I went to see Ray Anthony who operated Anthony Motors/Ray Anthony Studebaker, at the time. He said he could get me a truck. I got a brand new 1947 Studebaker truck in April of 1947. At that time, there was a place in Grinnell building truck boxes. I went to Grinnell and bought a 13' stock and grain box. You could haul grain in them or swing the sides up and haul livestock. There wasn't any hoist on this truck, and I hauled a lot of corn for cornshellers. I hauled it into town, and shoveled it out the back end.

Maybe I should tell you what that new Studebaker truck cost; the truck was $2,000.00, the box was $300.00, and license plates $65.00. I don't remember what the insurance cost, but I do remember how much of the money for the whole truck I had. I had the $65.00 for the license plates, but I got some pretty good loans on the truck. My granddad loaned me the money for the truck and my dad loaned me the money for the box. I might say they both charged me interest.  I got them both paid off and about 8 months later I was able to buy a K-6 International truck in Montezuma - they had one on the floor. I gave $2,659 for that truck. We got new trucks this year and last year. Don't ask me what any of those cost cause I don't remember. I guess that's a sign of growing old; I can remember what I gave for those trucks 45 years ago, but I can't remember a year ago.  Anyway, this truck had a 269 cu. in. engine; some of you readers will appreciate the smallness of the size. The truck wasn't big enough for me, so I built and pulled a pup trailer behind that great big 269 cu. in. engine. When we went over the hills at 30 miles per hour, we were doing pretty well. I should date that truck for you; it was a 1948 International, I bought it new in November of 1947. The pup trailer was a single axle pup, not a tandem as we know them today.

Ernie Mitchell came to work for me about this time, and drove this International truck. Ernie worked for Manatt's for many years, retiring a few years ago. We used to see him walking by the shop almost every day for exercise. He moved to Grinnell earlier this year.
In the summer of 1948, I bought a new F6 Ford truck and put a new, all steel Weston lime box on it. Boy, was that an outfit—the only trouble with it was, it didn't have any more power in the field to spread lime than to pull the hat off your head.
It wasn't very long until I bought a 49 Studebaker truck and put a lime box on it. These trucks had center dumps in them, we could haul lime in the winter time and rock for roads in the summer time. My cousin, Jim Manatt, who celebrated his 70th birthday last year, drove the 49 Studebaker. We were hauling rock south of Iowa City at Hills, Iowa. Jim got in a wreck with that truck; had 800 or 900 miles on it. It wasn't his fault at all, but it sure did wreck the front end of that truck. Jim is still doing a good job of driving for us.
About this time, I bought a 1951 F6 Ford. I had a young fellow by the name of Ronnie Niemann, driving for me. He upset it with the first load it ever had on it. You can see how my luck was running at that time. After Ronnie left me, he drove for Roadway out in Ohio, double bottoms over the turnpike, for years, and is retired now.

I'd like to relate a story about Ronnie. Business was a little slow in the summer time; I think this was about 1952. Potatoes were real hard to get; you couldn't buy potatoes at the grocery store at all - had a potato failure or something in the crop.

One morning I said to Ronnie," We aren't very busy, why don't you go buy a load of potatoes somewhere." He said he'd do that; he was young, unmarried and had a lot of ambition. I didn't tell him where to go; I assumed he'd go to Minnesota or South Dakota, somewhere where they raised potatoes.

Well, I didn't hear from Ronnie for a couple of days. Finally, he called me. He was in Little Rock, Arkansas with the truck. "What are you doing down there, Ronnie," I asked. "Well," he said, "I found a load of potatoes; that's what I came after." He went south instead of north. Well, I asked him if he could bring 'em home. He said he had trouble with his check, but he could go to a drug store there and a guy would cash his check for ten bucks and he could pay for the potatoes in cash.
Dad had that little old shop where the car wash is in Brooklyn now. Everybody knew we were on that corner and we were always up to something; and they knew we were after a load of potatoes.

When Ronnie got in with the potatoes the next morning, (probably wasn't the next morning as slow as we were in those days), everybody was lined up with cars and pickups to get these 100 lb bags of potatoes. They'd buy a whole trunk load; maybe 300 or 400 lbs of potatoes or a pickup load. I'll bet half those potatoes spoiled. Well, we weren't long unloading the potatoes; they were all gone.
We never went back to get another load. I don't know if we thought our luck might run out or these people would have so many spoiled potatoes they wouldn't do business with us any more.

