Wichita food truck owners share harrowing details of fire that totaled their rig
One of Wichita’s busiest food trucks is out of commission after a dramatic Tuesday fire on the side of MacArthur Road.
On Wednesday morning, the owners of Ken N Barbie’z Rollin Diner — Kelly Ake and partner Barbie Taber — shared the story of what happened when they were en route to a job at the Haysville swimming pool late Tuesday afternoon.
Their truck is now totaled, consumed by a fire so intense that the metal it was made from melted onto the road and had to be scraped off by the fire department. But Ake said through tears on Wednesday that she and Taber actually got lucky on Tuesday afternoon.
“It could have been real bad for us,” Ake said.
Another motorist warned them
Ake and Taber, who started their pink-and-blue, Barbie-themed food truck in 2017, had finished a lunch service in El Dorado on Tuesday afternoon and had taken their truck back home to load it up for their evening gig, which was serving people gathered for a swim meet in Haysville.
They like to get to their jobs early so they can get the french fries started, so they left about 3:45 p.m. They were driving near MacArthur and Hoover when they realized that their generator had shut down, which meant that their refrigerators full of food wouldn’t be working.
Ake said that she decided she’d pull the truck over once they got to the highway so that Taber could hop out and restart the generator. But traffic was backed up on MacArthur Road, packed with trucks hauling wheat.
That’s when Ake noticed that the driver of a white pickup behind them kept trying to pass, or so she thought. When the driver finally pulled up beside the food truck, Ake could make out one word he was shouting.
“Fire.”
“As soon as I heard the word, ‘fire,’ I stopped immediately,” Ake said. “Barb and I looked and we saw smoke and flames at the back window. We exited the truck thinking it was nothing serious, but it became real serious real fast.”
Taber grabbed the fire extinguisher from inside the truck and sprayed at the flames, but the fire was too big. Ake remembered that the truck was still running, so she quickly jumped inside and turned off the ignition.
Then, they backed away from the truck, worried that the propane tanks it was carrying would cause an explosion.
“We literally watched it burn, and when I say ‘burn,’ it burned the entire inside,” Ake said. “My seat and my steering wheel where I sit are toast.”
Truck was a total loss
When fire fighters arrived and were able to put the flames out, the truck’s owners were devastated to see what was left. The back end of the truck was completely burned through, leaving the framing visible, Ake said. Every last piece of kitchen equipment was “charred to the bone.”
Ever the professional, Ake called the Haysville swim meet organizers to explain what had happened. Overcome with emotion, she also approached the owner of the white truck, named Clayton, leaned in his window and just said, ‘Thank you.”
“We owe our lives to this guy,” Ake said. “Had we turned with the direction of the wind at that corner, the flames would have engulfed the truck, and we would have been trapped.”
Firefighters later told the couple that the fire started with the generator. They also told Ake that if she had not turned the truck off, it likely would have exploded.
Throughout the night on Tuesday and through Wednesday morning, the couple — who shared their story on the truck’s social media page — were overwhelmed with messages and calls of support from friends, family and other food truckers offering to help.
Typically, the pair serves its menu of sandwiches and burgers at about six events a week. Sometimes, they have as many as nine jobs on the books in a single week, and Ake said she was having to reach out to the organizers of six events who’d hired the truck to serve in the coming days. Other local food truckers are offering to take over at those events, she said.
Ake and Taber make their living with the truck, so they’re unsure what to do. They do have insurance, but they know it will take some time to get through that process.
Friends, colleagues offer help
In the meantime, their daughter-in-law, Tori Taber, has started a Go Fund Me designed to help the couple replace the truck. So far, it’s raised $340 toward a $25,000 goal.
Ake said that though she’s grateful, the fundraiser makes her feel a bit strange.
“For us, we always try to give, so it’s hard to receive,” she said. “It’s almost swallowing your pride.”
But Ake and Taber said they are committed to restarting the truck. They had their previous rig custom built, though, and getting another one built would take too long. They’ll likely try to find a used truck so they can resume their business quickly.
“This is our livelihood,” Ake said. “This is all we do. Not being able to go out into the community and do what we do — it’s devastating.”
This story was originally published June 25, 2025 at 1:51 PM.
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