June 2013 - Allegheny West Magazine

STORY BY DOUG HUGHEY
PHOTOS BY SARAH KIZINA HUGHEY
For almost as long as there have been means of mass production, there have been
movements dedicated to putting the human fingerprint back onto mass-produced things.
That struggle against conformity has manifested itself most recently as a contemporary
preoccupation with customizing consumer products from Nike shoes to the one status symbol
that American culture recognizes above all others: cars.
For Bill Steele, his obsession with the latter took root somewhere in between watching a guy
paint his father’s semi in Oakdale as a kid, and spending twelve hours a day, seven days a
week painting military vehicles the same exact sand color for Operation Desert Storm. The
hourly wages and overtime from that private government contract, which he landed at the
911th Airlift Wing in Moon in 1993, were enough to help him turn the same garage in Oakdale
that his father ran a trucking business out of into a body shop. While the prospect of paying
the bills and owning his own business remained first and foremost among his priorities, lurking
in there somewhere too was the desire to make just enough money to build his own custom
hot rods.
Over the next 20 years, Bill made enough money to build not just that one hot rod, but
plenty of others. His custom bikes and cars
have since won national honors. He is
the only custom builder to have
won the Easyriders Bike of
the Year award twice, and first
to have won the
ABOVE: Bill Steele, middle,
with his crew, from left to
right, DJ Hardle, Derek
D’Amore, Phil Williams, and
Josh Harden.