The Shark Boat Chevy Is Part Truck, Part Boat, and All Fun

His name is Kurt Morello and he’s a naval architect slash hot rodder slash fabricator from Woodstock, Georgia, and the creator and owner of the Shark Truck. The Shark Truck, as the headline says, is part truck, part boat and all fun, but you could also describe it as what can happen if you let a kid play around with tools in the shop.

It’s basically a fiberglass boat plopped on top of a Chevrolet dump truck, with both parts cut off just right so they can accommodate one another. On top of this Frankenstein of a vehicle, which Kurt actually uses as a daily driver, he painted shark teeth in a shark mouth, and other shark- and water-related stuff.

Kurt agreed to show off his build for the latest episode of Ridiculous Rides, which you can see in full at the bottom of the page. He says this is his third project as fabricator, but the footage shows three other cars next to the Shark Truck. He also explains that he came up with the idea after taking someone’s 24-foot fiberglass boat in for repairs for a leaking outboard engine, and another person’s Chevy dump truck, which was “running poorly.” He wasn’t thinking about a new custom ride, but he got the idea when he saw the boat sitting above the truck.

Powered by a 5.7L V8 engine that’s “pretty standard,” the Shark Truck weighs 6,000 pounds (2,721.5 kg) and sits 7 feet (213 cm) high. It has very poor visibility, so Kurt relies on four different cameras for safety on the road. It also has limited handling, since Kurt lowered the front end by a lot to be able to fit the boat on top, and that means the tire scrapes the well when he’s going over bumps.

Still, he loves it, and he’s very proud of it. Kurt doesn’t go into the specifics of the build, but you can tell from the way he talks about it. He says he did most of the stuff on his own and that he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t work by a plan, but would rather improvise as he moves along. That much you can tell from the way the Shark Truck came out, but it’s still impressive for how detail-oriented it is.

Inside, you can sit up to nine people, including the driver and a passenger on the custom bench seating. In the rear, six or seven more people can sit on L-shaped benches, with a rollercoaster-style lap bar instead of seat belts. Kurt even put holes for the fishing rods on the exterior, so he and his pals can pretend they’re fishing when they’re out on trips – “from the parking lot,” he laughs.

The video report doesn’t say anything about Kurt’s experience as a fabricator, except to note that he’s just “recently” gotten into custom cars and that his father was a boat builder. As it turns out, despite his claims he likes to cowboy when he’s building vehicles, Kurt is a naval designer himself, as he told FYI in an October 2021 episode of Ultimate Rides.

Also then, he said that he spent three full years working on the Shark Truck, which he referred to as the Shark Boat Chevy. Special touches he pointed out included the custom exhaust, the steel lap bar, the train horns, and a state-of-the-art sound system that cost him $10,000.

The Shark Truck also made an appearance that year in May at the Caffeine & Octane event in Atlanta, Georgia, where it stuck out like a sore thumb but earned warm praise for the fact that it was handmade and, if you’ll pardon the French, unapologetically ballsy.

Say what you will about Kurt and his Shark Boat Chevy, but you have to admire his dedication to the project. He even has a shark hat, and little stuffed sharks for his unique truck!