It is indeed possible to take a vehicle over 1,000,000 miles... my dad has done it with THREE (3) TRUCKS!!!!

The first one was a blue 1975 White-Freightliner that he put about 2,200,000 miles on over 11 years. He rebuilt it about 4-5 times and repainted it twice.



Then on his 1984 Freightliner, he drove it about 1,300,000 and rebuilt it twice. It was repainted once about the time he purchased it.



And then on his current rig, a 1995 Volvo, which he purchased in late 2000, has put over 1,000,000 on it and still counting. It's been rebuilt once so far.



It CAN be done!

 

Duane, great pics of your dads trucks, they look great! I was always a Kenworth fan growing up, I used to draw pics all the time of them in grade school! thanks for sharing..

 

My best friend and I met when he kept drawing pictures of Peterbilts, KW's, Internationals (his favorite truck, never will know why) and even Volvo's and the such.... his father and my father both drove rigs and we just started from there. My dad just prefers working on the Freightliners, he always thought they were as reliable as anything and easier to work on... until he drove a Volvo company truck for somebody he ran part time for for a time... and when he bought a truck in 2000, it was a Volvo!

 

RJ - Your '86 looks GREAT! I've always wanted one like that. Eventually we'll buy a house with a bigger driveway and then we're going to start looking for something like it

 

duane, im lovin that COE white. im lovin that black '66-7 GTO in the backround even more the one junkyard i visit has a ton of cool old trucks, and i beleive there is a similar COE white sitting up in there, along with a mid '70s COE KW, which i was lookin at. that one looked like its driver just walked away, still had a coat hanin from a hook, coffe cups in the holders, maps on the seat, and sheets on the bed.

my dad also used to drive dumptrucks in the late '70s when he was very young. he ran a dimond Reo and then an autocar, both outta the late '60s. we have a pic of one of the trucks somewhere...

 

Now that GTO was not ours... it is my Uncles, it's sitting in his back yard to the very day and he's "Gonna fix that car up one day..." and nothing's ever happened about it. I'd love to have it... but it's a convertible and I'm afriad that sitting in the weather all this time may have rusted it out beyond restoration.

 

nowadays, NOTHING is too decayed to restore, duane. EPECIALLY a convertable! was it a stick car? even if it was too far gone for ya to restore yourself, im sure there is someone out there who could tackle it. case in point: this '57 chevy one of my dad's friends dragged home looks pretty damn hopeless, but its a convertable... it sold in '05 for $15,000 on ebay. right now... IDK about 15k, but it could probibly fetch 3-5k easy... it was a factory 283 / stick car.

eather way, see if ya can nab some pics of that GTO. i'd love to see

 

I have no idea what COE is, so I did the wiki look-up, and now I know!!

 

I didn't either the first time I saw it on a truck paper article years ago... it didn't dawn on my dad either. We (speaking for myself and all the old truckers) never called them COE's... they were called cabovers... and "conventional" trucks were called "long hoods" whether they were the aerodynamic design or the real traidtional "long hood" seen on Peterbilt 379's and Kenworth W900's. It's just pure semantics really.

I remember being a small child from about age 4 on up until dad sold the truck and sitting on the "dog house" as it was called where the engine was between the seats in a cabover... and I would be sitting higher than my mom or dad! I used to have a toy steering wheel I held and pretended I was driving along with my dad.....

 

True. A lot of aftermarket stuff is now out there. Don't foget you can now buy a "NEW" '57 Convertible. New everything. They even started repo-ing hoods and trunk lids now. Doors, complete one-piece floor pans, quarters, trunk floors, trunk walls, tail pans, front fenders, inner front fenders............... everything. And C.A.R.S. started making a complete Convertible body about 2 - 3 yrs ago. It all comes down to how much do you have to spend and how new do you want it?

Personally I don't feel these new reproduction cars will hurt the originals in value any. But is it fair to have a completely new car setting next to a 53 yr old car at a car show and judging them both equally? Not to me.

I do know "IF" I were to play & win the lottery I'd give a lot of thought to buying one of the new '57 Chevy Convertible cars. Just to own one.




Thanks.

Wish I had a bigger driveway too.
A few cars I'd like to own myself.