At the time, Schroeder was the promoter of Argus Publishing's Super Chevy Sunday events. One weekend, while at a Super Chevy Show at Martin, Michigan, touring the GM Engine Manufacturing Plant, Schroeder was riding on the back of a golf cart with a dear friend of his named Wes Yocum, and he asked what Schroeder was up to. Schroeder told Yocum about his crazy idea to build a twin engine wheelstanding Chevy Dualie. To Richard's surprise, Yocum asked if he and his friends at GM could be of assistance. Within weeks, a pair of big-block Chevrolet engines and two TH 400 automatic transmissions arrived at Schroeder's doorstep. They found that one of the hardest parts about building that truck was it became an adventure in buying for twins. They had to buy two of everything. Schroeder got together with engine builder Mike Kuhl, and he built two supercharged Chevrolet engines. The truck also used a Jones Engineering six-gear V-Drive. However, the gear pitch proved to be wrong and the crew crunched a few gears. La Fontaine, Indiana's Banner Brown figured out what the problem was, and re-engineered everything to withstand the torque from the blown Chevrolet big-blocks.
The next problem Schroeder had to solve was the obvious lack of drag slicks.When was the last time you saw a Chevrolet Dualie with drag slicks? With the original weight of the truck being more than 8,000 pounds, the thin sidewall construction of a drag slick wouldn't hold that amount of weight. What they ended up using was a set of 9.00/50x16-inch military ambulance tires on the back, and they worked out great. With 163 inches of wheelbase dangling 20 feet up in the air, driver vision proved a problem, and the NHRA requested that Schroeder make single exhibitions runs only. Shroeder recalled, "I remember Super Chevy Show CEO Roger Gustin commenting that the first time he saw the truck run it looked like the Queen Mary coming down the track at 140 mph.
One Friday evening, after the crowd left at the Super Chevy Show at Indy, Schroeder borrowed Chevrolet's fork lift, jacked up the truck, and climbed inside. He ended up cutting out an area in the dash where the radio had been, as well as the floorpan area below it. That seemed to solve the problem.
One of the more humorous aspects behind the creation of the Emergency West Chevrolet Crew Cab Dualie wheelstander was that, with seating for four, Schroeder constantly found himself being bombarded with requests for rides, and some from some very influential people. After initial shakedown runs, they started removing weight, around 2,000 pounds total. The NHRA got wind of the fact that Schroeder had given couple of people rides in the thing, and they strongly suggested that since he didn't need all those seats anyway, he ought to consider removing them.
While Richard Schroeder's ground-breaking Emergency West Chevrolet Dualie was just the first of a new breed of wheelie truck, sometime around 1981, Wild Bill Shrewsberry reinvented himself with the introduction of his Knott's Berry Farm Ghost Town and Amusement Park-sponsored Berry Wagon. This was a yellow and magenta Hemi-powered, '31 Model-A Panel Delivery. Of course, the logic behind the use of a vintage Model-A truck body coincided with one of the Old West theme park's best known slogans, Knott's Old Time Adventures. Another well-known wheelstander from that era was Ed "Outlaw" Jones Goelitz' Candy Company-sponsored, wheelstanding '31 Chevrolet Fire Truck.