Philip Fleming won our Stars, Stripes & Steel Giveaway, then drove to Madisonville and pulled the CONEXPO 32K GVWR dump trailer home himself.
Back in July we put a trailer on the table. Not a stripped-down door prize. The actual 32K GVWR telescopic dump trailer we unveiled at CONEXPO, then handed to Cody Archie at Bar 7 Ranch so he could try to break it. He didn’t break it. He put 36,000 lbs of road base in it and it dumped every pound. Then we gave it away. More than 10,000 people entered. One name came out.
One name out of 10,000
Cody made the call himself. Philip Fleming picked up, heard he’d won a 32K dump trailer, and figured his buddies were pranking him.
“I’ve never won anything. Especially nothing of this magnitude.”
Senior Vice President Devin Davis followed up the next day to handle the paperwork. A few weeks after that, Philip pulled into Madisonville to hook onto it in person.
Meet Philip
Philip is retired from automotive. He and his son run a ranch in Oklahoma and a landscaping business on the side. Clearing, mulching, gravel, dirt work, roads. Between the two of them, there’s always something that needs moving.
“We’ll be moving some equipment with it and putting it to good use,” he said. Which is exactly what this trailer was built for.
He was already shopping us
Here’s the part we didn’t expect. Philip wasn’t a stranger who stumbled onto an entry form. He’d been shopping trailers for about a year and a half, comparing seven or eight of our competitors, and had already zeroed in on Texas Pride. He had three or four quotes in hand from sales rep Matt Fraley at the factory when he saw the giveaway, watched Cody’s stress-test video, and entered.
“I like the story, the quality of the trailer. I just decided that this is what I wanted.”
Then he won the thing outright. As he put it to his sales rep on the way out: sorry you’re going to miss the sale, Matt.
What he’s taking home
This is the same trailer that spent a full day at Bar 7 Ranch getting worked over on camera:
- 8′ × 14′ gooseneck, 32,000 lb GVWR
- 3-stage telescopic lift on a single 24,000 lb cylinder, bottom-mounted so there’s no doghouse in the box
- 12″ / 22 lb I-beam frame, crossmembers on 12″ centers
- 7-gauge floor and sidewalls
- Dual 15K axles, 18-ply tires, electric-over-hydraulic brakes
- Two 12,000 lb hydraulic jacks
- Electric tarp, barn doors plus a spreader door, toolboxes both sides
And the numbers that came out of the test: 36,000 lbs dumped without a strain. About 2,490 lbs of tongue weight with a legal 12-ton load in the box, which is roughly a pallet of feed sitting on your tailgate. Big rock dropped in from eight to ten feet up left two dents under a quarter inch, and Cody put both of them on camera instead of editing them out.
The 36,000 lb load was a closed-course overload test, not a recommendation. This trailer is built to haul 12 tons, and that’s how you should run it.
First job on the list
Equipment hauling can wait. Philip’s first load is mulch and landscaping material for his wife.
“They say happy wife, happy life. I say happy wife, chance at life.”
Smart man.
This won’t be the last one
A big thanks to Cody and Erika Archie at Bar 7 Ranch, who carried this thing from CONEXPO to the stress test to the winner’s phone call. And thanks to everyone who entered. All 10,000-plus of you.
We build these trailers Factory-Direct, American-made, and heavier than they have to be. Then we hand one to a guy who’s going to run it hard in Oklahoma. That’s about as good as it gets around here.
Keep an eye out. There will be another giveaway, and there’s a trailer with your name on it either way.
Congratulations, Philip. Let’s Roll.
