Truckster! 11

In these days of international suspicion and hostility, this story from a half century ago almost makes me nostalgic.  The photo below I took at the Brockway museum near Cortland NY.  Brockway, a heavy truck manufacturer eventually absorbed into Mack, custom built vehicles, starting with carriages, which you also find in the museum.  The firetruck below was built in Cortland in 1925 for a fire department in Argentina, where it was used until the mid-1950s.  Four members of that department, very satisfied with the performance of the truck, decided to drive it back to Cortland NY and order another.  Imagine driving that route today.

What the fire fighters, limited in their travel budget for a journey they thought would take a few months, needed lots of help along the way.  And the trip took several years and lots of diplomacy and help from fellow fighters and their communities.

Folks along the way signed the truck.

 

The brotherhood and sisterhood among people of the same profession transcends national boundaries and ideology.

 

Rather than retell the story, I’ll let you click here to read one account.

Here’s another account.

Maybe we’ve lost this sense of universal brother- and sisterhood these days.

Find previous truckster posts here and a previous Brockway photo here.