Our Story

The whole story…for now

When I was a teenager, I loved sports, music, candy, trucks, and T-shirts.

In other words, I was not a complex young man.

One time, I remember making an entire cassette of one Beatles song. Seriously — the same song repeated on the front and the back so I wouldn't have to rewind. I also listened to Phil Collins. A lot.

When it came to sports, I played year round. Starting in 3rd grade: football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball and soccer in the spring and summer. The last day of one sport was the first day of the next sport. It was awesome.

At the time, my teams were the St. Louis Cardinals, the Buffalo Bills, and the Buffalo Sabres.

My teeth were under constant onslaught from Now and Laters and Tart 'n' Tinys.

Scientists have concluded that eating sugar does not stunt your growth. I can tell you this — they didn't study me. I'm SURE it stunted my growth (because both of my brothers are taller than me)… and it made for frequent trips to the dentist.

When it came to trucks, it was my Grandpa Blaue's 1978 Chevy Blazer.

Here it is in its current condition and its current resting place — my cousin Will's barn. He hopes to restore it one day soon, and we hope we can help him.

My favorite T-shirt? A white Stereo Advantage T-shirt that I decided to tie-dye. The shirt is long gone, but I can still picture it in my mind like it was yesterday.

Some of my favorite childhood memories are tied to summer vacations spent in middle Missouri — my grandparents' farm in Wellsville and the small-town "freedom" of Middletown in Montgomery County, Missouri… or as we say, "Mazzura."

My favorite places to play were the cornfields, the fishing ponds, the barns, and, of course, the Middletown general store where I could get my candy (a fifth food group for me at the time).

And when given the opportunity, a chance to ride in that Blazer.

Here's a picture of me next to our mode of transportation used to get us from our home outside Buffalo, New York to Montgomery County.

And yes, that's a St. Louis Cardinals T-shirt — at the time, also one of my favorites.

This station wagon was great for getting the whole family through the 12-hour trip, but it was a slight downgrade from the camper — the one where my brother and sister rode in the bunk over top of the front seats while my dad and mom drove 70 miles an hour down the interstate. (Crazy how normal that was, until we learned how deadly it is without a seatbelt.)

The highlight of each 12-hour trip was pulling into Montgomery City for Buster Bars at Dairy Queen — but only after Dad had stopped off at the railroad tracks to dump the sewage from the camper toilet (memorable… but not a highlight).

Here's a picture of my brother after one such trip to Grandpa's fishing pond.

Here are some more pictures of the family and our summer vacations to "Mazzura."

Those were some great times.

It's hard to believe so many years have gone by. Thank God for pictures.

For me, like you, life is pretty busy. Family, work, responsibility, businesses, faith, blessings, failures, and kick-you-in-the-teeth lessons — all of it.

The biggest blessings of my adult life have been my walk with God, a wife of over 30 years, and five wonderful, flawed, faithful kids. Through it all, I have learned to love God the most — through His one and only Son, Jesus.

I have also been blessed by God to own several small businesses. They have been blessings and they have provided for my family, but the truth is, they are work to me. They are not T-shirts and trucks.

I've owned some cool T-shirts.

As for the truck, the closest I've come was this Jeep Grand Cherokee.

That's a restored version of the truck I had. Mine barely ran, and honestly, it was a lemon. I'm convinced the guy who sold it to me knew there were some really significant problems with it, but I didn't find out until it was too late. I ran it as long as it would run — about six months — and then it died.

Fast forward to today.

I still love wearing T-shirts and I'm still interested in getting that truck I've wanted.

And I've decided to do something about it — and possibly kill two birds with one stone.

Here's how things got rolling. For the last couple of years, I've been rolling with simple graphic tees that I buy from a well-known company.

But, as always, I find flaws.

Let's start with what I like about these T-shirts. First, most of their graphics are simple and clean. The ones I buy don't promote stuff I don't want to be associated with, and they don't make me feel like I'm a billboard for a brand. I like the feel of the shirt when I buy it. I like the way it fits when I first buy it.

