Tom Kirkpatrick

In my early teens. Say just a teen. A friend of mine's dad was a Mack dealer. One very cold Thanksgiving evening we were enlisted to repo a G. We got on a Greyhound which turned out NOT to be the through bus. So we had the pleasure of stopping at every little town between our destination. We picked up and dropped everyone who had too much wine with the holiday dinner. So much for sleeping off our holiday dinner. We finally got the truck started with our last squirt of starting fluid it fired up. Away we went no heat and no fans to move it if we did. We have always credited ourselves with the discontinuation of the paper road map. We'd stop and get them by the handful. Stuffed in every crack, crevis, and rivet hole was a map or piece of one. We made it to sunrise and the cab warmed some with sunlight. It was before the roof pole what a rattle. They were too wide on old two lane bridges. Inevitably one mirror or the other went the way of the wind. My favorite back then had to be the H model, short haul,city work was the MB. Long haul was the extended frame B75 with an aero sleeper. When I was legal over the road the F models had come into their own. Took a long time to get a job also every company required three to five year experience. So without verifiable legal driving experience it made it tough. For me the fun went out of driving about 2008. So I pulled the pin and retired early. I remember a storiesthat one or the other windshield popped out on on the KW. Boy there are some fantastic memories.