and that has been done by hand. Moreover, the highly-modified airbag system can put the front end completely on the ground, as well as raise it to legal height when it should function as a “normal” truck.
This was a tremendous project that took the Mendez team over a year and a half to complete, and some $150,000 to $180,000 in expenses. The cab was taken apart and stretched, and every other bit was made by hand or custom-made specifically for this purpose. The paintjob alone, which, according to TenFourMagazine, includes three different shades of blue and black with Blue Ice Pearl, in addition to the handmade filigree, took several weeks to finish.
“The paint job on it took weeks and weeks of just hard work, the filigree design that was done by hand,” Roland explains. “We’ve painted over 800 trucks in the last 10 years and this is by far the baddest paint job I’ve ever seen.
The filigree motif extends to the wheels, which is a feature you’re not likely to see on any rig, customized or not. Here, too, it was done by hand.
Project TOC is powered by a juiced-up Caterpillar 550 delivering 750 hp, and hooked to an 18-speed transmission, painted in similar colors as the rest of the truck. Everything about this rig is customized and matched, including the interior, which comes with black and blue seats and a custom blue dash. Custom grille, custom aluminum bumper, custom logos, custom lights and an awesome sound system (with “38 speakers and subwoofers combined,” according to Roland) make this rig truly stand out.
All LEDs on TOC can also turn blue at the switch of a button, which is how you know it’s in show mode. For normal operations, all lights are either amber or red, so taking this baby on the road is perfectly legal.
Rolland describes it as the “baddest truck ever built,” but stresses that the focus was to keep it “nice and clean” despite being 90 percent custom, so that it doesn’t assault the eyeballs. Indeed, while TOC is a stunner, you can only get a proper appreciation of the detailed, intricate and absolutely bonkers work on it from a closer perspective.
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