Where is everyone #5

I said to hell with u-bolts on the one I use to have on my truck. I went and bought 4" 1/2" thick aluminum angle and welded it to the bottom of the legs. Then I used 4 5/8 bolts on each side and bolted it to the frame.

It was alot cleaner look and was super easy to take on and off that way. Just a thought there @PoleCrusher

 

Same thing for me. No family members were truckers but I was always fascinated with them. We had a family friend who had a truck, COE Pete. Went on a trip with him and his son when I was 12 or 13 and he told me......."son, if you ever get into a truck you'll never get it out of your blood". I've told that quote before but no truer words were ever spoken.

I've been fortunate enough to be able to satisfy my yearning to drive over the years starting in '91, mostly on a part time basis, and a couple of full time stints, but it never panned out for me to be able to make a career out of it.

I've done Van, Reefer, Tanker and Step. From my first truck, an old spring ride COE Intl 9670, to W-900's, 379's and more of the plain stuff in between. When I lived back east I worked a 4 on 3 off schedule in my full time job so the other 3 days I went truckin. I use to run up to NYC every weekend haulin chicken for Perdue, Mountaire or Townsends and backhaul whatever to DC or Baltimore and loved every minute of it.

When I moved back here to Oklahoma I got hooked up with Western Flyer Xpress and boy did they have the miles, coast to coast. Dennison Tx, to Calexico Ca to Charlotte to Dallas, to Dennison, repeat, and I did it on paper and in style in a 379 EXH. I even took off 4 months from my other job just so I could run. I messed around with other stuff and would never put myself in a class with most of you guys but I did get a taste of it off and on for a while. I'm afraid it's probably over for me even part time but boy what a ride it was!

I envy all of you guys on a daily basis.

 

I really like that idea. Even better if you can put weld nuts inside the frame. Only 1 person and 1 wrench needed to unbolt it.

 

If you ever give trucking a rest and wanted to build and design things there is no doubt in my mind you could do it. I've gotten to know you a little over a year now and seen some of the work you do and it's top-notch!

 

That's a good idea. I really liked those weld nuts you posted the other day. Those are gonna come in super handy.

 

I appreciate that @SAR !

 

I use those every chance I get. It takes a bit longer on the initial project, but the time savings later are worth it.

 

I did it for roughly a year or so after high-school.

Worked for a woodworking shop down here in Florida. Did relatively basic 2D AutoCAD and CNC-programming. Loved the AutoCAD portion, disliked the CNC-Programming portion... Our CNC, although fawking cool and ###### to operate... was a two-million dollar piece of machinery made in...Germany by a German-speaking manufacturer. All of the icons, controls, self-help books were in...German. I don't speak nor read German, do you? Programming for it was PITA because of this... everything had to be in MM. Not our native inches. Took me awhile to get used to that. Eventually, I got the hang of it. I was writing door programs, from scratch, so our CNC basically "built" doors -- took our raw cuts of lumber and made the stiles and rails. Someone just had to install the dowels and slam the door together. Was crazy cool. Bloody CNC would get that door aligned perfectly.

The CNC program WAS NOT intuitive like I was used to with AutoCAD. Left me cursing my head-off some days and the operator (Jim) and I would go back and forth a lot over my mistakes. Overtime I ended up making a lot of programs that we could copy the code from drawing to drawing... that way Jim could select his tools on the fly rather than having to write the code from scratch... or having to do it myself. Being able to have a "variable" for everything rather than him having to manually attached each tooling path saved us hours of time each week.

On the AutoCAD side.... I was responsible for everything from the customers drawings to shop drawings... to moulding templates...to making sure Jim had an idea of what he was "looking at" when I sent him a program...all the way to making sure our lumber-guy would order the correct lumber for the bloody moulding machine. Why the salesmen wouldn't do that? I don't know. We did everything from doors, to mouldings of any-kind, all the way to custom signs and PVC gates....literally anything you can think of. I'd have to scan in mouldings the salesmen brought in... scan it 1:1 and then "trace" over it in CAD and make a template out of plastic. Verify it "fits" and then the moulding department can make a new blade and we can run mouldings for them.... We had fawking THOUSANDS of moulding knives. I could've spent hours scrolling through them all... they might look the same on paper but a centimeter here or there makes ALL the difference for multi-billionaires I guess.

















Here's the CNC running a door program...





My ol' buddy Iksonn. Didn't speak English that well but knew everything about mouldings... Setting up the knives on the computer. In the background you can see all the knives I'm talking about... There was 5-6 walls COVERED ceiling to floor with cubby holes filled with them...







I'm not sure the total number of feet that machine could do, per day. Depends on the number of times they gotta change the knives for certain mouldings, regrind the knives, etc... but those boys made us our MONEY.

Was an alright gig... in the end I got bloody sick of the office politics. Like real bad. I let that crap get to me too much and that's what drove me away from it...

 

Well the rear end should be fine with my brother either way. He will just drive it easier than me loaded heavy. He is technology teacher. I am a baby on the trucks and beat a car like a rented mule, or village bicycle! But I figured I would talk him into a exhaust system. I'm sure I will have to put it on however. What do did you get Tug? The guy he bought it from was 62 or 63.

 

I see those Western Flyer guys every so often..

Their running Peterbilts again... yanking flats every so often.