*Editors Note* This story was to be published three weeks ago but was delayed due to technical difficulties.
The historic LTL carrier New England Motor Freight suddenly announced yesterday plans to voluntarily enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy and cease operations. News of the bankruptcy came as a shock to the LTL community as capacity within the trucking segment is at near historic highs. Specific reasons were not provided as to why bankruptcy was the only option but industry experts suspect that carrier was too reliant on major contracts from one or two major clients that left little room for margin in already highly competitive market. Ten other subsidiaries of NEMF also fall by the wayside including the well know Eastern Freightways.
For true industry insight check out this article over at Logistics Management.com
I always enjoyed seeing NEMF trucks on the road as the company kept up a livery of colors other than white. It was also fun to pronounce the company acronym. Fun fact, the company was founded in 1977 by Myron Shevell. Myron’s daughter is Nancy who just happens to be married to Sir Paul McCartney.
Now that Excellence in Motion has become a fallen flag lets let back on some photos from years past in this memorial gallery.
It’s ironic that the many folks blame the dog eat dog state of the modern trucking industry to deregulation. Usually it’s regulation that stifles an industry but in this case the exact opposite has occurred. Poor old government, can’t win for trying.
Has this truck been featured on this site before? Maybe it was a truck that looked similar. I’ve been meaning to grab a shot of this truck for sometime now. I figured my lazy ways would lead to me missing it but for unknown reasons this truck seems to have been parked for good.
I figured it was time to get a better shot of this International dozer that has been working a project in Cicero, NY for many a year…..but that didn’t turn out to be possible.
While I wasn’t able to get a cleaner shot I did come away with this photo of setback axle Ford L9000 dump truck.
Sometimes you have to play the cards you’re dealt.
There is only one man in this modern age of ours that can rock the handle bar mustache and that man is Dennis Gage of the long running car show My Classic Car. Last year he paid to a visit to the greatest annual truck show around, the ATCA national meet in Macungie PA.
Watching the trailer made me a bit jealous that I wasn’t able to make the show last year but I know that Dennis found the coolest rigs and talked with their owners. I couldn’t help but point at the screen each time I saw a truck I recognized and none more so that when Ray Hildreth’s perfectly restored 361 played the backdrop for the show open.
The Macungie episode of my classic car is scheduled to air February 2nd at 8:30 AM EST on the MotorTrend network.
I have never tried to hide the fact that I like International Trucks. In my personal ranking system I would put the S-Series in my top five all time favorites. Until this very moment I never knew that my humble S-Series had its very own theme song but it does! This video changes everything. The disco inspired tune is the opening salvo in a dealership video on why you, the average truck buyer, should purchase the all new model. I’m sure more than a few people bought a dozen trucks just to get out of the room.
By the time the S-Series was starting to reach its prime the International Harvester Company as it had been know for nearly a hundred years was slowly being spun off into the hands of its competitors. By 1986 the truck and engine segments were the only remnants of the former industrial titan. The S-Line was the little truck that could. It proved to be a product line that buoyed the bottom line of the newly formed Navistar through the turbulent economic times of the 1980s. By the standards of today these trucks are antiques but when compared to the models they replaced (Fleetstar, Loadstar, etc) they were straight from the future.
It’s possible that I’ve shot this truck twice…..and came out with a slightly blurry photo each time. Things that make you go hmmmmm. Maybe it has an anti photograph force field in place.
Here is it is back in 2016 when it was sporting a red and black paint job.
And here it is just few days ago wearing its new all white paint job.
Now I’m just assuming they are the same truck as I can’t imagine Northshore Excavating has two identical steel nose DM in their fleet. I’ve poured over the photo and I can’t find any detail to suggest it’s not the same truck in both photos.
If you can find any differences let me know. I liked the red paint job better.
I recently came across a worn out copy of Owner Operator from 1988. Usually I would like to keep a magazine like this intact but it was so weathered that I figured I would slice it up for some of the cool truck related advertisements. With surgical precision I removed the staples, trimmed the pages and scanned them in for all to enjoy. The paper is a tad a thin and yellow after all these years but most of them came out decent.
