Low, lifted and lit-up: Houston’s truck owners flex their modified rides

Drive around Houston enough and you’ll likely see one of two things: A low smooth-ridin’ pickup or a behemoth monster truck.

Love ’em or hate ’em, modified trucks have been part of Houston culture for decades. Swapping out suspensions or painting a truck’s body is not just a hobby, but a way of life.

“They’re not friends. They’re like brothers and sisters to me,” Daniel Perez said of his car club. The Waller resident is part of a Houston car club called Latin Image, which he’s been part of since 1995.

Since then, he’s shown off his 1994 Chevy Silverado, which he calls Southern Look, at hundreds of car shows. It has a paint job featuring wolves, buffalos and a dreamcatcher along with other art. He has suicide doors, which is when the doors open the opposite ways, and the hood and bed are lifted. Southern Look has won hundreds of awards since he first started modifying it.

“I just like the competition … Every time I get a plaque, I don’t know where to put it.” said Perez, whose friends call him “The Legend.”

 “You talk about the legend, but The Legend never dies.”

Perez still shows off Southern Look – it placed second in the Lowrider paint category at the 2024 Houston Art Car Parade. He also organizes a local car show in Waller, as well as an occasional gathering at the local Buc-ee’s. 

“That’s what it’s all about. The kids and the community. Having a good time with the car show people,” Perez said.

On any given weekend around Houston, anywhere from a handful to dozens of truck owners get together to flex their rides and catch up with friends.

On a warm Sunday night in mid-December, for example, dozens of trucks filled a barren shopping center parking lot on Houston’s east side, near Cloverleaf just off Interstate 10 inside Beltway 8.

Most of the trucks were parked, their owners standing by the hood or bed with friends or significant others, or hanging solo. The rest of the trucks paraded through the lot, blasting corridos, reggaeton, rap or norteñas, while their drivers flexed their lifts, lights, paint jobs and sound systems.

As the night went on and the city went silent, the truck meet only got louder. Trucks continued to trickle into the parking lot surrounded by a Wells Fargo, Aarons and a Home Depot.

Police eventually arrived to clear out the area after some drivers started doing burnouts, creating clouds of smoke by spinning their wheels while keeping their trucks stationary.

The day before, another meet took place at a tire shop less than a mile from Pearland High School. Those exhibiting their trucks were shop customers, and they all boasted lifted trucks that towered above the handful of drivers, a few kids and a dog. 

When not inspecting an engine or wiping a truck clean, drivers would do donuts on the grass next to the tire shop, slinging dirt at the crowd and filling the air with dust and smoke amid the revving engines and barking pitbull.

The goal of the Pearland meet was not just to showcase trucks. The tire shop owners were collecting gifts for the Toys for Tots program. Each toy a truck owner brought was exchanged for a raffle ticket for truck gear.

The night before, another meet took place just outside the 610 Loop on Houston’s northside, with owners showing off their truck builds amid modified sports cars.

A red truck wrapped in Christmas lights was the head-turner of the meet, parked near a Salvadoran food truck, a Mexican spicy candy vendor and a DJ.

Social media plays a key role in today’s truck culture, with many owners using Instagram and TikTok to show off their rides. Some drivers advertise their accounts with stickers on their windshields.

One of them, 20-year-old Juan Méndez from southeast Houston, has his username on his squatted 2014 High Country Chevy Silverado.

On his Tiktok account, @2dopejuan, he’s been posting short videos for almost a year. His content varies from videos of his truck in different parts of the city or sneak peeks of his upcoming modifications.

He’d been eyeing that High County model for years, noting its beautiful brown-leather interior. It wasn’t overpriced, so it was a good deal for him and his family, who helped him buy it for about $18,000 on Facebook Marketplace. His job as a full-time delivery driver for AutoZone has helped him pay off about half of it so far.

And he’s getting his money’s worth.

He shows off his squatted truck, a style in which the front of the vehicle is lifted and angled up. It’s common in various southern states, but particularly the Carolinas.

Many of his friends call Juan’s truck King Kong because it reminds them of the gorilla emoji: 🦍

“You don’t see it everyday and that’s what I love about it. Anywhere it goes, it gets attention,” Méndez said, adding that he and some friends did most of the work to get it lifted at home. “A ton of elbow grease.”

The squatted truck style is banned in several states due to limited driver visibility while on the road. Méndez acknowledged the constraint, so he doesn’t drive it daily and ensures he’s careful whenever doing so. He thinks it’s only a matter of time before it gets banned in Texas, but even if it never happens, King Kong isn’t a forever style for him.

