Quick everyone look! It’s the 1,000th post! Like the odometer rolling over on your semi truck at the million mile mark Daily Diesel Dose has reached a milestone. Phew! I always said when I reached 1,000 I would shut the site down. When I made that pledge I never figured things would get as far as they did. Too bad really. I’ll miss this page but I’ll have plenty of free time for other pursuits like knitting and creating 14th century German poetry.

0_O

Naaaah, I’m just kidding. Too many great things have happened around here over the past three years to just walk away now. I’ve been strolling through the archives of the page to get an idea of where it all began and maybe where the page is heading. Some new features have emerged while others have silently died. Remember the Know Your Diesels category? No? That’s okay, it only had one post. The days of transcribing my thoughts on Ice Road Truckers seems to be a thing of the past as well. The new season is now 3 or 4 episodes in and I haven’t mentioned it once on the site! To be honest I didn’t even know it was back on TV. Some ideas just don’t pan out while others take years to show up. For instance, Autocar Mondays may seem like an established feature but it didn’t debut until March of 2013 and it took another three months to gain its now established headline….after a 3 month hiatus! Thanks to the efforts of many loyal visitors I’ve been able to keep it alive.

Acceptance Speech

Speaking of visitors, you (the visitor) are the main reason this page is still around. I don’t mind talking to myself but after awhile you start to get lonely and wonder what it’s all about. Over the past three years I’ve meet and interacted with some great folks. Regular contributors from day one like Dan, Ryan, Andy, Joe, and Jim help me fill in the many holes on this page with photos of trucks and equipment that one person sitting behind a desk most of the day can not capture. I lean on them heavily during the dark winter months when my natural go to locations and activities are frozen over. A special thank you to Clarence for opening his personal collection of classic trucks to my prying eyes. Not only is he a regular contributor to Autocar Mondays but he also let me behind the wheel of his Brockway 361 wrecker. Speaking of Brockways, let’s all give Kyle a hand for the part he played in the very first Daily Diesel Dose ride along when he offered up the services of his 257. I still watch both videos on a regular basis. Great times and memories for all involved.

Behind the Curtain

Over the years I’ve let the site take its own course with photos and videos of various events taking the main roll of daily activity. Sometimes I wonder if the page has become something of a glorified photo blog with a snow plow photo every other day! Taking a look behind the scenes and you will find that 98% of the time there is nothing scheduled for the next day until 10 or 11 P.M. the night before…if I’m lucky! I suppose I should have thought harder when I decided to put the word daily in the site name. The pressure! I’ve found that carrying a camera on me at all times is necessary to provide the content we all crave and love. According to Google on the most visited pages on the site is the one related to Semi Truck Racing. It pulls in more visitors than other topic and by far has the most comments of any post. Right now it is only bested by people searching for “Ex Municipal Heavy Duty Trucks For Sale”, hmmmm, imagine that!

Memory Lane

Thinking back over the past three years about the many topics I have covered a few jump right out as favorites in mind.

The operation and disassembly of a large Sany Crane from Auburn Crane and Rigging.

Stalking of OCDOT Plows.

Discovery of a GMC General, Brockway 359 and a White 3000

Prepping for St. Patricks Day

Demolition of Bristol Myers Squibb buildings, Part 2

As I dug through the archives I realized much more has happened around here than I remember! So what are your favorites? What would you like to see more of? Less off? Let me know in the comments below or email eric@dailydieseldose.com

Once again, thank you to everyone for stopping by and supporting this site. While it might be a lot of work to keep this place going it has never seemed so much like real work that I’ve wanted to stop. Check back sometime around 2017 for post 2,000!

Last Saturday I went to the annual equipment auction held by Alex Lyon at their property in Canasota, NY. Like past years there was plenty of heavy equipment and trucks to go around. To my recollection I would say this was one of the larger auctions of the past two or three years. Ironically I took the smallest amount of videos and photos out of all my trips to this event. Remember, it’s quality, not quantity that counts. 😉

Amoung the fields there were more than a few “classic” pieces of Cat equipment. A large D8H dozer held court near one end of the auction lot. It was sandwiched between a dinky Cub Cadet ride-on mower and a F-250 pickup. It easily could have crushed both of them. Each time someone climbed aboard the D8H I secretly wished they would hit one if not both vehicles but everyone played it safe.

The steel on this dozer was mind boggling. Take a look at the blade and the thickness of the material that is starting to curl. I don’t know if it hit something or that is just rust taking its toll but the metal is easily over 1/4 inch think. LOL WUT?! I stalked a couple of guys who trying out all the old equipment and compiled a video of their test runs. Enjoy as they evaluate a D6C, a 950 loader and the D8.

On the truck side of things there was an entire fleet of Peterbilt and Mack dump trucks but the jewel among them all was this 1989 Ford LTL9000.

As you can this truck is in great shape. The grill is perfect. The fenders are straight. The cab is free of rust and sports a reflective glossy black paint job. Aluminum fenders out back work together with a sharp looking headache rack complete with strobes. The mechanical guts come in the form of a Cat 3406B diesel attached to a 13 speed. You just don’t find LTL’s like this one anymore. Case in point, the LTL I spotted a few weeks ago outside of Herkimer, NY. Walk around and cab view video below.

As is the case with some auctions you just have no idea the past life of the item you are bidding on. Was it abused? What problems are lurking below the surface? Often times you only have the most basic of details on which to place your thousand dollar winning bid. Other times you have more details than you can ask for. As is the case with the International Hough dozer.

A note attached the cab told you all the critical details as well as some history.

This machine was bought brand new by the talc mine in Balmont, NY. The machine was bought to plow snow to keep the roads open in the winter.

And there you have it. Bid on my friends, bid on.

Other notables from the gallery below include a little orange truck used to move a car crusher around. For some reason it reminds me a vehicle that could do burnouts and wheelies. A 2012 Peterbilt 367 with only 1,300 miles. An Athey grader that reminds of drag racing tractor (is there such a thing?) and a bunch of other heavy equipment that just happened to catch my eye. You’ll notice a pair of Hanson machines in the gallery that were not part of the auction but guarding a large pile of millings. I figured they were nice enough to photograph.

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