The Mack and Western Star

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These two trucks were a great adventure. They allowed me, among other things, to visit the highways and byways, the cities and the remote rural places, all over the USA and Canada.

The first one was that single stack Mack with no window in the back. Just an astonishing truck. I had more fun with that. Funniest of all, almost everyone told me when I bought it, for $5,000 on a credit card, that it was going to fail - not only the truck would fail, but the whole venture of getting my own DOT authority, the expensive insurances, the fuel tax registrations and accounting, the customers, etc., would fail. I had all these people telling me that I was going to fail, people who had worked their whole lives in trucking, whereas I had been a driver for only a couple years.

I went everywhere with that old Mack. I just loved it. It had certain problems that required me to learn a lot about it as well as about the widespread ignorance and incompetence of the professionals, the experts, the people whom we suppose to know what they are talking about because they have been in the business their whole lives and make their living supposedly knowing about their field.

I traded the Mack in at about half way through the seven year adventure and bought the second truck you see here, a big, long-wheelbase, Western Star, a “premium truck.” The Western Star advertisements call it a “Serious Truck.” That thing had all the features, all the comforts, all the bells and whistles, whereas the Mack was just a plain old basic functional machine that did the job, pulled the load down the road.

I often look back on those years when I had my own trucks and wonder which of the two trucks I liked best. I learned a lot with both of them, made money with both of them, liked them both. But I think that, knowing what I know now, if I had it to do over again I would say that having that plain basic Mack fit better with who I am and what I see as important in life.