Camo bus designed for country stars
By Bonnie Edwards
Published in News on March 16, 2004 1:58 PM
KINSTON -- A 45-foot-long camouflaged tour bus sitting on U.S. 70 belongs to country music stars Daryle Singletary and Rhett Akins.
It is temporarily residing at Camo Extreme, where it received the camouflage decorating job.
Milton Turnage at Camo Extremes said he met Sam Klements, owner of Spectrum Outdoors while he was at a wildlife show in Perry, Ga. He said Klements, whose company makes a video series on hunting, grew up with Rhet Akins and told him about the bus.
News-Argus/Bonnie Edwards
Milton Turnage of Camo Extremes in Kinston leaves today to deliver this 45-foot-long camouflaged tour bus to be used by country music stars Daryle Singletary and Rhett Akins.
Akins and Singletary are from Nashville, Tenn., and they travel around the country performing concerts together. Their bus is called "The Honky Tonk Tailgate Party."
Turnage got the job of camouflaging the bus, and it's been at his place of business about three weeks.
"It's ready to go," he said Monday afternoon. He was to deliver the bus and the trailer it pulls today to the singers' driver in Martinsville, Va. It will leave to pick up the singers in Nashville and then take them to the concert in Georgia on March 22.
The bus and trailer are expected to appear on the Country Music Channel and in People magazine. There's a possibility it will be in numerous hunting magazines, said Turnage.
"It will be in the country music videos they'll do," he added. The bus is also on Turner's Web site at camoextreme.com.
This weekend, Turnage plans to go camping with the country music singers and a couple of "big-name hunters." The following Monday, they will present the bus to Real Tree Tour, which makes the camouflage pattern.
The design is on a 3M removable material that won't affect the bus and the trailer's paint. The bus is worth $600,000, and the trailer is worth $10,000.
The camouflage design goes on by a peel-and-stick process with a pressure activated adhesive. Turner applied it with help from David Mallard, Fred Murphy and Chris Kearney. "It took us about two and a half weeks."
He carries Real Tree and Mossy Oak brands of wraps. "Not everybody wants to do it," he said. "It takes a long time, but we ship the material all over the country."
Turnage started doing the wraps four years ago. He wrapped his truck, a Toyota Forerunner, and took it to the Dixie Deer Classic. "We had it under the Toyota tent, and everybody thought Toyota had come out with it. Everybody had to touch it. You can't go around it without touching it."
He goes to shows up and down the East Coast. The singers' bus is the biggest job he's done so far. Although he's been doing the wraps for three years, it's been in the last year that he's gotten the most exposure with people in the hunting industry.
A month ago, he decorated a 36-foot-long motor home for Muzzy Broadheads, a company that makes arrow tips. Professional archers Jesse and Ginger Morehead of Georgia had him decorate their motor home.