It’s 7:15 a.m. as students pull into the parking lot. It’s early and most people are still half asleep as they drive into an empty parking spot. Although many are not completely aware of their surroundings, the one thing that most students notice are the five large trucks neatly parked in a row: two white, one green, one burgundy and one black.

“A lot of the time there is one [truck] in front of me and then they always want to back in right in front of me,” senior Niki Borgeson said.

Most people see the trucks and don’t understand why they are parked there, but to juniors Tyler Wiebe, John Richardson, Josh Jeffords, Ryan Skinner, Tyler Schaefer and senior Jeremy Wandling, the trucks are a part of them and their friendship.

“It’s a lifestyle,” Jeffords said. “The trucks are a choice.”

The friends are just like normal friends with the only difference being they have trucks.

“We hunt and just hangout,” Schaefer said. “We do a little fishing but mainly we just hangout at someone’s house. It’s nothing special.”

For them, the trucks aren’t just something they drive. They’re much more. Before Wiebe sold his former green truck,
“Tyler Wiebe Jr.”, his truck was always ranked Wiebe’s top priority.

“Out of all the things I would do, I would rather wash my truck than anything,” Wiebe said. “Truck or girl… truck first.”

Perhaps the only discrepancy they have is that they feel many people do not understand their friendship and the reason why they park their trucks next to each other.

“A lot of people take it the wrong way and don’t really like us,” Schaefer said. “A lot of people think it’s cool but most
people probably think ‘Why would you do all that to be friends?’ The trucks didn’t make us friends. We were friends before.”

As to what their ‘gang’ should be called, Richardson doesn’t give them a name. In fact, he doesn’t see them as a ‘gang.’ They drive the trucks just because they can, they park together just because they can and they are friends just because they can be.

“I wouldn’t call us anything, just a group of friends with trucks,” Richardson said.