Tom, Willie, Rick, Steve and I made a trip from Woodland to Paso Robles about a month ago. I have been so busy at work that I haven't had time to copy and resize the pictures until now. We met at the coffee shop in Woodland at 6:30 am Saturday. Tom had brought his F550 pickup and gooseneck trailer, his friend Steve drove his red Peterbilt and trailer. Rick came with his yellow Peterbilt with Murray detachable gooseneck. Willie also came with his yellow Peterbilt and red set of doubles.

After breakfast we all went to the Best Ranch. We used Tom’s trailer as a ramp to load stuff on my top deck and onto Willie’s trailers. We loaded Willie’s trailers from the back and just drove across the gap between the back and front trailers. That was a little scary because it seemed like you might drop down between the two trailers, but the tractors just went right across like nothing.

I had brought our regular 35mm SLR as my daughter needed my digital camera that weekend. I was taking pictures at one point as we were pulling a dead tractor up with one tractor on each side when I set the camera on the track of the tractor we were pulling. I left it there and we pulled it forward and smashed it. Luckily, the case didn’t get too smashed so most of the pictures were salvageable. The camera is a write off, though. At least they are getting pretty cheap now, since everyone wants digital, so we can replace it pretty easily.

I was the only one with a camera, so we thought we wouldn’t get any more pictures. One of the guys scrounged in his truck and found a disposable, though, so we were back in business. You can see those pictures because the camera was old and they kind of look sepia toned. I think it is kind of neat. While we were at Jack in the Box I ran across the street and bought a few more disposables for documentation purposes.

We left Woodland a bit after noon and convoyed through Sacramento. I was following Willie a bit south of Sacramento when he blew a driver tire. It made a lot of noise, dust and smoke! We pulled off at a convenient offramp and assessed the situation. The tire had torn out one crossmember from the trailer between the center frame and outside frame and beat up the plywood and the fuel tank a bit, but hadn’t done any disabling damage. It had a big strip of tread hanging off it, though, so we couldn’t drive to the next tire place. Willie hooked a chain to the strip and we backed up and went forward trying to rip it off. It tore a bit, but wouldn’t come all the way off. Finally, we were able to just grab it and jerk around and tear it off.

Willie took off to head slowly for the next tire place, about fifteen miles down the road. Steve, Rick and I also left. Steve and Rick caught up to Tom and the three of them headed on to Paso Robles while Willie and I stopped to fix his tire. It was so nice to not be the guy with tire trouble! Willie was able to find an acceptable used tire and they mounted it up and we were back on the road within forty five minutes or so.

Willie and I then ran straight down to Paso Robles. Tom called us and said to go to his house. It was dark by now and I had never been to Tom’s house. He gave me directions over the phone. The directions were like “Take XX to XXX South, get off on XX West, do up until you find road name Y (I couldn’t really hear that well in the truck). Turn right on Y, High, Bye, whatever. Continue down that road until the pavement ends. Keep going another few miles on the dirt. It’ll shake the $@#! out of you, but don’t worry about that. Keep your speed up because there are some steep parts where you don’t want to stall. When you get almost to the end of the road, it’ll turn to pavement again. You’ll come to a T intersection, turn left. The pavement will end again. Here, really keep your speed up because its pretty steep and windey, so you don’t want to go too slow. Rick will be at the top of the hill with a flashlight.”

Miraculously, we made it to Tom’s, but the dirt road in the dark seemed a hundred miles long and I was sure we were going to get lost and have to back up four miles to a turn around.

Rest to come on next post.

We unloaded the dead tractors from my truck and Tom had me start the orchard Twenty Two and skooch it around on the top deck until I could drive it off, too. Tom made us all hamburgers. Those were some of the best burgers I have ever had. We spent the night at Tom’s. I got one of the kid’s beds, Rick stayed on the couch and Willie slept in his truck. Steve lives in Paso Robles, so he stayed at his house.

In the morning we got up and went down to the museum to unload Willie’s truck and some of the other trucks which Steve and Rick had left there. I got to poke around inside the museum some, too. We fiddled around, got things unloaded and situated and closed the place up, then I came home and was back by about 5:00 pm Sunday.

Thanks for your hospitality Tom and Mrs. Tom and for your help and letting me play trucks and tractors with you Tom, Steve, Rick and Willie.

Sorry it took so long to post.

Pete.

Well, with some help from Daron I figured out how to post linked thumbnails to Photobucket. Thanks for the help Daron.

I have edited the below posts and added all the pictures. Next time, I will try to get the pictures into the right place with the text, and break the post up instead of having such a long string of pictures.

I hope you all enjoy.

Pete.

When you look at the above pictures and then at the photos Pete posted of me loading the Holt 75 you see one of the huge advantages of the Best over the Holt. The Best 75 has track frames that articulate and allow the front wheel to remain on the ground even when loading. Man that sure makes it a lot easier on the heart. Loading that Holt over the rear of the Murray is ok with Don's 75 because of the rubber pads that are on the tracks and the front wheel. Don's tractor also has brakes that function well and allow the operator to nose the 75 over without it crashing over onto the deck of the trailer. I would not want to load any other Holt 75 that way without having the rubber pads.

Thanks again Pete.