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The long haul

Antique truck collectors will roll into the city for a convention and show

Each of the trucks that Roy Moxley Sr. has owned represents a defining chapter in his life.

For instance, the three 1927 Mack dump trucks that Moxley bought after World War II hauled enough slate from a Delta, Pa., quarry to pay for the house he built in 1947.

The chain-drive trucks, purchased for $1,600, "were the toughest things I've ever seen," says Moxley, 84. "Especially the rear ends. The toughest of any ever built."

The Macks transformed Moxley and for the past 26 years, he has been transforming the Macks. A barn and a hangar on Moxley's ancestral family farm in Dublin houses his fleet of seven restored antiques. They honor his own personal history, as well as that of the trucking industry.

Moxley's trucks, the tales behind them and a tractor trailer's worth of others will animate this week's National Convention & Antique Truck Show in Southwest Baltimore's Carroll Park. Members of the American Truck Historical Society, the show's sponsor, are counting on the convergence from around the country of 600 restored antique trucks, pickups, fire engines, RVs, military vehicles, vans and other trucks for the three-day summit, which begins today and is open to the public.

Lectures on topics such as "GMC: First Century of Trucks" and "Highway Equipment and Construction" will alternate with demonstrations of Model T disassembly and reassembly. Truck preservationists can scour the convention's swap meet for upper radiator tanks, hood ornaments, windshield hinges and other needed parts. Proud owners, including Moxley, will stand by their mechanical steeds, eager to talk chassis, differentials and crank shafts with passing admirers.

For anyone swept up in the romance of trucking, this week's show is an ideal chance to ogle the pioneering beasts of the road: big rigs by Peterbilt, Mack, Kenworth, Sterling and other makes.

"That's mostly what you'll see, are the larger trucks," says John C. Milliman, the show's ad hoc "publicity guy." The public affairs officer for the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command nurtures two 1949 Chevrolet pickup trucks on his Mechanicsville Christmas tree farm. Milliman also maintains stovebolt.com, a popular Web site for truck enthusiasts named in tribute to the 6-cylinder Chevy engine.

"These guys are serious," Milliman says of Moxley and his semi-collecting brethren. "They have 18-wheelers."

Compared to his one- and two-ton pickup trucks, "That's a whole other universe," says Milliman. "Those guys are nuts. I can do stuff by myself, pull a wheel off, change it. I can even lift my own transmission. These guys need cranes to restore their trucks."

Individual stories

Knobby and spry, Moxley, sporting a green Mack cap, strides across his property from truck to truck, relating the history of each - where it was found, the industrial role it played; how he, his son, Roy Jr., and others rebuilt it, often from nothing but a rusting heap of junk.

Among the Moxley behemoths is a 1927 chain-drive Mack dump truck built with parts from another Mack found decomposing with a tree sprouting from its frame. The parts from that truck returned the '27 chain-drive to its original can-do glory. "This is like what I had in the quarry," Moxley says.
A1978 Superliner, a top-of-the-line Mack owned by Moxley's son, was discovered sitting in the lot of a Pennsylvania truck dealer. (Any truck made 25 years ago or more is considered an antique.) A formidable 1955 Mack, known as the "Duesenberg of Diesels" for its lines that are reminiscent of the classic automobile, came from Prescott, Ariz., where it hauled stone and gravel.

'The best part'

Each of Moxley's trucks is painted a sturdy green and ripe tomato red. They are the trademark colors for Moxley's Welding & Machine Service, the Dublin company he founded in 1954 after leaving the hauling business. Moxley and his men used to build log debarkers, bean pickers and other machinery from scratch and mount them onto the trucks for their customers. Today, Moxley's concentrates on the retail sales and installation of dump bodies, salt spreaders, snow plows and other truck equipment for state and local road crews and private clients.

Although the company is now operated by his son and grandson, Moxley is hardly idle. He's constantly on the road - it could be to Ellicott City or Pittsburgh - delivering trucks and picking up equipment. He also attends truck shows around the country, sometimes traveling in impressive convoys with other collectors. "Showing them's the best part," Moxley says. "Restoring them is hard work."

Moxley learned to weld by repairing his old dump trucks, which got torn up by the jagged heaps of slate they carried to a plant where they were ground into roofing material. Moxley has since applied his expertise to rejuvenating his antique Macks, or "Bulldogs," as they were nicknamed by the British during World War I. He and Roy Jr. use the shop for those heavy lifting jobs.

With some of his restoration projects, Moxley began with nothing more than a rusty frame. "That's a job," he says. "You talk about a lot of work." Clean. Sand blast, Cab off. Engine out. Scavenging junk yards for parts. Casting other parts that are obsolete. A project can last for years.

A different era

If Moxley and others didn't dedicate themselves to preserving trucks, they - and the stories - would vanish, he says. "The only way trucks will ever be saved is if people restore them and keep them inside," he says. "Otherwise, most of the younger generation will never have seen anything built like these trucks." Nor would they understand, "This is the way it was when I was growing up," Moxley says.

Standing abreast in a field, with polished grills, curvaceous fenders and noble hoods, Moxley's seven beauties project a capable air that speaks to an earlier era of industrial pride and mechanical awe.

The horn that goes ooga, ooga, carbide parking lights, air-ride seats and 50-gallon diesel fuel drums that served drivers before the new interstate highway system greatly expanded driving distances: Each element is an accessory of an earlier era, preserved by the Moxleys and many among the 23,000 trucking historians who belong to the ATHS.

Based in Kansas City, Mo., the organization, incorporated in 1971, has a staff of six. Its library collection contains more than 100,000 photographs, 35,000 pieces of sales literature and 45,000 books, according to the ATHS Web site. The society also publishes Wheels of Time, a magazine brimming with articles, classifieds and photographs of vintage trucks displayed with the same saucy attitude as so many cheesecake models in a gas station calendar.
It's not just the trucks that ATHS seeks to preserve. "There's a real push with the organization now to capture that history while we still have access to it directly," Milliman says. That means interviewing "some of the big pioneers, the early guys of the trucking industry. We're losing them fast," he says. "The guys who were truckers in the '20s and '30s, [when roads were being built] and they started out driving trucks with solid rubber wheels and never saw pavement."

A lot of the same guys lived to see "18 wheelers cruise 79 mph from here to Long Beach, Calif., in two to three days," Milliman says.

Many stories

Moxley didn't haul freight quite that far. But he has plenty of stories to share, including those that form the overture to his quarry days tale. "I decided when I was 17 I would like to have a dump truck," he says. He sold three heifers to his father for $300 and bought a 1934 Ford dump truck. "I got tired of working on the farm," Moxley says. A year later, he bought a 1935 Ford dump truck.

Eventually, Moxley graduated to a 1939 Brockway tractor. "I started pulling single axle trailers to New York for the Baltimore New York Express Trucking Company," Moxley remembers. "I got $60 a trip. They paid the toll to cross on a ferry from Penns Grove, N.J. I went up one night and came back the next night."

No doubt, more stories lie ahead for Moxley.

On a breezy spring afternoon, he climbs into his Duesenberg of Diesels. It's a "big old girl," Moxley says.
He turns the key, and works its three stick shifts. They'll "wear you down," he says, aloft in the driver's seat. The air brakes exhale in a piercing hiss, like some massive mechanical creature. It's a sound Moxley likes very much, a sentiment affirmed by the smile that creases his weathered face.

>>> The Antique Truck Show in Carroll Park in Southwest Baltimore is open to the public. Admission is free. Hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and tomorrow; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. For more information, visit: aths.org.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/lifestyle/bal-to.truck25may25,0,7025314.story?page=2&coll=bal-artslife-today

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