I dream of old trucks.
Or rather, I dream around old trucks. You know the scene: a 1960s Ford stakebed or Freightliner cab-over sitting stagnant in a repurposed industrial backlot or straw field, its iron tonnage sinking slowly into the earth. The paint is dull and sun-scorched, with rust streaking the weed-choked Dayton wheels. From the looks of things—and those busted windows—it hasn’t moved in decades, now more landscape than machine.
Personally, I find these scenes to be preternaturally quiet. Standing in front of one of these hibernating behemoths is a bit like standing on the tarmac of an inactive racetrack—it shouldn’t be this calm. These eerie feelings are soon cut by daydreams around what this old workhorse hauled, towed, or built, a faithful foundation of a community time left behind.
Naturally, this leads to idle Googling as to what a running, working example might cost. I say “idle” Googling, as the idea of actually purchasing a commercial vehicle of any condition, size, or vintage is comical given the challenges I face just street-parking a simple (and smallish) compact crossover. Really, I’d be better off managing an abandoned Indycar than a rusty Peterbilt; at least with an Indycar, I know where to start looking for parts.
Still, classic trucking is a tempting fantasy—and a shockingly affordable one at that, at least from an entry cost perspective. Regardless of marque, age, and configuration, classic commercial vehicles are incredibly affordable when compared not just with their light-duty counterparts, but with collector vehicles as a whole. On a pound-per-dollar perspective, nothing—nothing—beats a vintage commercial truck.
It’s not as if I’d expect you to know that. As of this writing, no commercial vehicles are tracked in the Hagerty Price Guide. This is due to a combination of factors, including sample size, public sale results, and the shocking spread of vehicle configurations, conditions, and availability. Ultimately, the classic commercial vehicle market isn’t quite what we would consider “definable,” given the sharp delta between vehicle variety and a reliable dataset of successfully reported sales.
In other words, too many vehicles, too few comparable sales. Ford’s 1966 medium-duty lineup is one of my particular favorites; cursory research reveals F600s outfitted as flatbeds, tankers, tow rigs, stakebeds, dump trucks, and even firetrucks—all in various states of condition and originality. Compared to the heavy-duty stuff, however, Detroit’s medium-duty fare might as well occupy a market as clear as a C2 Corvette.
In my digging, two platforms stood out in both volume and relative quality of vehicle in relation to the target audience. Mecum appears to be the biggest outlet for large private collections and (sadly) liquidated truck museums, with private Facebook groups being the biggest channel for the mass-majority of driver-condition (#3) commercial trucks. That’s just for the public sales; according to folks in the hobby, club classifieds and word-of-mouth deals remain strong.
I started with a Facebook group. The aptly named Vintage Truck Marketplace was the greatest resource for realistic sales, with the majority of transactions occurring within an enthusiast group. Compared to what I’m used to on the traditional collector vehicle market, the value spread presented here is remarkable; a driver-condition 1969 Kenworth W900A with an impressively clean interior for $16,000. A few posts down, a 1966 Mack Model MB600 Cabover appeared surprisingly original, all yours for $11,000. Then, a running but ragamuffin 1971 International 4300 Transtar cab for a shocking $2250. Yes—a running full-size, heavy-duty semi-truck tractor for barely more than two grand.
Tempting. But as I said earlier, where would I put it? What would I use it for? What would I do with it?
I looked to the American Historical Truck Society (AHTS) for answers. Considered the largest and most active enthusiast group for these types of collectible commercial vehicles, the AHTS maintains and hosts a wide range of chapters, gatherings, workshops, seminars, and cruises, not unlike what you’d experience as part of more mainstream enthusiast clubs like the Porsche Club of America or Model A Ford Club. In their 2023 organizational report, the AHTS claimed a dues-paying membership base of 15,000 individuals. In many ways, it’s a traditional vehicular organization; the AHTS hosts conventions, publishes a periodical magazine, and maintains an expansive reference library.
Thumbing through sample issues of the AHTS’ Wheels of Time magazine proved overwhelming. A fleet of Macks, Whites, Internationals, Peterbilts, and Autocars in a stunning array of configurations defied casual understanding. As pretty as these trucks are, this is a publication aimed at the faithful, not the neophyte.
Lucky me—the Southern California Chapter of the ATHS had a show on the schedule. I showed up to the city of Perris’ Southern California Railway Museum on a gloomy mid-May morning, emerging from between wooden train switch-shacks to a sprawling selection of this country’s finest historical workhorses.
