Eric Huyffer’s enclosed trailer, aptly named Guilty Dog Transport, may look inconspicuous, but inside he is hauling some of Wyoming’s most expensive cars.
“The most expensive car I’ve ever hauled was a 1967 Ferrari,” Huyffer said. “It sold for $4 million.”
The oldest car was a Model A that had come from a restorer in Denver. It was an antique, Huyffer said, and he had to crank it up to start it.
Huyffer, who lives in Jackson, had never intended to get into the business of hauling cars for the wealthy. In fact, he says he doesn’t even like designer cars.
“Like everything else in my life, it was by accident,” Huyffer said.
Huyffer was a cabinetmaker for 35 years and had what he called a pretty good-sized shop in Jackson. In 2014, he was ready to get out of woodworking and sold his business to his employees.
“I did pretty well, but not quite palm tree and umbrella drink well,” he said. “I’m not very good sitting around, so I decided to start a small trucking company because I needed no employees.”
He figured it would be a low startup cost and easy liquidation if he failed.
“The first thing I hauled was a car, and I thought, 'Well, that was pretty easy because it drove on and drove off the trailer,'” Huyffer said.
He said he then got hooked up with a guy in Jackson who has a lot of exotic cars, who then turned Huyffer on to all his friends.
“I built relationships with dealers in Salt Lake City, Vegas and Denver, and, well, here I am,” he said. “Exotic car hauler.”
$1,200 Oil Change
About half of Huyffer’s business centers around oil changes.
“Ferrari and Porsche are the two brands that I haul the most,” Huyffer said. “They have to be serviced by a certified technician, and the closest certified technician for Ferrari and Porsche is Salt Lake City.”
Huyffer said that whether the cars are driven or not, the cars are hauled over for their scheduled maintenance. When a new car is bought, included in the price of the car are the services to keep it running for the first seven years. If you don’t keep the schedule, your warranty is void.
“I’ll pick a car up in the afternoon, take it to Salt Lake City, drop it off at the dealer, and then I wait around until the service is done, usually the next day, and then I bring it back to Jackson,” he said.
Huyffer’s fee is approximately $1,200 for the round trip for these oil changes.
“It’s banana land,” Huyffer said. “But a lot of my work is just to get the cars to and from service appointments.”
Huyffer said that his mother can’t believe the job he now does and has asked him why his clients just don’t change their own oil.
They’re Bananas
Huyffer said that even though the cars are super neat to look at, they’re pretty uncomfortable.
The owners also don’t want to put unnecessary miles on them. He has driven all over the states delivering the exotic cars so that they will be in garages waiting when the owners show up.
“It’s snowbird time coming up right now,” Huyffer said. “I move a lot of cars from here to Scottsdale in the fall, and then I go down to Scottsdale in the spring to bring them back.”
He has been to the East Coast as far as northern Maine and has picked up cars in Florida. Most of his trips, however, are between Jackson, Salt Lake City, Phoenix and Los Angeles.
“Everybody asks me, 'Oh, what’s the coolest car you’ve hauled,'” Huyffer said. “I’ll be perfectly honest with you. I could care less about cars.”
Huyffer said the last time he had a fancy car himself was in high school to get a girlfriend, but since then, he is content with his reliable Dodge Ram.
“I don’t understand the people that spend all the money on these cars, but I sure like hauling them for them,” he said.
Huyffer said that his clients are always buying and selling their exotic cars because, unlike normal people’s cars, these appreciate constantly instead of depreciate.
“They’re always wheeling and dealing, so I do a lot of trades,” he said. “They will buy them somewhere and I go pick them up.”
Keeping Business Small
Huyffer has chosen to keep his business small and haul just one car at a time.
“Every now and then, the businessman in me kind of shows up on my shoulder and says, ‘You should get bigger. You should buy a bigger trailer and truck,’ but I like how it is going now,” he said.
Huyffer has a 34-foot trailer with a small sleeper in the front of it as modest living quarters for himself, leaving 21 feet for the cars he hauls.
The secret to his success, Huyffer said, is that he has built a reputation for dependability.
“All you have to be to stay in business in anything these days is reliable, and it seems like less and less people can figure that out,” Huyffer said.
His clients like that Huyffer is only hauling their car and that it is secured in his trailer.
“They know that there won’t be another car dripping brake fluid on the hood of it or whatever,” Huyffer said. “They know me, and they trust me, so they don’t care what it costs.”
Huyffer said that he never had any romantic illusions about being a truck driver, but he admits that he really likes the gig he has fallen into.
“My wife and I have been together for 37 years,” he said. “I tell people, I go out on the road until my wife tells me to come home. And then I stay home until she tells me to go find a job.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
