George “Pete” Zanetti, longtime team roper and renowned horse-trailer builder, passed away on July 30, 2025, at age 86. He grew up riding and roping before hitting the rodeo trail in the 1960s, even competing while serving in the Army. In 1979, he founded Pete Zanetti Trailers, crafting more than 270 custom aluminum rigs that became legendary across the rodeo world.
The following article about Zanetti appeared in the 2017 Finale program.
Rumor has it that a Pete Zanetti-built aluminum horse trailer in the Phoenix area has more than 6 million miles on it. And the late Joe Kirk Fulton of Lubbock, Texas—the AQHA Hall-of-Famer who bred Peppy San Badger— had three Zanetti six-horse trailers that each had been pulled more than 4 million miles.
Zanetti himself might be 78 now, but through storied endeavors that include building more than 275 aluminum horse trailers from the ground up, serving in the Army, filming TV commercials and running a wildly successful trailer-repair shop in Texas, one thing has never changed—he never quit roping.
Vintage aluminum
“I picked up a rope at 9 years old and never put it down,” he says.
Zanetti has headed steers at three of the past five WSTR Finales in Las Vegas, but was a heeler for decades and was known prior to that as a tie-down roper. He’d purchased his RCA card in 1958, when pro-rodeo memberships cost just $25.
He hit the rodeo trail out of California in the 1960s and made most of those runs on a grandson of Driftwood that he rode for 18 years. Even when Zanetti was drafted into the Army in 1962-63, he was based at a missile defense station where his commanding officers would let him off to borrow a horse and rope at the few rodeos near New England.
One of his rope horses, in fact, is indirectly responsible for kick-starting Zanetti’s trailer-building business.
“When I got drafted, I had five head of horses that I put out at Jack Roddy’s place in San Jose to get sold,” Zanetti says. “Then I met a guy who had a two-horse aluminum trailer out in the middle of his pasture.”
Prior to World War II, horses were typically transported in the back of a truck. Post-war trailers like this one were homemade and simple, with a single axle and often no roof.
“I traded him one horse for that 1955 trailer, fixed it up, put tires on it and a tarp across it, then used it to move to Baltimore,” Zanetti remembered. “I pulled it for 26 years. People always asked me, ‘Why can’t you build something like that?’”
So in 1979, he did.
“The first trailer I built took me four months, and the next took two months, and that’s how I started,” he said. “Nobody taught me anything about it. I just built them to really, really last.”
For 17 years, Zanetti shipped his trailers all over the country. He built everything from a single-axle one-horse to a triple-thoroughbred straight-ahead in six-horse and eight-horse versions. He discovered recently that a 34-year-old Zanetti trailer that cost $6,000 new just brought $13,000. They’re basically collector’s editions.
Building trailers was a hard-scrabble life that Zanetti supplemented by tying calves at rodeos, where some friends of his were Hollywood stunt men. So Zanetti also filmed a few commercials, which he says was “a kick in the butt.” One, for Busch beer, aired for 17 years.
Working in Weatherford
Zanetti raised two boys and lived 58 years in the Napa Valley area. His father’s family were stone cutters from Italy, and his folks had a donut shop for almost 50 years. He was brought up in their bakery in Victorville, and worked frying donuts all the way through school. He tries to stay out of bakeries to this day.
Trailers were more his thing. Twenty years of fighting the California economy led him to Texas where, instead of building trailers, he opened a shop to repair them. He and his wife, Jan, have owned Zanetti’s Trailer Repair now for over 30 years.
He and a friend built the shop in Weatherford, back when there was just one other repair place in town. Zanetti borrowed $2,500 from a friend to put parts on the shelves. Five or six years later, the shop was doing more than a million dollars a year in business.
Zanetti knows basically everyone after 35 years roping out of California and 35 years roping out of Texas, but one roper from right there in town became a lifelong friend. Eleven years ago, following a lifelong battle with epilepsy, Pete’s son Tony Zanetti died at just 37 years old.
“That never leaves you, you know?” Pete says.
He had been at Matt Tyler’s place that day, practicing. He remembers catching 12 in a row by two feet for the 20-time NFR header before he got the phone call.
“Matt took care of me that day,” Zanetti says. “He’s as close a friend as anybody could ever have.”
That’s the same way Zanetti has trained his staff to take care of his customers, which has kept Zanetti’s Trailer Repair flourishing today despite there being at least four other repair shops in town. Jan’s daughter, Samantha, runs the shop now, with Pete and Jan there most days, too. Pete’s son Lee Zanetti raised a family in Chandler, Arizona, where he still works in the oil-and-gas industry.
“He ropes well,” said Pete. “Dale Woodard taught him to trick-rope and he can still do it. Plus, every year he goes to a local grammar school and teaches those kids how to rope a dummy. He’s the nicest guy; if you knew him, you’d want to steal him – and that’s from a dad’s point of view.”
Despite his own success, you won’t catch Pete Zanetti accepting much credit for having one of the most popular destinations for trailer owners in the West. He’ll just tell you he’s been blessed, or lucky. But customers will tell you exactly why they have Zanetti’s on speed-dial.
The golden rule
Zanetti calls himself “the parts runner guy” and spends his time gathering parts when he’s not heading steers. But he’s made sure his repairmen are bar none. They don’t turn any problem away, and they double-check everything in front of you before you pull out.
When they’re not changing an axle, installing an Air Ride suspension or having Cummins work on a generator or Outlaw repair a living-quarters snafu, they’re helping motorists stranded near Weatherford with broke-down trailers.
A while back, Zanetti blew an inside dually tire with two horses in the trailer coming back from a roping. The local tire shop wouldn’t squeeze him in, so he set a new policy at Zanetti’s. His staff always stops what they’re doing to fix a guy up and get him back on the road.
In the meantime, Zanetti will never quit roping. When he got his left knee replaced, he was back to roping 42 days later. A complication with blood clots when he got a new right knee meant it was 56 days until he chased a steer. The guy has the same fortitude of the hand-made trailers he painstakingly put together back in the day. He comes from that stock—his mother is a little over 100.
Zanetti appreciates the same fortitude in his horses as his trailers. He’d already heeled for 14 years on his grey Otoe-bred gelding before switching ends. His heel horse before that was a mare that lasted until she was 30. He pulled them both in a trailer he built 37 years ago and sold, then bought back. He’s been pulling it 29 years, and it has a quarter-million miles on it. He did finally change the floorboards the other day.
Like his vintage aluminum trailers, Pete Zanetti is one of a kind.
—TRJ—
