Jim
Vermillion said a viewing of the movie ‘Heat’ convinced him he
should buy the wrecker used in the film.
In the movie “Heat,” Raja the wrecker proved quite a hit, the big brute toppling an armored car so that Robert DeNiro and Val Kilmer could make off with a fortune inside.
Around Rowan County these days, Raja the wrecker is proving an equally big hit.
“It’s wild driving it down the interstate ... the looks you get,” said Will Hege, one of the drivers for Classic Custom Automotive & Wrecker, the Salisbury company that owns the tow truck. “If you listen to the CB, that’s all they talk about.”
The mammoth four-axle wrecker measures 35 feet long and is capable of lifting up to 90,000 pounds. That’s as much as a fully loaded tractor-trailer could possibly weigh.
And then some.
The truck came to Salisbury about seven months ago.
At the time, Jim Vermillion, the owner of Classic Custom, called John Hawkins III, vice president of sales for Miller Industries in Chattanooga, Tenn. Miller Industries is involved in the manufacture of various types of truck equipment. Hawkins also helps with the sale of numerous trucks.
Vermillion told Hawkins he was looking to buy a big wrecker, something capable of lifting at least 45 tons.
Hawkins thought for a moment, then told Vermillion about Raja, the wrecker that’s featured for several minutes in the opening sequences of “Heat,” a 1995 release that received rave reviews.
It so happened that Vermillion, a self-described “movie nut,” owned a copy of “Heat.” So he went home and popped the videotape in his VCR.
The next morning, Vermillion called Hawkins back.
“Yeah,” he said of the big wrecker. “That’s the one I want.”
Vermillion said he hasn’t regretted his decision despite the vehicle’s $120,000 price, which he said he considers a relative bargain. He said a similar truck would cost well over $200,000 new.
Vermillion didn’t even have to go far to fetch the truck – just to Statesville’s Auto Equipment where the truck sat for sale.
The tow truck, which employees of Classic Custom have dubbed “Big Green” because of its almost lime-green color, is powered by a 400-horsepower Cummins diesel engine. The truck is a 1979 Peterbilt and spent the first 10 years of its life as a long-haul tractor-trailer, which explains why it has 797,000 miles on its odometer.
In 1989, the vehicle was converted to a tow truck, a Challenger wrecker added to its Peterbilt chassis. It has a 40-foot boom that can upright almost anything that’s overturned.
“It stays pretty busy,” Vermillion said of demand for the creation.
He said that in addition to fetching overturned trucks along Interstate 85 here in Rowan County, he’s also been called to go as far away as Indiana and Florida to help untangle highway messes.
Vermillion said he’s been on long-distance calls in which he’s charged his customers as much as $12,000 for use of the wrecker. The base price for the wrecker and a single operator, he said, is $350 an hour.
But Vermillion said he doesn’t get paid for every trip he makes in the truck. He’s been known to go to private homes to give rides to children fascinated by tow trucks in general and his big green creation in particular.
“I don’t know what it is about that green, but it sure stands out,” Vermillion said.
He said the owner of a Chinese restaurant he frequents told him the name Raja means “king.”
Vermillion said it’s pretty interesting to watch his wrecker in action in “Heat,” though he said he realizes some of the havoc wreaked by Raja was the result of Hollywood special effects.
Vermillion said cables helped pull the armored car to its side after Raja rammed it.
Those same cables were used to drag the armored car across the pavement.
Ricky Simmons, the owner of Simmons Wrecker Service in Meridian, Miss., was the owner of Raja the wrecker when the producers of “Heat” called about using the truck in their movie.
Simmons said he thought it was a joke when those producers first called. His mind didn’t change, he said, until he received a contract in the mail offering to lease the vehicle for four months of filming.
“At that time, there weren’t many four-axle wreckers in the country,” Simmons said of the reason his truck was especially sought after. “There were only about six wreckers like that one out there.”
He said one of his workers drove the wrecker to Los Angeles where “Heat” was filmed.Simmons said the truck wasn’t green when it left Mississippi. It was gray with red stripes.
Simmons said he’d given the producers of “Heat” permission to change the color. They also reupholstered the truck and dubbed it “Raja.”
Simmons said he knew the truck would be returned with a damaged front end.
“I fixed all that myself,” he said.
But he kept the wrecker the color the producers had painted it. And he kept the name “Raja” painted on its side.
Simmons said producers told him they wrecked two other trucks in practice before filming the scene where Raja was used.
He said he kept the truck for several years following the filming, proud of the role he’d played in a major Hollywood production.
“I update my equipment periodically,” Simmons said of his reason for selling Raja. “But in some ways, I always wished I’d kept it.”
He said the wrecker made him a sort of celebrity around Meridian. Simmons said one man stopped by his garage and asked to have the truck backed over a piece of cardboard to serve as something of an autograph from the big beast.
At Miller Industries in Chattanooga, Hawkins said he also played a role in landing Raja a role in “Heat.” He said the movie’s producers called him looking for a big wrecker.
“They said they wanted the biggest, baddest tow truck in the U.S.,” Hawkins said.
He’d been friends with Simmons for quite some time, Hawkins said, and advised those producers to call him.
Hawkins said being used in “Heat” didn’t drive up the value of Raja, though he said making a movie appearance didn’t hurt the truck’s resale.
“There’s an aura or myth about it,” he said.
Meanwhile, back in Salisbury, Vermillion said he’s realized as much.
He said people occasionally stop by his place of business excited to see the wrecker used in “Heat.”
“Sometimes, I just play along like I don’t know what they’re talking about,” Vermillion said, pausing to chuckle. “They’ll tell me it was used in a movie, and I say, ‘Oh, really?’ ”