I immediately gravitated to a gorgeous 1960s GMC flat-bed serving as both trophy platform and logistical center, where a young man with a judging clipboard compared the line of awards with his printed criteria. After introducing myself and my assignment, I asked him what he could tell me about the show, his background, and what to expect from the owners. Jack Morgan, as it turns out, restores old Peterbilts for fun with his buddy, a bit bemused at my follow-up question as to what exactly he does with these 17,000-pound behemoths when they’re roadworthy. “Just cruise around, I guess,” he laughed. “That’s what most of these guys do.”
I moved inland a bit, finding two rows comprising thirty-some-odd trucks and tractors—the common term for a semi-truck with a fifth-wheel coupling—that ran the gamut from the 1930s all the way through the 1990s. I stopped by a pair of 1950s Mack rigs, entirely taken in by the truckmaker’s clear deference for mid-century aesthetics and attention to detail. Much like a ’57 Chevy, a vintage 911, or classic Ford F100, even the most automotively illiterate passersby would stop and stare at the Mack’s effortlessly handsome haunches, especially with the marque’s signature bulldog mascot perched on the hood.
I wound around to the back of the Macks to find a cluster of folks chatting. The trucks were owned and maintained by father-son duo the Podsiads, the eldest of which having bought and operated the 1951 Mack in-period. I asked similar questions of the Podsiads regarding their background and use case for their lovely trucks.
A common thread quickly emerged: the overwhelming majority of the folks I talked to are or were truckers by trade. If not, they worked with trucks in an adjacent capacity as a painter or mechanic, as was the case with an owner who drove his 1981 Kenworth K900A up from Redondo Beach, CA. Having lived in that area for over six years, I’m intimately familiar with what is and is not commonly parked on Redondo’s exceedingly suburban streets. Purely a trucking enthusiast, he keeps his Kenworth off-site and out-of-town at a storage facility. His use case? Coffee runs and casual cruises.
I kept walking. A pair of matching Freightliner cab-overs sat a few spots down from a swath of early medium-duties, most of which hailed from the same collection and were loaded up with period-correct farm equipment. Some were patinated with age and hard use, but most remained glossy and polished. Twenty feet in the background of each gleaming row, the railway museum’s assorted fleet of classic trucks languished in the scrubby, scratchy field.
A pair of weatherworn White rail service trucks sat dormant near the Podsiads’ Macks, with one wearing a faded “Historical Vehicle” plate with 1995 registration. Across the way on the tarmac lot, a 1960s-to-1970s bus sat tucked next to a grimy box-truck, the sizable stain of engine fluids under its rear engine compartment indicating it might—might—be an occasional runner.
I meandered back to the main area, and past a section of familiar light-duty classic trucks, the instant recognizability of a Chevy C10 and Dodge D100 standing out in stark relief. A surprisingly small section of military vehicles was parked across a small pop-up swap-meet, where attendees picked through tables of truck trim, shift knobs, literature, models, and trucker ephemera.
Back toward the entrance of the show, a line of five (or more) teal-colored semi tractors from various eras was clearly one of the star attractions. I found the Dalton Trucking crew congregating in a circle around back and asked a similar battery of questions as before. This was just part of the collection of Terry Klenske and his son Matt, who runs the day-to-day operations of Dalton Trucking and manages the classic fleet.
I caught up with Matt Klenske a few weeks later over the phone. He’s a second-generation trucker, following in the footsteps of his father, who, according to Klenske, caught the trucking bug from a young age. Most of the older trucks in the collection—the oldest of which is a 1948 Autocar—are the rigs his father dreamed about before he could even drive.
I ask if my hunch that most folks who own and operate these collector commercial vehicles are either active or former truckers. “Almost all,” he says. “Though, if you’re not old-school and grew up with them, most of today’s modern truckers won’t be able to get into an old truck with a twin stick and drive. They mostly drive automatics.” His use case is the same as everyone else: coffee runs, club cruises, Sunday breakfast, and service as parade vehicles.
To someone accustomed to weekend drives in classic sports cars and old Americana, pleasure-cruising a six-wheel twin-stick semi-tractor is a concept as evocative as it is alien. Equally surprising is the revelation that not all old-timer trucks are retired. Far from it, actually; “Trucks of the mid-’80s vintage, without any regulatory restrictions—like CARB—are still competitive to go out and do work. There’s just not many of them around.”
CARB seems to be another common theme. California’s ever-tightening emissions restrictions have forced many a hard-working, road-worthy rig off the road for good, or restricted them to operation purely as a hobbyist vehicle. At the show, the Dalton Trucking crew was quite vocal in the ongoing struggle against CARB. “The industry right now, it’s not much fun,” he said. “The glory days are long, long behind us.”
