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When Christmas comes in on four wheels
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Gus Ferrell Has Been Painting Trucks Red Since 1987. His Hands Are Finally Telling Him to Stop.
Gus Ferrell spent thirty-four years painting signs for businesses all over western North Carolina. He retired in 2018 with a shop full of metal trucks he’d been collecting since before most of his clients were born. Every year since 1987 he’s painted a batch of them red for Christmas—adding a small bottlebrush tree in the bed, wiring it with a tiny light, attaching a wreath to the door—and given them to people who asked for them. Now his right hand shakes with essential tremor, and the detail brush work has gotten slow. This year’s batch might be his last.
“The sign work, I can do that tremor or no tremor—big letters, steady hand isn’t required,” Gus says, turning a finished truck over in his left hand to check the base. “The little tree in the bed, the wreath on the door—that’s where the hand needs to be quiet. It’s not as quiet as it used to be.”
He holds the truck up to the window of his shop, the one that looks out at the corner of the lot where the hickory has been since before his parents were born. The red catches the November light. “Still the right red,” he says, like he’s checking in with it. “I found this red in 1989 and I have never once thought about changing it.”
Thirty-Seven Years of Getting the Red Right
Gus started with a single metal truck he found at a junk sale in 1984. A beat-up toy, missing a wheel. He replaced the wheel, cleaned it up, and set it on his workbench where it sat for three years while he painted signs and thought about what to do with it. In 1987 he painted it red—“Christmas red, not fire-engine red, there is a difference”—and put it on the shelf at the shop. Three customers asked to buy it the first week.
He found more trucks at estate sales, junk stores, box lots. He learned which ones had the right proportions for the bottlebrush tree—the bed needs to be the right depth, the cab needs to have the right vintage silhouette, the scale needs to be right so the tree doesn’t look accidental. “It’s not decoration,” Gus says. “It’s a scene. A truck that’s got somewhere to be.”
Every truck gets the wreath on the door and the tree in the bed, wired with a small light that runs off a battery pack in the bed. You set it on a mantle or a table and plug it in or switch on the battery, and the tree lights up and the wreath is there and the truck looks like it arrived from somewhere good.
“I’ve been making these for thirty-seven years and I still stop and look at one when it’s finished. That’s the test—if I don’t stop and look, I start over.”
A Red Truck That Makes a Corner Complete
There’s a particular place in a Christmas room where a single object can change the proportion of the whole corner. Not the tree, not the main decoration—something smaller. Something set on the mantle or the side table or the windowsill that makes the room say “yes, this is the season” without shouting it.
Gus’s truck does that. The red is the red of something that has been somewhere. The tree in the bed is small and real-proportioned, not a toy scale but an object with its own presence. The light in the tree is warm, not white, because warm is what a tree in a truck in December should be.
“People put it on the mantle and it becomes the thing in that house,” Gus says. “Every year they get it back out and put it in the same spot. That’s when you know you made something worth making.”
What Gus Built and Why It Works
Gus has been using the same red since 1989. It’s the red of a vintage tin toy, not a stop sign—slightly warm, slightly muted, the color that photographs right and reads right in a room with Christmas lights and candlelight. He found it by accident and hasn’t changed it in thirty-seven years because it’s right.
A small bottlebrush tree sits in the truck bed, wired with a warm-glow light powered by a battery pack. Switch it on and the tree lights up—not bright, not blinking, just warm and steady. That’s what Christmas looks like when it’s not trying.
A small wreath on the truck’s door is the thing that makes it a scene instead of a toy. It’s the detail that Gus’s hand now has trouble placing steadily. It’s also the detail that people notice first and remember. The wreath says the truck knows where it’s going.
Gus sources metal trucks specifically because the weight and the silhouette are different from plastic—heavier in the hand, vintage-proportioned cab, the kind of truck that reads as something that existed before you did. Metal takes the paint differently. It has a history. Plastic doesn’t.
Gus’s right hand shakes. The detail work takes longer. He’s made this batch anyway, one truck at a time, the same way he made the first one in 1987. This might be the last batch his hands will let him finish this carefully. He says it might not be. He’s not sure yet.
The Bench by the Window in Asheville
Gus will keep painting signs as long as the steadiness holds for that work. The trucks are a different question. “I know what the right finish feels like,” he says. “And I know when I can’t get there anymore. I’m not there yet.”
He says this quietly, turning a truck over in his good hand, checking the undercarriage the way he always does before he considers something finished. The red is right. The wreath is on. The tree is in the bed with the light threaded through it. The hickory outside the window is bare now, which means it’s time.
This batch is packed. Every truck that came out of this year’s work is in boxes, ready to go to the rooms where they’ll spend the next month on a mantle or a table, doing what trucks with trees in them do: making the corner complete.
Gus’s 2024 batch — made before the tremor wins — limited
The Christmas red is right. The tree is lit. The wreath is on. Choose your pack and get it to your corner.
See Availability & Packs1 truck · 2 for 5% off · 3 for 10% off · 4 for 15% off
What People Are Saying
★★★★★
“I ordered this for my father who spent forty years driving for a lumber company in the mountains. He opened the box and didn’t say anything for about thirty seconds. Then he said ‘Where did you find this?’ like it was something he remembered instead of something new. I can’t explain it better than that. It’s the right truck.”
★★★★★
“It’s on my kitchen windowsill. The tree is lit and you can see it from outside at night. My daughter drove past and texted me to ask what the thing in the window was. I told her. She ordered one for her apartment. That’s how I know a decoration is working—when it makes people stop and ask.”
★★★★★
“Bought two—one for us, one for my in-laws who have a farmhouse in Vermont. I sent them a picture of theirs on the mantle before I shipped it and my mother-in-law called me and said ‘it looks like it was always supposed to be here.’ That’s the right sentence for it. It looks like it belongs wherever you put it.”
Three Questions Before You Choose
How big is the truck, and where does it work best?
It’s a tabletop piece—designed for the mantle, the windowsill, the entry table, the side table in a guest room. Not so small it disappears, not so large it takes over a surface. The proportions are right for a corner that needs one thing to define it. Most people put it where they can see it from the main room and the tree light is visible.
Does the light run on batteries or plug in?
The tree in the bed is wired with a small warm-glow light with a battery pack tucked in the truck bed. Battery-powered means it can go anywhere—no outlet required, no cord to manage. Turn it on when you want it lit, off when you don’t. The batteries are standard size and easy to replace.
Is this actually the last batch Gus is making?
He’s not sure. The essential tremor in his right hand has made the detail work slower and harder, and he says this batch “might be the last one I can do this carefully.” He hasn’t ruled out another year. But this batch was finished under the same standard he’s held since 1987: he stops and looks at each truck before it leaves the bench. If it passes that test, it ships. This batch passed.
Gus’s red · the right tree · the right wreath · the right corner
See what’s available from this batch before the Christmas season fills it up.
See Availability & PacksShips from Asheville while this batch lasts.