It’s not going anywhere, but it certainly looks like it’s ready to.
It is a 36,000-pound granite and marble same-size sculpture of a 1952 Ford F-1 pickup truck that United Pump & Supply co-owners Clay and Sara Moore had done in front of their Moore Ranch House complex in the Shiloh Estates between Odessa and Midland.
Modeled after a red pickup that the Moores count among their antique vehicles, the sculpture was done by noted Calais, Vt., artist Chris Miller, who worked with a four-man crew after completing the grill, bed rails and running boards in Vermont and bringing all the marble and granite in with a tractor-trailer rig.
The grill, headlights and hubcaps are marble.
Working over six weeks through an earthquake, a sandstorm and the horrific Winter Storm Uri in early 2021, the hardy Miller and crew installed heaters and put up a big tent around the project so they could keep working.
Clay Moore said the idea came from Kara McKenzie of Weatherford, formerly of Odessa, who sent an Internet photo of Miller’s work.
“Chris does very beautiful work,” Moore said. “His most famous work is the 14 1/2-foot-tall Statue of Agriculture on top of the Vermont State House in Montpelier and he is now working on a big tractor that’s 1 1/2 times bigger than the original.
“It gives me a sense of pride that I have a duplicate of one of the pickups I have inside the ranch house.
“Chris had said, ‘I’m not worried about it getting cold in Odessa, it gets cold in Vermont.’”
“He said one of the most memorable things about Odessa was the people, the contractors and us, because we were so accommodating and made him feel so at home.
“The neighbors kept coming by to look.”
Moore’s collection also includes a 1912 Ford Model T, a 1937 “Poppin’ Johnny” John Deere tractor, souped-up Ford Roadsters from 1931 and ’33 and a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air with an LS-1 Corvette engine.
