Hi all! Well, I'm new here, so I'm supposed to post some info on myself and why I'm here, so here goes - My dad was Fleet Services Manager for Cities Service Oil Co., then headquartered in Tulsa, in the 60's-early 80's. He was friends with Perry Harper, who owned Mack Truck Sales of Tulsa. When the "experts" (READ: MBA's who came in to CS as VP's of everything) wanted to divest the company of all of it's trucks (and brother, they had a LOT of them), dad made a presentation to the Board showing that leasing was NOT a viable option for the Company (no real equity when the lease is up, not to mention what would happen should there be an economic downturn - which did happen in the late 70's). The Board overruled the "experts" and authorized dad to develop a program of purchasing, amortizing, retiring, etc., the fleet, and he did so, primarily, using trucks. When I turned 16, "It's time for you to get a job", Dad said, so, Perry Harper, who needed another person to work night shift and clean the shop, hired me to assist the older man who had worked there for many years. I worked there full time in the summers, and 4 hours a day during the school year, and did so through my high school years. During that time, I converted my grandpa's 1965 Chevrolet 1/2-ton pickup that I drove into a something of a "Mack, Jr." - by the time I went to college, everything on it said , and precious little said "Chevrolet". The only thing left to changeover was the tailgate and the hubcaps (which I had planned to convert to status by using the round, flat ones from R-model's, covering the Chevy logo in the middle of the "dog dish" hubcaps). In college, disaster struck - when I was a Junior, one of the University's 2-ton flatbeds, which was driven by a fellow band student on the equipment crew, was driven over and through the bed and part of the cab of my "Mack" truck. The Band Director, not wanting the Band Dept. or the student to get in trouble with the school, made the kid promise to fix it (his parents were loaded), but he never did. That was 1982 - and I never had another truck again. Until now. I found another 1965 Chevrolet 1/2-ton that is almost identical to my grandpa's (which had been the only new vehicle he ever owned - Dad bought it for him), and bought it. I've spent several months getting it mechanically sound and up to spec. Now, I'm beginning the "Mackification" of it - I started Saturday by putting the Bulldog hood ornament on it - I started there because it just didn't "feel" right driving a truck like that without the Mack bulldog on the hood. Now I'm looking for more things to convert it: * Horn button from an R-model (fits perfectly!) * Accelerator pedal, base, and pin (also works perfectly) * An old speedometer with the decal having B-style sideview of the bulldog on it - I'm going to place it where the "HighBeam" word appears on the Chevy dashboard. * Cab lights. * Fender lights - front & back, probably from an R-model. * Fender 1/2-cut bulldog emblems. * Letters that say "MACK" for the valve covers on the vintage 283 I'm going to rebuild and put it the truck (when I paint the engine after having it boiled out, I'll use Maxidyne Gold). And on, and on, and on I'm going to go. Oh well, now you know I'm nuts... Todd W. White Sapulpa, Oklahoma
