Anything 70's

Do an internet search for 'Hanks Truck pictures" and you should satisfy your need for ancient, non power steering, bias ply tired, no front brake, spring seat machinery without air conditioning. LOL!.

 

Why go all the way back to a 70's truck (30+ years old) when you could buy a decent 4 years old truck for 25-30k and run it. Only a fool buys a 100,000 dollar truck. And if you did buy a 100k truck, why would you have to spend a bunch of money to fix it up. They come ready to run if you pay 100k for them. We buy trucks to drive and work with, not to fix them up like the horsecrap on "Trick My Truck".

You should look into the American Truck Historical Society if you want to have an old truck as a hobby. But for actually doing work, and for actually making a living, those trucks are way behind the times. There is a 35 year gap in technology between what you enjoy as a hobby, and what is being used by people that work for a living behind the wheel. I would not trade any R model Mack with a camelback suspension for the 2006 Vision sitting out in my driveway.

I appreciate the older trucks too, and would like to get my hands on a mid 60's crackerbox with all the trimmings, but that would be strictly as a toy to play with, not as a way to earn a living.

You can find drivers that drove most of those trucks back in the 60's-70's, and you can usually identify those drivers by the scars where they had surgery to repair organs bounced loose by the pounding of those old trucks.

 

You're going to have a tough time since Detroit never made a 91 series.

But FWIW, here's a website full of Detroit 2 stroke engine soundclips:

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/ryq/

 

Just where do you plan on putting a 1970's truck to work? Most major companies will not allow you to lease on with them if the truck is over 5 years old, and a great many won't go back any further than 3 years. DOT inspectors at anay scale take a very jaundiced view of older trucks, since they typically have 1-2 or more million miles on them, and that takes a toll on a great many parts that can't be replaced easily.

About the only tyrpe of work you could do with an older truck is going to be port work pulling containers, and that is the poorest paying work in the country, no matter what port you pull out of. You might be able to find some kind of local work with one, but the chances of that are pretty slim.

And any truck from that time period is going to have a mechanically injected engine, which means that it would not be able to pass the exhaust opacity tests and emission requirements in California. And needless to say, the mechanically injected engine is incapable of providing the same fuel mileeage as current generation engines. Most of the engines in trucks in that time frame were designed in the days of chep fuel, and if it only got 4 mpg or so, no one really cared.

Look, if you like older trucks, that's fine. A great many people do. But to suggest that people are going to start driving 30-35 year old beater trucks and give up the comfort of the trucks that they have now, and go to work in the worst part of the trucking industry for the privelige of doing so just isn't going to happen. You are basically asking everyone to sacrifice the last 35 years of mechanical progress because you like the colors and the sounds of the engines. The fact that you like older thrucks is fine and dandy, but they are past their prime and suitable for collectors now. They had their day in the sun, but that time is past. The good side of that is that now they can be bought and restored cheaply as toy for their owner, but they are past the point of being working machines any longer except in very rare circumstances.

 

You will not find any major companies running good paying freight that are going to sign up a 35 year old truck to pull the load. You are going to find very few drivers interested in driving a cabover tractor. The moment the laws were changed to allow for longer vehicles, cabover production began to decline and with the exception of some mid sized trucks used in city use, there are no cabovers left in production. No one is designing new ones because they are almost impossible to build and meet current safety standards.

If you have companies near you that are actively signing up those trucks, the companies are bottom feeders at best, not prime quality companies that drivers will be willing to work for. Those trucks were long since retired off the road before you were born, and in a few years, when you get a drivers license, and possibly learn to drive a truck, you will find this out.

For now, you are sadly mistaken about the commercial value of those trucks. As I said before, they are pleasant toys for weekends and maybe to use for your own fun, but there is no way to make a living with them for the majority of drivers actively on the road.