Talkin' Trucks With Mike:A History of the TNT Companies

No, all three were homemade units although they did share some design elements with the Holmes 750. Here is a Holmes 750 that I did own, although this is a lter picture of it from the current owner. This 77 White Road Boss was in service until 2014 and would still be if the operator hadn't let it roll away and down an embankment. They wrecker body lives on remounted on a Pete chassis.

 

It's sad to hear the Roadboss was totaled, not many of those running down the road anymore.
Do guys build homemade wreckers anymore? All the companies I see appear to be running mass produced units.

My first ride in a big truck was in the early 1980's with my dads friend who drove a White Western Star tow truck with what I now know was a Holmes 750. As a kid I thought the Holmes 750 badge on that Western Star wrecker was the guys cb handle lol. I'm not sure what year it was but it had round headlights and two transmissions (2 sticks). All we did was drive out to a farm and pull a dump truck out of the mud, but that single event got me hooked on big trucks, I've never worked in any other industry, just trucking lol. So far I've never got into towing, my area is fairly rural so I've been told by many in the business that towing is either "feast or famine", but mostly famine. Anyway, I've always watched wreckers from afar and read about them on the internet. In my home town all the mechanical wreckers have long ago been retired.

Im curious if you might be able to identify what type of wrecker unit this is? Anyone who stops at the Rice Hill Oregon Pilot will probably recognize this truck due to the fact that it's usually parked across the street.

 

Please, next do a piece on Con-way, who i thought was the best in terms of atmosphere/paint jobs/ "LTL-ness", for an ltl carrier. And not the new con-way either-----a 4 yr old with a magic marker could have came up with that excuse for "logo"-----and probably did............

 

Cool picture. That appears to be either a Challenger or a Kemp Conversion, both are based extensively on the Holmes 750. The Kemp Conversion was a kit sold in the 80's and 90's that allowed you to replace the booms on a Holmes 750 with a hydraulic boom that was stronger and add hydraulic drive to the winches for better finesse and control. Most likely that is what this is.

Challenger was founded by former employees of the Holmes company after it was sold to Dover Corp. and their early designs were merely copies of the Holmes equipment, so this truck may have been built by Challenger.

As for modern homemade equipment, sadly it doesn't happen often anymore due to liability and police towing contracts. With the sue happy culture we live in today should something fail everyone on scene from the driver of the wrecker to the police officer that called him is getting sued, so most police agencies now stipulate that the wrecker apparatus must be of kind and quality from a recognized manufacturer of towing equipment.

 

Here is the remount of the 750 wrecker boom from the totalled Road Boss. The owner did some modifications, mostly useless but still he did them. Having inspected this up close there is no way I would use this truck for anything, he took an awesome piece of towing history and destroyed it with shoddy craftsmanship.

 

I think you might be right about the Kemp conversion. It looks like it has a Holmes badge on it, but I can't be 100% sure of that due to the fact that it's usually parked aways off the road, so close inspection is not possible, hence my question.

 

I agree, it's sad when some one takes old equipment that's historically accurate and butchers it. I knew a guy who "modified" (his word) what was a prestine 1965 Peterbilt narrow nose by replacing the original naturally aspirated Cummins and the 5x4 transmissions with a 3406e Cat and a 18 speed.






Another Classic tow truck I see regularly is a old KW COE that has a unique boom design that I was always curious about. So I did some google image searching which lead me to the ATHS and Tow 411 forums. As a result of my search I think it's a old Continental tow truck with a Tex Freeman wrecker unit, as it looks just like the trucks in the pictures above. Based on my reading of the above mentioned sites Continental Towing was a major player in keeping the freeway and highway systems of Los Angeles and the Inland Empire running smoothly from the 50's through the 70's, along with some regional long haul towing as well. I guess those Tex Freeman wreckers were very nice and powerful in there day . I gather the one down side to the Tex Freeman design is that the operator had to sit high up on the unit to operate it, which left him highly exposed to breaking cables. If it truly has any significant historical value I hope someone rescues it before it rots away in the field it's been parked in for many years.

 

@Mike2633 you ever think about putting together a history of Mack