Very cool!
My grandfather drove dump trucks in and around Chicago for almost 40 years until he retired to Arizona in 88. He has some pictures of old trucks like those in and around different job sites.
They sure have come a long way since then!
My grandfather (left) drove this fuel truck back in the day. The little dude is my dad. Pic taken in 1945. A very treasured picture indeed.
G-Town identified the truck for me as:
an old IH KB 8 or 9, can't tell for sure. Gasoline engine. No splitter either. It was likely an in-line 5 or a twin stick 4-5 over 2. A ball to drive!
Forgot the pic lol
Wow, great photos. Especially of Turtle Sr. I can see the resemblance. My first truck driving job was back in the mid 70's working for a house mover in Oklahoma. He had old Macks that he customized to the house moving work. He was a mechanical genius who took old Macks and built his own drive trains by linking two or three transmissions together. He added new meaning to the term Granny gear. And the I-beams I hauled from job to job were 80' long, plus the tractor. Didn't need a CDL back then, just some gumption. Thanks for the great photos!
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
62 mph uphill or downhill hammer down... didn't matter ... olny two problems... you needed to put your foot on the dash to get in out of gear, and if you missed a gear you needed to stop and start all over again
Awesome pictures!
Olny=only ... sorry
and I forgot to say... that was loaded or unloaded
Chuck, that's hilarious!
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Found some old family photos this weekend of some of the trucks I grew up around. Pictures were taken in the mid 70's. And that is not me in the photos, I was probably around 10-12 when these were taken. My cousins and I used to play in these trucks on the weekends.
The Mack on the left was a beautiful truck. Was factory chromed out before that was a thing. Notice the front rear drive, when those trucks got stuck on a job site with 8 yards on concrete on they were really stuck. I would love to have that now to restore.
This Mack was one of a group of about 5 that the local Mack dealer sold to my grandfather at a really good price in return for us giving them feedback on how they preformed in the field. They were one of the earliest attempts at automated transmissions. They had true automatics with torque converters, They really worked well for the first couple 1000 miles when the trans tended to explode, usually loaded on a job site. Mack eventually replaced the transmissions with manuals. Technology just wasn't there yet.
This is the truck I first learned to drive at 14, it was a 1960's era REO. I would haul bank run gravel from the pit to the processing plant. Don't remember a lot about it but it had a gasoline engine and 3 gear shifts. One for the main trans, one for the aux trans and I believe the 3rd was for a 2 speed rear end. Off road you did not really have to use many gears but I do still remember the first time I was able to pull off a shift using the aux transmission.
HOS:
Hours Of Service
HOS refers to the logbook hours of service regulations.