While many roadside tributes include crosses, signs and flowers, the friends and colleagues of Daniel Toops found a more unusual – yet seemingly fitting – way to honor him. Toops, the owner of Toops Performance in London, Ohio, passed away early Thanksgiving morning as the passenger in a single-vehicle accident, and on their way to his viewing, a convoy comprised almost exclusively of tuned diesel trucks stopped in front of Toops’ shop with a soot-spewing, tire-smoking tribute which was all caught on video.
According to mydailyregister.com, Toops was a self-taught diesel mechanic with a flair for innovative solutions, and his shop’s Facebook page shows that he was competitively involved in truck pulls. The 13-minute video is posted below showing more than 50 trucks laying rubber on a stretch of rural Ohio backroad, along with a second, more conventional tribute video. Note: There’s a brief bit of explicit language right at the end of the first video.