His1972  R Model Mack that he drove for the Burdett Oxygen Co. was that month’s Tractor of the Month Runner-Up. The two classic cars beside the Mack in the photo are Fetterly’s 1930 Model A Ford roadster and a 1939 Ford deluxe business coupe. Fetterly showed cars in the Can-Am Division of the International Showcar Association in 1975, when the roadster won first place in its class.

The Thousand Islands, N.Y., resident has also been active in antique truck groups and travels to shows regularly while he and his wife winter in Florida. He still owns the truck and the 1930 Ford, shown below in a current photo taken on display in Florida. Fetterly sold the 1939 Ford, still an all-time popular antique, 15 years ago.

He served in Vietnam as a 19-year-old and went into trucking back home in New York when his combat duty ended. He became an owner-operator in 1986. Though retired from full-time work, the trucking aficionado hasn’t completely given up work. When he’s back home in New York, he drives his 1992 RD Mack for the town of Diana, N.Y., where he works in the summer. “It’s the oldest truck the town has,” Fetterly says. “But I like it.”

The story of Fred, Mike Crawford's beloved rat terrier, and her unwillingess to share in-cab space with Crawford's wife, Phyllis, placed first in the Best Dog Story contest. Courtesy of Mike Crawford

Mike “Mustang” Crawford, an owner-operator who resides in Long Lane, Mo., won first place in the Best Dog Story contest for his story, “A girl named Fred.” OverdriveRetro held the contest encouraging truckers to submit memories of their favorite in-cab companions as part of the website’s trucking history emphasis.

Joyce Griffin, of Walton, N.Y., placed second for her story, “Lady and the thief.” Malone, N.Y. resident Angela Duval won third place in the contest for the entry, “Travels with a king of the road,” and Bruce Wieser, former owner-operator and resident of Ayden, N.C, takes fourth place for his story, “Tasha and the inflatable mattress.”

Crawford gets a one-year free subscription to Custom Rigs magazine, an Overdrive T-shirt commemorating the magazine’s golden anniversary and a copy of “Smokey and the Bandit” film director Hal Needham’s memoir, “Stuntman! My car-crashing, plane-jumping, bone-breaking, death-defying Hollywood life.” All place winners will receive an Overdrive T-shirt and other prizes.

“Although animal stories are always entertaining, the relationship between a trucker and his dog is something special,” says Equipment World Managing Editor Amy Materson of judging the contest. “Reading about the mutual affection and loyalty was touching and inspiring.”

Also serving as judges were Overdrive and Truckers News Senior Editor Max Kvidera and Better Roads Editor-in-Chief John Latta. Kvidera, Latta and Materson are part of Randall-Reilly Media & Business Information’s editorial division.

In-cab pets Fred, Lady, Bugg Bandit, Tasha and Goodwill featured in the winning tales lightened the load of their owners’ daily travels. Read their tales on the OverdriveRetro links below:

“A girl named Fred”

“Lady and the thief”

“Travels with a king of the road”

“Tasha and the inflatable mattress”

“The secret is out”

There are many ingenious ways to bend or beat Department of Transportation laws in this wonderful land of ours. One way to do that is to use other laws to circumvent the one giving you trouble. I did that once helping a trucker friend stuck at a scale house in Missouri in 1994.

That unforgettable night at my then home in beautiful Colorado, I got a call from my boss. My colleague and buddy Ron had been pulled in and detained east of Kansas City.

Both of us worked for the same company. We hauled excavators, dozers, motor graders and other heavy equipment with a Big 4 axle Bulldog sporting a Mack E7 460-hp and dragging a 55-ton lowboy with detachable gooseneck for easy loading and unloading. On that particular job, Ron had been sent to Dyersburg, Tenn., to pick up a new Caterpillar motor grader.

The motor grader he was hauling was over the permit limit he had with him, and they shut him down. The state transportation department told him that he couldn’t leave there without taking the motor grader apart and hauling half of the parts on another truck.

Our boss instructed me to leave that night with a smaller truck and head for Missouri to help Ron get out of his bind. I drove all night to get to the little motel where my friend was holed up. About 2 the next afternoon, we went to the scale house of what we called Extreme Pain.

The scale house inspectors told us that bringing in a crane, taking the motor grader apart and lifting parts onto my trailer would cost about $5,000.

Ron and I returned to the motel to think about our dilemma and respond to our boss’s frequent phone calls. By morning, I had a plan.

We confirmed with the DOT office by phone that no laws prevented driving a motor grader, or any other rubber-tired machine on the side state or county roads. Then I told Ron we were going to unload that grader.

