Today was my first time driving a big truck (bigger than a 1-ton DRW.).

It was a 1968 GMC 2 ton dump truck. I asked my boss if I could drive it empty and he said **** it and let me...it was also only my 2nd time driving a manual, but I did pretty damn well. Here's a pic!

 

i remember those, we had one on the farm with a 6V53 detroit diesel. loud as anything.
my first truck was a 49 international L-190 single axle tractor, with a big 6 cylinder gas engine and a quad box. started driving it at 13 years old, and that was all i drove until i was almost 20 and bought my first "car", a 66 dodge W-300 power wagon pickup.

 

Was in like 1983, my boss asked if I could drive a stick...? I was driving a 1964 Galaxie 500, 390cuin, 4 barrel, hot rod, my only car. He takes me out in the construction yard and points at this truck...can you drive that ? Hmmm I guess... he had a fellow drive me around the block...then I drove it around the block. We come back... and tells me, that's you brand new crew truck... you now a foreman. OMG !

I didn't even know a truck could have more than 4 gears.... LOL Was like this truck, but we added cable reel lifts in the back.

 

What a great way to find out about a promotion, eh?

Are the W300s the very round body or still the square ones?

 

the W300 i had was the square civilian model
looked like this, only dual wheels and a flatbed body instead of the utility body:

 

It's beautiful. That looks way to big to be a 1 ton tho, although it could be the camera angle. We're 1 tons just way bigger back then?

 

Back in 95, I was in the labor union working on a pipe line being ran in my area.
One morning the job super has me go with him to a different area than where I had been working, he pulls up next to a Peterbilt dump truck and tells me he needs me to drive it a couple miles down the pipe line.
I don't know where he got the idea I knew how to drive a truck. I never said I could. I told him I had no idea how to drive it. He says it's easy blah blah blah. Don't touch the clutch.
Well it's all back roads and I don't have to go fast, so I make it almost all the way to where I had to go, I turn on the last road and roll to a stop.

I tried everything to get moving again, including pushing in the clutch, nothing worked. I ended up having to call the super who came back after about an hour. He messes with it, and ends up calling a lowboy trailer.
He hooks a winch up to the truck and I had to keep it straight as it was being pulled onto the trailer.
As it turns out, the reason the truck wasn't being used, was because the clutch was going out, they just didn't know when or where it was going to happen, and I was the lucky person to have it happen while I was driving it.

 

that old dog had 8X19.5 tires on it.
8 inch wide, 38 inch tall and on a steel 19.5 inch rim.
even back then the tires cost close to $150 each. they were very hard to find because they were old military stock. and being bias ply they would get flat spots if the truck sat for more than a day or two, then would feel like you were driving on square tires for the first 5 miles or so until they got hot and rounded back out.
then it would just feel like you had concrete tires.
that old dog was about the roughest ride i ever drove. but there was nowhere it would not go, or nothing it would not drag down the road.
it had either 5.38 or 5.71 gears in it, and had a top speed of 55 mph.

 

1977, I was 20 years old. Started driving this, 1966 GMC, V8 gas motor, 4WD, John Bean High Pressure pump.

 

That is beautiful.

 

i remember that old bean. only thing you got wrong was it had a 305 V6 in it, not a V8. after it retired from service my friend bought it for use as a hydroseed unit. he ran it for around 5 years before selling it after the rear axle blew and he had trouble finding parts to repair it.

 

Really? Awesome to know that. When it was purchased in 1966 my Dad went out to Michigan to the John Bean factory to be trained on high pressure fog firefighting. That was one tough truck. We ran the wheels off of it and it saw a lot of fire in it's day. Where did your friend use it? I never knew what happened to it when our town sold it.

 

in the garbage dumps in jersey and new yawk.

 

Oh OK, thanks. You are right on the V6 also. I did remember it had a V6 after I did the post. I do miss that truck, and those days, lol.

 

Biggest truck I ever drove was a huge penske truck that my sons school used to transport instruments for band. Huge learning curve for me