what was it like

that what we thought if you didnt have a dry road/wet road valve you just backed them off

 

i remember c.h. roberson paying somtimes .65 a mile in some places

 

I remember my grandfather telling me, without a block heater they would just tossed some oil soaked rags under the engine block and light it on fire to warm it up a little before trying to start.

 

take a cut down barrel and start a charcoal fire after the flames went down slide under oil pan then wrap tarps around bottom of truck wait about 1 hr get the starting fluid and if all 4 batteries were good crank if not get 2 cars and cables and pray

 

Yeah a lot of things back in the days today would make us look crazy before I started driving I rode with my dad back in the seventys man what a diffrent world that was I dont even know where to start

 

I'll show my age here, do any of you old drivers remember before anyone had a watts line you'd call collect, if they had a load they'd accept the call if no load they'd refuse the call.

 

yes some did some did not

 

I was just old enough back then to see the last of the Cabovers. Just about every big carrier had them, companies back then had color matched trucks and trailers, not these cookie cutter white volvos/cascadias with white trailers. Big sense of pride! Growing up in north Jersey I really feel I got to see the last of an era. I remember trucks idling at their yards all night during cold nights. Autocars, and R model macks were the trucks to have up there. (Loved seeing coal roll out from an R model stack). Trucks looked like trucks, drivers like drivers, wearing their company hats shirts/uniforms but would still help a fellow driver out. Accepting the old mans collect calls once in the morning before school and once before going to sleep. I'm only 25 and can honestly say the industry I'm getting into today is not the one I remember from when I was a kid. Pride, respect, brotherhood I wish would make a comeback above all else.

 

Sounds like a great way to dry/burn out your oil pan gasket and get bad leaks.

 

I remember my first truck (a 77 International cabover) had an "ether injection system". Sometimes it worked, some times it didn't. Sometimes using it [correctly or incorrectly] would lessen the engine life by 500 hours, sometimes it wouldn't.