Chapel Hill dad makes shirts that go

Nick Morgan has always been into vehicles and transportation. And he's driven pretty much all of it ... from pizza delivery to UPS trucks to tractor trailers for FedEx. He's flown planes. And he's a fan of airshows.

But Morgan's passion took another turn about 15 months ago after his oldest son, now 6, fell in love with all those vehicles too. Morgan couldn't find anything but cutesy T-shirts with smiling trains or cartoon trucks. His son, who especially loves the connecting rods of trains, craved something a lot more realistic.

"I couldn't find anything out there without scouring the net," Morgan said. "I decided I needed to come up with something on my own."

By last summer, Morgan, a UNC-Chapel Hill grad, had four designs for T-shirts with realistic looking vehicles and launched his website.

"It's been an evolution ever since," he said.

He's up to nine designs, including the Carolina blue fire truck, a tanker truck, a cement mixer and an electric train. Morgan comes up with the idea and works with an illustrator, who creates the art.

"The underlying theme for Shirts That Go is that sense of motion with a large vehicle," he said. "So you'll notice in my designs, they're all moving with a sense of power and size with them."

Right now, Shirts That Go is hobby for Morgan, who has worked in the web hosting industry for the last decade. But he's gotten some buzz from mommy bloggers and some good interest in his shirts. When I was interviewing with him, a mom called up to ask about placing an order for an entire birthday party. And he's starting to get customer reviews on the website.

"My initial nine designs are based only on what I think is cool," he says. "The next two we want to try and put forward something that is maybe in demand or very hard to come by."