He looked at me in disbelief, not unlike the confused look of a deer caught in the headlights.

We headed back to the scale house, detached the goose-neck and set the lowboy on the ground. In about five minutes, one of the DOT officers came out and asked us what we were doing.

“We’re getting ready to solve this problem,” I replied. Ron and I back the motor grader off the lowboy and loaded my smaller truck onto his lowboy. When I told they, by then, all five DOT officers standing around us that I was going to road the grader home, they laughed. I told Ron I’d meet him outside Kansas City, on the Kansas side.

Cruising at a whoppin’ speed of 30 mph, I drove the grader down through the corner of the corn field, through the gate and hit the gravel road. As I came into Kansas City, Mo., rush hour traffic was at its peak. I spotted a small, nearly empty used car lot, pulled the big CAT motor grader into the lot and jumped out.

“I’ll give $20 to anyone who can get me through Kansas City with this thing the quickest and easiest way,” I said to passersby who were amazed. A volunteer stepped up to the task, and I followed him through what seemed like downtown to the long bridge that crosses the Missouri River into Kansas.

Ron was waiting for me on the other side’s first exit when I drove across, just like I knew what I was doing. He’d already detached the lowboy and unloaded my truck so I drove up onto the lowboy and chained everything down. Our boss couldn’t believe what we’d done when we called him.

The DOT was left standing in amazement and couldn’t do a thing about what they witnessed. The boss got his new motor grader. I got a bonus and a small pay raise.

And Ron? He got out of a lot of trouble.

Big Al Weekley and his wife, Bonnie Weekley, publish the Bertrand Herald newspaper. A longtime music performer, Big Al is also host of the “Dispatch Me Home” online trucking radio show at dispatchmehomeradio.com.

English sheep dog Lady rides along with L.J. Doig in his 2003 Peterbilt. Photo courtesy of Joyce Griffin.

Nine-year-old Lady has traveled more than 1 million miles with owner-operator L. J. Doig, a close family friend, since she was a puppy.

The shaggy English sheep dog gets a bath every Sunday if she’s home. She enjoys the ritual because it’s her sign that she and L.J., who’s leased to Mercer Transportation, are getting ready to ride and haul some more freight with his 2003 Peterbilt 379.

Last year, L.J. stopped in Ohio to buy Lady one of her daily treats, a McDonald’s Big Mac. Before he got outside the restaurant with hamburger in hand, his truck and trailer were stolen – with Lady inside.

L.J. spent two entire days looking for her, thinking the thieves would have thrown her out of the truck, dead or alive. Family and friends finally persuaded him to come home, to Walton, N.Y., when neither hide nor hair of the beautiful dog surfaced.

Four days later he got a phone call: Someone had found his truck in Pennsylvania, and Lady was in the cab unharmed.

Our longtime trucker friend dashed to New York’s neighbor state to get his dog, but when L.J. arrived at the truck, Lady was mad at him. She would have nothing to do with him. And when it came time to go home, she would ride only with L.J.’s wife – that’s how mad Lady was.

Friends pitched in with L.J. to console the traumatized dog. For three days, we encouraged her to bond anew with her longtime devoted owner by driving to farms looking at cattle. It’s one of Lady’s favorite pastimes.

One day soon after that, Lady must have decided she still loved her owner, for suddenly she nestled at his side and wouldn’t leave for anything.

In the end, our friend got his Lady and his truck back, both in good shape. Thank God.

Joyce Griffin and her trucker husband, Joe Griffin, are residents of Walton, N.Y.

[The Best Dog Story Contest is open through the end of December. For details on how to enter, write Overdrive managing editor Lucinda Coulter, at LCoulter@rrpub.com.]

Coventry, R.I.-resident Hamilton Benn owns the 1940 Ford shown here. It is similar to the one Maurice Bourne drove.

As a teen in the early 1950s, I took a liking to trucks. I grew up in Marquez, Texas, a small town in a big farming region. We raised watermelons, corn, grain, peas, tomatoes, hay and other crops. We also raised lots of cattle. In that rural part of Texas, if a boy was too skinny to do much work, but had more-or-less good sense, he ended up operating farm tractors and old trucks. I qualified on both counts, so my fate was determined at a young age.

Our region had a lot of flat beds, which we called them bobtails. Most of our farmers and ranchers liked Chevrolet trucks, although a few owned Internationals and Fords. One old farmer once told me that the International was the best truck made, but it cost “way too much money.” I don’t know what a 2-ton International sold for in the 1940s and 1950s, but evidently it was way too much.

