Customizing your pickup truck is probably the second-best thing about owning a truck (the first being lucky enough to own one!) and people all over the country absolutely love taking their vehicle and turning it into a living, revving, representation of their personality, from lifted trucks, lowered trucks, or heck, even pickups modded to look like Ice Trucks in Anchorage, Alaska. Americans love their trucks, and they love to show it off.

But let’s say you’re new to the truck moddin’ life, where do you even start? Well, here are some basic truck mods you should consider if you want to start turning your beauty into a beast:

Big Wheels, Small Tires

Going big with the mags is perfect for people who love bling and they ain’t afraid to show it! Sure, smaller tires mean you won’t be able to go into rough terrain, but if you’re primarily a city-dweller, you won’t need those rugged tires anyway.

Big wheels often take up a majority of your tire’s sidewall, which decreases your grip on off-road conditions, but looks mean and tough on the street. Best of all, big wheels with small tires don’t actually affect your truck’s carrying capacity, so you can continue hauling as much as you used to. The downside? Large wheels with thin, sidewall tires are expensive. But hey, that’s the baller life, baby.

Small Wheels, Big Tires

On the flip side, you could opt for smaller wheels with bigger tires, which is perfect if you’re a hardcore off-road enthusiast who tears up dirt roads every weekend. Or, y’know, if you just want to look like one.

Bigger tires is to equal more surface area, and more surface area means more grip on loose surfaces and huge boulders. Larger tires can also be aired down so they can have even more grip on off-road tracks. Sure, it doesn’t look as blingy as its counterpart above, but it sure as heck provides you with a lot of utility in the wilderness.

But here’s the downside: they are going to be just as expensive as their blingy counterparts. Again, ballin’ ain’t cheap y’all.

Lifted Trucks

Adding a lift kit to your pickup does exactly what it says on the box: it literally ‘lifts’ your truck chassis up from the wheels and gives you a lot of additional ground clearance. Practically, this helps you protect your undercarriage from bruises and scraps from rocks and other debris, especially if you’re off-roading with your 4×4.

But, even modest lift kits give even a humble pickup a meaner, more aggressive, and tougher vibe than stock counterparts. Yes, they can be expensive, and yes, it’s added maintenance, but it’s a small price to pay for looking bad as heck.

Lowered Trucks

Lowered trucks are on the opposite spectrum of monster trucks: where the monster truck looks like a primitive destruction machine, lowered trucks look like sleek, futuristic ships from the 30th century. They are the epitome of dieselpunk cool, and if you’re (understandably) worried about the undercarriage getting all kinds of scraped up, don’t worry because most lowered trucks have a hydraulic system that lifts the truck up off the ground when necessary. All business when its up, all party when its down.

Customizing your pickup truck is one of the best things about owning one, so go and design it the way you want.