Here we see the International 9700 billed as the only way to travel first class. I would gladly buy a ticket for a ride in one of these of an airline flight any day.
As a kid did you ever have a “spot the difference” activity book? Here is the classic truck version. While the two 358 model Brockways below are not the same truck they certainly have more than a few similarities.
I picked up the above photo on eBay while feeding a baby late at night. At the time I thought I might have found the original version of a truck I spotted at the 2018 National Brockway Truck show. After I took a full look at the photo when it arrived I realized it was a case of close but no cigar.
Clearly the two were cut from the same cloth and who knows, they might have even passed down the factory line one after the other.
The other day I came across a heavy haul load, a massive electric transformer, that had a pilot car in the front and the rear. I don’t have any pics of the truck doing the hauling but that’s okay because it wasn’t as cool as this Western Star of Charlebois Towing.
Trucks just look better with squared fenders, big hoods, and large grills. Hugh caught this truck awhile back as it was hauling a few dump bodies. Now that I’ve seen this photo I wonder what trucks make up the rest of the Charlebois Towing fleet? If you recall from many years ago they have a massive Freightliner twin steer tow truck.
This past August I was contacted by the people at Feedspot.com regarding a list they compiled of the Top 50 Youtube Trucking channels. Good old Daily Diesel Dose came in number 6. While it might not be a major award that comes in a large wooden crate with Italian lettering on the outside I still treasure the attention.
This ranking caused me to reflect on some of the videos I created this year. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at a few and share some behind the scenes information.
The Disappointment
This past construction season witnessed the complete demolition and rebuild of the east bounds lanes of I-690 that pass through the City of Syracuse. I whiffed on getting any coverage from the west bound lanes demolition the previous year so this video helped to ease my tortured soul. I thought I captured some really get action shots of the large steel support girders crashing to the earth along with equally nice concrete crushing action. I even dressed up the video with captions that looked like road signs. Sadly, this video crapped out a 935 views and has received almost no attention in the past few months.
The Well Rounded
This past summer I went on a whirl wind tour of trucking hunting with Ryan and a few other equally obsessed truck guys. One of ours stops brought to the collection of Paul Sykes. I was able to get some great shots of both the outside and the inside of his of 1959 Oshkosh W-2211. Short of seeing this truck plow snow I think the video turned out well for being shot a warm summer day. Plus I think my font take on the History Channel hit TV show, Ancient Aliens, was out of this world. 😉
The Viral
This popularity of this video was a complete surprise to me and I was amazed to see the reaction it gathered it such a short period of time. With over 170,000 views, 546 comments, and over 2,000 like/dislike reactions, this video was by far my most popular of the year. Unfortunately this latest entry into the “Looking at Trucks” series became something of a lighting rod for the anti-government folks and cast a negative light on hard working DOT employees. Here are a few take aways from the smash hit, Government Surplus.
People will not read the description or watch the video to learn why the truck in the title slide is cut in half but will instead post a comment asking “what happened?”
Governor Cuomo is not popular on Youtube.
While a truck can have a rear differential, hubs, rims, and tires this does not mean it has an axle. More than a few people were willing to share this fact with me but I only began to listen after the 100th comment.
Every 3 out of 5 Youtube commentors is an experienced welder who could repair these trucks without breaking a sweat.
The Fun
The first early days of spring when the days are little longer and the nights a little warmer are always a welcome sight here the frozen tundra of New York. This time of the season is usually when classic rides begin to emerge from months of hibernation. In early May I stopped by to hang out with my buddy Dave and his Detroit powered Brockway 457. A magnetic mount for my GoPro allowed the camera to chill on the roof and again under the cab for up close access to parts of the truck rarely seen while running. The short introduction at the start with history of the truck and some vintage photos is a template I hope to mimic in the future on other videos. This video also did fairly well in the views department by racking up almost 16,000 hits in just a two month window.
So here is to 2019 and all that it can bring. Who knows, maybe there will be a new video series, Looking at Trucks with a Baby?