Most of these trucks spent their lives in fields, on dirt road, and on narrow asphalt farm-to-market roads. They all had gas engines and 4-speed gearboxes, while a few had two-speed rear axles, a fancy add-on that mystified most of the old-timers. Most of these bobtails had 14- or 16-foot beds, and a few had 18-footers

This was before the age of the goose-neck trailer, and in my part of Texas most cattle went to local auction barns loaded on bobtail trucks. Nobody seemed to worry much about GVW ratings – trucks were just loaded until they looked about right. As far as I can remember, a full load on one of these trucks ranged from 5 to 10 tons.

The first real truck I ever drove, as a 17-year-old, was a flatbed Ford. I think it was a 1940 model, and it was the first time I ever drove something bigger than a pickup. The fellow who owned the Ford bobtail was a cattle buyer, and I got acquainted with him when he hired me to install the cattle racks (sideboards) on his truck. That seemed like a simple job, but as it turned out, these homemade cattle racks were solid oak, weighed about a ton, and were not very well designed.

After the stakes had been driven into the side pockets, the sides and ends had to be joined by nailing them together with 20 penny nails. For safety’s sake, I also wrapped baling wire around all the corners. That “simple” job took me the better part of a day. In spite of their appearance, these rickety racks manage to stay together while I hauled many a load of half-crazy cows to the sale barns in Buffalo, Groesbeck, Calvert, and Crockett. I was 17 years old that summer.

The fellow who owned the truck was what we called a hands-off guy. He bought and sold cows. He would look silently at a pen full of cows and make the farmer an offer. If the farmer didn’t like the offer, we would get in our truck and drive on down the road. If the farmer agreed, the buyer would pay cash on the spot. I would then back that flatbed up to the loading chute and start loading cows while the cattle-buyer would stand around, chew tobacco and chat with farmers.

Loading cattle is a world unto itself. A cow doesn’t respond to soft words and gentle persuasion. It’s hard to explain to civilized people how 15 or even 20 cows can be crammed into the back of a 14-foot flatbed. It can be done, but it takes a great deal yelling, beating, whipping, cussing and general carrying-on. I became something of an expert at it.

If my early days were any indication, it seemed I was destined to become a truck driver, and that suited me just fine. As it turned out, fate sent me in different directions several years later. But during those years I drove a lot of old trucks.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, those were probably the best years of my life.

About the author: Maurice W. Bourne is an award winning, part-time writer who writes about trucking, flying and other subjects. He is a Vietnam veteran and owns a fiberglass molding shop in Marquez, Texas. For more stories and photos go to Old Time Trucks.

Bill Archer says this snapshot of his 1965 Freightliner stays in his pants pocket most of the time. Courtesy of Bill Archer

Bill Archer, 62, has shifted a lot more gears than the ones in the 1965 Freightliner he drove for several years.

An owner-operator and steel hauler for nearly a decade, the Pennsylvania native changed careers to be a reporter for West Virginia’s Bluefield Daily Telegraph in 1983. He has also authored history books and performed musically with partner Karl Miller for 23 years.

Archer attributes the wide-ranging success to confidence he gained from learning to drive in a straight line.

“Being able to work through uncertain situations – manmade, weather-related or other – gave me confidence to try things that I normally would have shied away from because I didn’t think I was very smart,” he writes in a recent Telegraph column.

He learned in 1973 to shift smoothly on his first run. He hauled pipe from Beach Bottom, W. Va., to Iowa. Turns out, the mix of heavy and light pipe on the spread-axle trailer he was pulling was unevenly distributed. An inspector noted his load exceeded legal weight, and he spent a couple of hours reloading. “I pulled pipe from one end to the other,” Archer told Overdrive in a phone interview. “That was interesting.”

The former owner-operator communicated with other truckers on the highway by hand signals. “We were really a close knit group,” Archer recalls, noting that the steel haulers watched out for truckers likely to be on drugs. “We didn’t let the hot pads get out on the road. We’d deal with it on an individual basis.”

His bachelor’s degree from West Virginia University and credit hours in graduate school helped his literary skills, but in delivering freight, he writes, he also touched on the world views of the nation’s great writers:

“I knew in my heart that if I could make my way through Chicago’s China Town section or survive hauling freight to the piers in New York, that I could probably appreciate the difference between Henry David Thoreau’s failure at Walden Pond and Washington Irving’s triumph in ‘A Tour on the Prairies.’ I believe that Irving would have liked to travel the U.S. in an 18-wheeler, but Thoreau? Not so much, I’m thinking.”

Archer, left, and Karl Miller have performed together for 22 years. Courtesy of Bill Archer

His advice to truckers is simple: “Life flows no matter what you’re doing. When you encounter obstacles, find a way to keep that flow. Don’t let the obstacles take over your life.”