He said he may put the front back down or even get a different car that stands out, maybe an old-school Japanese car or a Corvette.

His truck journey began years earlier with a 2003 Chevy Silverado truck gifted to him by his parents.

“My sisters had quinceañeras, the big expensive party. I didn’t have anything like that. So that was their gift. It seemed fair, you know?” he said, laughing.

He received the truck in December 2021, while a 17-year old junior in high school, and named it Manzanita for its red color.

Over the next two years, Méndez lowered Manzanita, changed out the sound system and added 24-inch wheels. Eventually, mechanical issues became so frequent, he ended up selling on Facebook Marketplace for about $5,000 a little more than a year ago. Manzanita had gone through two transmissions and couldn’t go more than 60 mph, among other issues.

“That was my first truck, you know? I had a lot of memories in it,” Juan said. “Being a high-schooler, it feels badass having that.”

Juan earns money from a side business, 2DopeAudio, which he started in high school.

The idea for the business came to him when he realized he could do sound system work cheaper at home instead of servicing it out. After getting the hang of it, he began helping out friends with other truck work and eventually started charging people for it. He learned many of his skills from YouTube tutorials.

“It would provide a decent amount of money just for me to like just do kid stuff. Go eat on the weekend, hang out with friends,” Méndez. These days, though, he’s mostly hands-off while working 40 hours a week and being a full-time first-generation student at Texas Southern University.

Instead, he earns a commission on every project that 2DopeAudio completes while the rest of the money goes to two of his friends who do the physical work. Méndez helps promote their work.

“We all win. I get extra money. We get extra money. It goes a long way,” Méndez said.

One of his sisters, Jarely, said their shared love for cars has helped them bond. He has been part of Jarely’s journey into car maintenance for her Mini Cooper.

“Him learning about trucks helped me learn about cars and it just brought us closer together,” Jarely Méndez said.

Many truck owners form crews, create a group-focused Instagram page and host events together. Some local crews include Impulsive Trucking, Royalty Truckin (which Méndez heads), Alianza Performance and FirstClassTruckin, all boasting hundreds, sometimes thousands of Instagram followers where they hype each other up in the comments.

Chris Garcia is part of Arriesgados Trucking, and he drives a 2004 Chevy SS Clone that he calls “La Paloma.” He bought it for about $4,000 when he was 16. In the years since, he’s dropped it, given it a new paint job and performed extensive body work.

“It took me three years of all kinds of odd jobs. I was putting tile, I was cutting yards, I was going to work out of town doing little repairs on houses just so I could get this through,” Garcia said.

And he’s not done yet. In addition to the mechanical upgrades, he wants to create merchandise depicting it on stickers and shirts.

“I want my truck to be able to live on in multiple forms. I don’t want it to just be out here. I want other people to be able to enjoy my truck just as much as I enjoy it. I see kids, they look at my truck and wave and I make them happy. That makes me happy.”

Across La Paloma’s windshield is a decal that reads: “TROKIANDO.” It is Spanglish slang for trucking and often is used by many Latino drivers who are part of the truck culture scene.

Some of those that are part of trokiando culture are known as takuaches, another slang term best defined by Itzel Alejandra, a Mexican-American writer and photographer, in a piece on Remezcla:

“For those who aren’t familiar with takuaches, the literal translation is a possum but within the trokiando scene, it’s slang for people who have a modern ranchera/o aesthetic. You can find takuaches in everything from bootcut jeans and square toe boots or Jordans to gold chains with a fitted cap vs. a cowboy hat while dancing nuevo corridos, cumbias and tribal.”

The slang trokiando also gave rise to a Houston-based brand of the same name that makes truck-themed merchandise and sells it nationally.

Some truck owners were introduced to the truck scene through family.

Sergio Sanchez, a seventeen-year-old from northside Houston who is part of the Poor Boyz Dream truck crew, arrived at one of the meets with a 2013 F-150.

With more than 350,000 miles, the truck was a hand-down from his dad who used it for work.

“He was a guy who took care of the truck a lot. I wanted to keep that legacy for him,” Sanchez said. “I’ll probably pass it down to my kids.”

He drives to school with it, where he says it has been a hit with students and teachers alike.

“One time I got into a crash and it (the truck) was gone for a while and the teachers were asking like, ‘What happened with the truck? We miss the music and everything.’”

His favorite part of Houston’s truck culture is gathering at meets for a good cause, such as toy drives.

“I just like the way the truck community comes together to bring happiness to kids and family in general,” Sanchez said.

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