Truckstar Festival 2022 #2

The Truckstar Festival in Assen has become known for something that now feels routine at truck shows across Europe: the nightly tradition of trucks standing open with their lights running, their owners trusting the crowds to look without touching. Assen was the first show where this became clear to me, and it has since become a fixture of the event. Walking around the site in darkness is now part of the experience, with plenty of visitors still strolling among the vehicles right up to midnight.

This year I made a point of heading out on the Friday night to join that walk, and it was well worth the effort. The standard of machinery on display was exceptionally high, and lighting has grown into as significant a part of a truck’s customisation as its paintwork or interior. What stands out in the Netherlands is restraint. Very few trucks look overdone, the sort that appear to have reversed into a lighting display and come away with everything attached. Instead, the lighting tends to be balanced and considered, evenly spaced and neatly arranged rather than simply bolted on in the hope that it works. Dutch, Danish and British owners all seem to share a similar instinct for getting it right.

Among the highlights were three Danish trucks from Christian Soleen’s fleet, which made for striking photographs and ranked as my favourites of the show. A closer look at them is planned separately. The arrangement of three lights beneath the bumper works particularly well, as do the clean, straight lines running down the sides of each vehicle. Lines of orange lighting down the flanks, in the style favoured across the Atlantic, look especially strong here.

One small note for anyone studying the photographs: the white line above the left side of the DAF is not some novel aerial arrangement. It is the large crane in the background, fully lit.