Read more of the column, “Trucking came naturally – but reading, writing and arithmetic, not so much,” and other columns Archer has written in the Daily Telegraph.

Award-winning editor Bill Archer resides in Bluefield, W. Va., a small town nestled in the Appalachian Mountains.

The legendary announcer was named Overdrive’s Disc Jockey of the Year in 1973, in part from the success of the Road Gang show started in 1970 on WWL with a clear channel signal out of New Orleans. The show’s format with news for truckers, weather and country music attracted truckers and many other nighttime audiences nationwide. Douglas made regular appearances at trucking conventions in the ’70s, and his column of that era, “Country Music Scene,” ran in Overdrive.

Douglas, a native of Ludowici, Ga., never drove a big rig but grew up around them. His father owned trucks and tractor-trailers that delivered pulpwood, pine and cypress to a local lumber mill.

“Truckers and construction workers are the last vestiges of hard-nosed pride in being male,” Douglas once told Overdrive. “They are the last ones to practice that time-honored art of whistling at pretty girls. This nation would be in one helluva fix if it weren’t for the men that follow lines between the ditches . . . and the ladies too, ‘bless ‘em. I appreciate and admire the entire industry.”

Many in the entertainment field appreciate Douglas’ legacy. “Trucking radio lost the man who invented the genre,” Sirius/XM radio’s Dave Nemo, former Road Gang co-host, told TV station WWLTV.com. “He will live on in the memories of all who rode through the night with this great friend of the truck driver.” Read more about trucking’s early radio DJs, including Douglas, in April’s OverdriveRetro story.

Already a veteran when he started the Road Gang, Douglas first broadcast at KLIC in Monroe, La., in 1953. He was inducted into the Country Music DJ Hall of Fame in 1994. In the early 1980s, he advanced his radio career in Nashville and started Compact Disc Xpress with partner Paul Lovelace in the mid ’90s.

He is survived by his wife and three children.

A memorial is planned for Saturday, Dec. 3 in Picayune, Miss., where Douglas lived, according WWLT.com.

The truck also featured the phrases, “To forget is to repeat,” and “Neither is acceptable.” Below the mural was a tribute to prisoners of war, that read “POW,” “MIA,” and “You are not forgotten.” Mapstone, a Wrightsville, Pa., resident, was quoted as saying, “This picture speaks volumes.”

With a new engine, driveline overhaul, brakes, clutch, radiator, wheels and tires, Bad Moon Rising had been completely rebuilt when its photo was originally published. It also had a new paint job, new chrome and steel parts inside and new leather. It ran on a 425 horsepower Caterpillar and a 13-speead Eaton transmission. It was one of the last Autocars built with an American-style cab. Mapstone used the truck to haul antique vehicles and agricultural equipment.

On this Veterans Day, it’s worth noting that Overdrive has long supported U.S. war veterans and featured occasional stories about or letters from soldiers serving in Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Tributes to soldiers and the American flag have graced Overdrive’s print issues and online sites.

OverdriveRetro, for example, included last year an essay by Overdrive’s Technical Editor John Baxter about his experiences as a refrigeration equipment repairman in Vietnam. Another article describes the combat duty Overdrive reader Doug Fetterly served with the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Trucks that pay homage to Americana images like Old Glory can be found at OverdriveRetro online in the Trucks photo gallery.

The 1977 Kenworth, like the one in Overdrive’s July 1977 issue shown here, was one I always wanted to replicate because of its paint scheme. I started with an AMT Kenworth K-100C Aerodyne kit. I tried to build the tractor to match the one in Overdrive as closely as I could with the addition of a few lights.

I modified the basic kit by shortening the wheelbase. Then I replaced the Detroit and Allison that comes in the kit with a Cummins and a 13 speed transmission. I also swapped out the kit stacks and bumper for nicer ones from my parts box. I had the fuel tanks and steps chrome plated. The cab lights, horns and breather cap are made from aluminum. The paint is all DuPont basecoat, clear automotive paint.

As far as I know, nobody ever had a real trailer painted to match one of these trucks so I decided to make one. I used an ERTL Great Dane 40-foot van kit and used a Thermo King unit and an extra set of chrome wheels from the parts box. I had the roof, nose and back end chrome plated. The reefer tank is aluminum. I used chrome foil on the rub rails. Masking over the ribs on the trailer to do the stripes was a challenge, but I’m pleased with the results.

