STEVENSVILLE — You might have seen a whale on wheels driving around Western Montana.
The truck and Killatrina, the whale swallowing the cab, belong to Bennetto Fernandez.
“I want people to see Killatrina and smile,” he said. “People are already thinking about orcas more than they were, right?”
Check out Bennetto Fernandez and his whale of a vehicle:
Fernandez retrofitted an Isuzu NPR from the early 2000s into the orca, complete with a cherry on top of the cab, for what he calls the Montana Orca Project. With Killatrina, he hopes to inspire people in a silly, but serious way.
“Really, I think all that it takes to change the world is just a try. Most people, I think, are a little too scared or a little too lazy or a little too hurt to try. So, I have taken it upon myself to try a little harder,” Fernandez said.
His dream and his love of orcas started while he was growing up in Stevensville.
“When I was a kid, I built this same truck, but like this big out of a piece of pine for a pinewood derby. So, I think I've kind of just always had it in me to build an orca truck,” he said. “I love orcas because they're powerful and they are also very collaborative. They're very communicative. They're very family-oriented. So, I think they're kind of one of the best examples of what we can be as people.”
In 2020, he built the real thing with metal, foam and fiberglass. The whale opens up too, near the tail and at a service window, which Fernandez hopes to one day use to sell ice cream.
“I would really like to start my own ice cream factory,” he said. “I’m a ways off from that.”
But, until then, Fernandez said the whale is already making an impact at home and beyond.
“You know, it has made people smile. I drove it to California a couple of years back and the whole way, people coming at me on the freeway were just beaming,” he said. “There's phones coming out the windows and people running up to me at gas stations and just being like, ‘Dude, this thing is amazing!’”
People have a whale of a time checking it out. Fernandez loves to connect with them, taking their pictures when they ask and answering lots of questions. He welcomes anybody interested to reach out.
“I want to talk to them,” he said. “I want to talk to anybody who has the guts to sit in this orca and be a part of the project.”
No matter what roads or oceans are ahead of the orca, Fernandez hopes to make a splash.
“Somebody might see the orca and be like, ‘Dude, I need to make a blimp. I need to make a blimp that's an orca,’ or maybe it's something else that they've always wanted to do and it took just seeing this crazy lump of fiberglass rolling down the road to do it.”
