Our story
About the Founder
The story of the Keystone Truck & Tractor Museum begins in Abilene — a small south central Virginia town no longer on the map — where a boy of just thirteen learned to drive his first truck.
Son of a sawmill operator, Keith Jones hauled lumber from mill to factory alongside his four brothers. Hard work was no stranger to the Jones boys; they tended the family service station and earned their way to higher education. That same ethic still drives Keith today. As CEO of Abilene Motor Express — founded in 1986 and named for that vanished hometown — he and his brothers operate a fleet of over 300 road tractors hauling nearly a thousand trailers across the continental U.S. and Canada.
Along the way, a job with International Roll Call took Keith to Baton Rouge, where he met the woman who would become his wife and proposed that same evening. They were married six weeks later. With his brother Kolen he launched Roadmaster, a storage-trailer business that soon grew into hauling freight — the seed of Abilene Motor Express and those familiar green 18-wheelers on the highway.
Keith’s passion for tractors began with a John Deere M abandoned under honeysuckle after his uncle’s passing. When his aunt planned to send it to auction, he bid nearly fourteen hundred dollars for it. Weeks later she returned the money — his uncle had always wanted him to have it, but she wanted him to earn it. Keith restored that tractor to show quality, and the passion only grew. Today the John Deere M sits among more than 200 antique farm tractors and vintage road trucks he has collected and restored for Keystone Truck & Tractor Museum.
Keith enjoys sharing his collection and knowledge with fellow tractor lovers and anyone curious about these machines. He and his staff welcome the public seven days a week to visit the museum in Colonial Heights, Virginia.