As if to punctuate his point, a modern Peterbilt just a few trucks away from the Dalton lineup wore a cheeky “Certified Dirty Idle” sticker. On the phone, I asked Klenske if I’ll be able to see some old-timers still hauling outside of California. “You get to Texas, Oklahoma, and the middle of the country where a lot of these trucks are still working, guys with the really, really high-end restorations don’t work ‘em a whole lot,” he explains. “They might pull a few loads, but they got so much tied up in the restoration, they don’t go beating on them.”
I ask Klenske what a full-bore restoration of a truck—any truck—might cost. “You can spend $200,000 on a really nice restoration, pretty easily. And, people do,” he says. He then confirmed my hunch that it’s rare to get your money back if you were to sell your truck, even in the right market. “It’s just like a hot rod—you never get what you put into it,” he laughs. But occasionally, a truck will command big money. “There was an early Peterbilt that sold at an auction that went for close to $200,000, and it blew everyone’s mind.”
It turns out I’ve been looking in the wrong place for the nicest trucks. Ritchie Brothers’ commercial auctions and Mecum are the primary outlets for the finest classics. Among some of the more recent “big” sales, a 1950s Peterbilt brought home $124,000 as part of a museum liquidation in 2023. A few really pretty mid-century Macks moved in the mid-$60,000 range. Then, I found a 1958 Peterbilt Bullnose COE from that museum collection that brought a mighty $198,000.
Clearly, there are enthusiasts with deep pockets. And since so few of these worn-out and hard-worked trucks were preserved over the years, the scarcity of desirable examples likely outstrips some vintage Ferraris. Still, they’re not for everybody. “The problem with trucks is storing them,” notes Klenske. “That $200,000 early Mustang—that goes in the garage next to your daily driver. That $200,000 truck? Gotta have a place to park it out of the weather. It limits the market.”
Also limiting the market is the technical and logistical aspects of operating such a vehicle. Much to my surprise, Klenske confirmed you don’t need a full commercial license to operate the medium-duty trucks like old Ford stakebeds and fire trucks. For the semi-trucks, hobbyist operation falls under just the written portion of the Class A license, allowing those interested a far easier and cheaper path to (spiritual) truckin’ than having to qualify and maintain a CDL. Of course, your mileage may vary depending on where you live.
To my very novice eye, Mecum’s big-buck semis appeared to be original. Based on how much originality is prized in my corner of autodom, I ask Klenske if this is a shared trait. “Not really. The nice thing about trucks is that you find a really nice 1970 Peterbilt, and the guy worked it for a really long time. And as they were working it, they upgraded a few things.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, it was fairly common to have a catastrophic engine failure. In that era, most failed hearts were replaced with a newer, upgraded unit that slotted in with minimal modifications—another common thread amongst the show attendees. With the exception of one truck, everything in Dalton Trucking’s classic fleet has been modified. “There are a few purists who have to have everything perfect, but it’s so rare to have a numbers-matching truck. Now, it’s got 75 more horsepower and is way more reliable. So, it might not be factory-correct, but it’s period-correct,” says Klenske.
Through all of this, the most surprising—or perhaps comforting—things about the community of collectible commercial vehicles were the parallels to the mainstream collector car world. Regional differences mean different concentrations of marques in different areas; Mack and Freightliner were more East Coast, whereas Kenworth and Peterbilt were mainly West Coast until the 1970s. Trucks tend to survive longer in California, just as most classics do. California’s agrarian industry led to a concentration of hay trucks, whereas heavily forested regions like Oregon have more logging trucks.
The people are the same, too. We use our machines—trucks, cars, bikes, toys, whatever—as an excuse to swap war stories and tall tales of the good ol’ days. These hunks of metal unite us, from the father-son trucker teams to the Anaheim Union High School District mechanic proudly showing off the district’s massive 1986 International S1900 tow-truck he sourced from a USMC base.
Beyond this hobbyist perspective, these are living, breathing pieces of history. In many cases, these are the tools that built America, and they deserve just as much preservation and attention as any collector car. “The key to all this is that trucking is a way of life, not just a job,” Klenske explains. “And, as [truckers] get older, they’re holding onto the glory days. It was a better time, a simpler time. Wasn’t an easier time—you can listen to the horror stories of just trying to survive. But, it was a simpler time, and everyone has that story in every industry.”
When I left trucking in 1977 (with a broken back), I was VERY ready to forget all about being on the road, throwing freight, TruckStop food, worrying about scale houses and logbooks. Little did I suspect that years later, I would yearn to once again climb up into a big rig and haul a load over the road. I truly miss the darned old things. I now watch shows like Twin Sticks Garage on YouTube or reruns of Movin’ On, and wish I had a shop big enough to restore on old Pete or KW.