Over the years, I found out about other truck modelers and discovered the aftermarket parts available for them. My models gradually became more customized. Now I rarely build a model that doesn’t have lots of modifications to the basic kit. I use mostly DuPont automotive paint on them.

I really like trying to replicate the factory paint schemes often found on trucks from the 60s, 70s and 80s. I collect old copies of Overdrive because they’re full of great ideas and photos of trucks I want to build.

I’ve been around trucks my whole life, in part, because my grandfather inspired my brother and me when we were young. He died in 2010 and was a trucker for many years. A blue and white 1970 Peterbilt 359 with the Great Dane reefer was the last truck he owned, and I’m working on restoring one like it.

I am 33 now and started driving trucks when I was 20. I am probably one of the last drivers to come along who started in a 1979 Freightliner cabover. My white 1981 Kenworth that is in Overdrive‘s Reader’s Rigs Gallery is one of the trucks I used to drive. It is now a retired antique show truck.

For several years, few truck models were produced. Revell of Germany and Italeri kept making several kits. But the old AMT and ERTL kits were hard to find. Fortunately in recent years, a lot of the older AMT and ERTL kits have been rereleased.

Now is a great time for truck modelers. There are more kits available than have been in a long time. And the aftermarket suppliers have tons of great parts, conversion kits and decals available.

My only problem now is deciding which model to build next.

Robby Gaines is a resident of East Bernstadt, Ky., and is a member of the American Truck Historical Society and Old Time Trucks. Two of his model trucks were featured in Overdrive’s April 1994 issue.

Fred the dog sulks in Mike Crawford's cab after having to share space with Crawford's wife, Phyllis. Courtesy of Mike Crawford

I found my dog, Fred, abandoned by the side of a gravel road April 23, 1999, the same day as my third daughter’s 29th birthday.

That day, soon after I’d delivered a load of steel to a hog farm in northwest Iowa, I saw something on the roadside that bothered me, so I stopped and got out to take a look-see. A small Rat terrier bitch had been killed and a black puppy – four or five weeks old – was huddled near her as though to say, “Wake up, Mom, I’m scared. Wake up.”

I picked the puppy up and was looking at her when she nuzzled in under my chin. “C’mon, Dog,” I told her. “You’re on the truck with me. I need a navigator.”

At first, I named her Dinkey as we headed to Norfolk, Neb., to load steel. But when we arrived at the steel mill, I changed her name to Fred in honor of the mill’s loading supervisor, Fred Smith. He stands at 7-feet, 4-inches tall and is made of 345 pounds of nothing but rawhide and spring steel. My dog’s moniker definitely was not short for any feminine name, like Fredrica.

She adjusted well to my rig, was easily potty trained and had no accidents. Often, she rode in her bed on the passenger side floor board and looked at the world from the little window in the door. Or she rode in my lap, sleeping or looking out my passenger window.

Sometimes she stood on my lap with her front feet on the steering wheel and watched through the windshield like she was driving as though to say, “This is my truck I can drive it too.” Actually, she was pretty good – she never had an accident in 1.75 million miles on the truck.

She always preferred being in my lap, my bed or her bed on the floor. She refused to ride in the passenger seat.

By the time Fred was about six months old, she’d become something like the Queen of the Castle on that truck and was jealous of others. When my wife, Phyllis, who has her CDL, ran team with me to California, Fred jumped up between us when we went to bed. If we were walking together Fred jumped up in my arms so Phyllis and I couldn’t hold hands and in the truck, Fred hit Filly’s (Phyllis’ nickname) stuff. Sometimes, she jumped into the passenger seat and rode there so Filly couldn’t. We often had to put our dog on the floor, whereupon she instantly retreated to the bed and pouted.

She loved Filly at home but that was Fred’s truck and the queen dog was not happy sharing. One day, my wife and I were outside the truck with Fred in my seat front feet on the steering wheel watching us through the windshield. As we approached the truck she jumped to the passenger’s seat and when we opened our doors, Fred was in my wife’s seat squatted peeing and didn’t stop when we hollered at her. When she finished, she jumped off the seat, ran to the back and wagged her tail as proud as a peacock. I had to get a bucket of clean water and flush it, then mop up the whole mess and put a fan to blow it dry.

After that, her jealousy seemed to ease up somewhat.

Fred died this year, the morning of March 24 in her bed on the passenger floor board. She was with me on the truck for 11 years, 11 months and one day. The only time we were separated was when I was hospitalized in Mattoon, Ill., with swine flu and the security guard was kind enough to keep her at his home for those three days.

I miss my Fred.

Mike “Mustang” Crawford is Overdrive‘s 2010 Trucker of the Year and resides in Long Lane, Mo.