Now for what I don't like.

Once I wash these shirts a couple of times, they're too short at the waist. Also, this company plays this silly game where they price these tees at something like $59 each and then mark them down to under $30. I hold out for $19, which rarely happens anymore. Honestly, I've grown exhausted of this game.

Also, more and more of their tees have images and graphics I personally won't wear.

So how does this all fit together?

Last year, I went back to Wellsville for a family reunion. While I was there, my cousin Will gave me a tour of his house and farm and took me into the barn, where I got to see the Blazer — which I had no idea was still around.

The interest in owning a truck like this came flooding back.

Then, months after that trip, I noticed one of my graphic tees was on its way out.

I have several of them, but the graphic on this one, as you can see, is an old pickup.

In the past, there would have been little I could do about it, and I probably wouldn't have given much thought to reimagining that T-shirt. But today, with AI and tools like ChatGPT, almost anything is possible — especially with graphics.

So I took a picture of the T-shirt, and I asked my cousin to text me a couple of pictures of Grandpa Blaue's Blazer.

I uploaded them to ChatGPT.

My request was simple. Inspired by these pictures I'm sharing, create a graphic of a utility-type truck that's original.

I waited.

I started to daydream.

What if it was possible to combine my love for T-shirts with my desire to have a utility truck or a pickup that looked like these — but built with today's safety standards and technology features?

That's part two of this crazy idea.

At this point, I feel like it's really important to explain why I haven't tried to buy one of these older trucks.

The truth is, they are not safe. Not by today's standards, anyway — and I have no desire to satisfy an urge to have a truck that looks like this but doesn't have the safety standards of today's vehicles.

Not only that, they don't have some of the features we all love about the new trucks — mainly the tech features that let us connect our smartphones so we can play music and follow directions.

But with print-on-demand companies, tech tools at my fingertips, and ChatGPT, I knew part one — the T-shirts — was possible.

So I immediately started researching how I could make some T-shirts.

I bought a Cricut heat transfer machine, some DTF transfers of the graphics I created, and some blank T-shirts.

I made my first T-shirt and showed a friend. He asked if I could make him one.

Then I decided I would share these with all of you.

I decided my company would be called TripsterTrucks.com. It would feature truck designs on T-shirts, hoodies, and trucker hats.

That is, until I remembered one thing.

Remember earlier in this story when I said "kill two birds with one stone"? That phrase is an idiom.

My daily speech includes a lot of idioms, and I've always thought some of them — maybe even many of them — could make great T-shirts.

I learned from the best. My dad used them a lot, and during a recent conversation with him, I found out he learned them from my grandpa and my great grandpa.

I have my favorites that we all know.

My favorite is an original. "Original" meaning ChatGPT can't find it anywhere.

I use it whenever appropriate. Feel free to use it yourself.

For over a decade, I've wanted to bring idioms to life on T-shirts, but I never had the money to hire an artist and I didn't have the talent to create them myself. Until now.

So, because of my desire to bring idioms to life on T-shirts, I didn't want to have to create another T-shirt brand.

Instead, I changed the company from Tripster Trucks to Tripster Co.

Officially, Tripster Co is now T-shirts, hoodies, trucker hats, gear — and maybe, just maybe, one day, two real-life trucks.

From here on out, my goal is to have fun making Tripster Truck and idiom graphic tees and hoodies that I love and wear — and that solve my longstanding problem of looking for the perfect T-shirt.

That's a win in and of itself.

The second part of this dream is to build a community big enough that a car or truck manufacturer will partner with us to build these retro-looking Tripster Trucks with today's safety standards, tech features, and the ability for us to fix a bunch of stuff on the truck ourselves.

How cool and helpful would it be if a company built trucks that let us owners fairly easily care for them, without needing to endure expensive trips to a dealer or a mechanic?