UW 8-31-17
Wyoming Football unveiled a brand new equipment trailer with a brand new design on Wednesday at War Memorial Stadium. Arrow Moving and Storage is once again providing the equipment trailer to accompany the Cowboys on road games in 2017. The new trailer will be pulled by a new Peterbilt Model 387 tractor from Peterbilt of Wyoming. The trailer is wrapped in a design from Western Specialty Manufacturing Corporation of Cheyenne. Jonah Bank of Wyoming also partnered on the trailer.
The trailer is 53 feet long and contains 4,100 cubic feet of space to haul Wyoming Football gear. Mike Ottoes of Arrow Moving and Storage was on hand for the unveiling, along with Bill Miller of Western Specialty Manufacturing of Cheyenne, who created the design for the trailer.
Ottoes, who earned his bachelor’s degree in management from the University of Wyoming in 1995 and was a member of UW’s marching band during his time as a student, said that the project is one his staff is passionate about. He was joined for the unveiling by Arrow Moving and Storage’s operations manager John Weaver and drivers Eric Bird, Aaron Bird and Jessie Hubbard.
“This is a very exciting and important relationship between the UW athletic department and our company,” said Ottoes. “We’ve been hauling the team’s gear for many, many years. I’ve kind of lost track of the years it has been so long. But it is exciting to produce a custom truck like this to drive around the country and show the pride we all have in Cowboy Football. It means a lot to us to be a part of this.”
Asked if he has had fans ask him through the years about his company’s involvement in providing the trailer, Ottoes said, “All the time. People tell us how much they love the truck and they want to come and take pictures with the truck. It’s a lot of fun, and its great to be able to help represent the university.”
Miller, who is also an alum of the University of Wyoming and whose company designed the wrap, said it has been a labor of love for he and his staff.
“It is a unique project to complete,” said Miller. “It was fun working with Dan (Stinson, Equipment Manager for Cowboy Football) and the athletic department, sorting through photos and trying to find images that would work on the trailer. It was amazing. It took a little bit longer to get done than what we anticipated, but at any rate it was a fun project and a challenging one too.
“We’ve done this project before, and we’ve made some changes to past trailers to reflect bowl wins and things like that. But this was a completely different process. We completely body-wrapped this trailer. One of the challenges of doing that was this truck has many, many rivets on it, which made it harder to do. While it was a challenge, that is what makes these types of projects worthwhile.”
Stinson said that he and his staff will load approximately three dozen equipment trunks, including an estimated seven tons of player gear, staff apparel, coaches communications systems, sports medicine supplies, radio broadcast equipment and video equipment into the trailer for each road game. The new 53’ trailer also features a lift gate to assist with the loading process.
The new truck and trailer will make its first trip of the year this week, when it will depart from the Rochelle Athletics Center on the UW campus on Thursday, Aug. 31 for Iowa City, Iowa. The Cowboy will open their 2017 season against the Iowa Hawkeyes on Saturday, Sept. 2 in a game that will kick off at 10 a.m., Mountain Time (11 a.m., Central Time).