As long as I’m telling stories, I’ll tell another story about another little deal I did to make money. After WWII, Case came out with a wire tie baler. The baler would go down through the field, pick up the hay, and bale it. Two fellows had to sit back in the dirt along the side of the baler and poke wires through blocks that were put between each bale. One end of the wire had a loop and the other was a plain end; they’d put it through and wrap it real quick. They’d sit there in that dirt all day long tying those bales. They made good wire tied bales. All the farmers (some did custom work) had these wire tie balers. One year, about 50 or 51, these wire ties were really short. There was a place in Des Moines that made them, but you couldn’t even buy any there. Dad was in the implement business and he could only get few from them. Nobody could get these wire ties.
One day I decided I was going to go find some wire ties. I took off in my Kaiser car (or maybe a Fraser) took my wife and Johnny (John was just a baby) and headed to Missouri. (This is kind of like another potato story.) So, I went down through Missouri in the car and I’d stop in every little town; wherever there was an implement dealer, a lumber yard, or any place that looked like they might handle wire ties. I’d stop and if they’d have ten bales, I’d buy them from ‘em, pay cash and get a receipt. I’d do that all day long. In the evening, I’d call Ernie Mitchell and have him bring that big K-6 down with the pup trailer and load these bale ties. I’d try to have a load for him by evening, I’d call him and he’d be down there the next morning. He’d stop at each one of these places and get the number of ties that I’d  bought and paid for.

After two or three days of that, I stopped at a little old lumber yard that was about falling down, in a town about the size of Carnforth. I was sure they didn’t do any business there, but because I stopped everywhere else, I stopped there. I talked to the guy and I told him what I wanted. He said, “How many do you want.” I said, “I’d take all you got.” He said he had, I believe it was six truck loads over in Kansas City. He said, “I bought ‘em last winter, and I don’t need ‘em.” I bet him that he couldn’t get them, but if he could, I’d just take them all. By golly, you know that guy was able to get them. He’d send two little trucks into Kansas City every day that we were there. He’d come back out of Kansas City and I’d have Ernie there with the pup. We’d put one load on the pup and one load on the truck, and Ernie would head for Brooklyn. You talk about people waiting for potatoes, you ought to have seen the farmers waiting for bale ties when they were hard to get. We’d tell them around Dad’s shop there on the corner that Ernie would be in at a certain time with the bale ties. I say we, really Dad did, ‘cause I’m still looking for bale ties. They’d be lined clear up to the city park with their pickups early in the morning, waiting for Ernie to get in with the bale ties. Those farmers would take probably twice as many of those bale ties as they needed because they were hard to get. I’m telling you, we were making more than a truck bill on them. They came from all over to get them because they couldn’t get them anywhere else.

I guess the reason I tell you about the potato deal and the bale tie fiasco; I always felt you had to do something with your trucks besides what you made just hauling something.
There was a period of time for several years that I bought hogs. I’d weigh them at what was at that time a little sale barn in Brooklyn. I had an arrangement with a fellow that I could weigh them there. I bought the hogs, got a commission on the hogs and I got to haul them. I was always looking for something besides just the truck bill, because you’re never going to get rich if all you get out of anything is the truck bill. Even today, in 1991, we’re still running a lot of trucks, but as you know we’re in the construction business and it’s more or less the same thing. We’re getting more than a truck bill out of running our trucks and I think that’s been very important over the years.

I drove the K-6 a lot of the time, if Ernie wasn’t driving it. I drove it, oh, I don’t know, thousands of miles myself. I sit here laughing about some of the things I hauled. For instance, there was some guy from Brooklyn, I mean he was raised in Brooklyn (I can’t think of his name), but he was a college professor and he got a job teaching in some college in Michigan. I took my stock truck, bought some furniture pads and loaded up his furniture and hauled it to Michigan. Never thought about having any moving permits or anything, never did care as long as I was on the road and never got caught. I hauled furniture quite a few times, in that stock truck using my furniture pads and always got a good rate for that.

I just hauled anything, any time, any place. I never worried about permits. Dad used to handle New Idea farm machinery. We would load that out of Sandwich, Illinois, and I didn’t have any permits to haul it. We’d go in there with that old K-6 and pup and load up a load of knocked down manure spreaders or hay rakes or whatever, bring them back to Iowa and take them to dealers around the State. I had good rates on that. Never did get caught for permits. You know I wouldn’t do a thing like that today for anything.
I had double decks in that truck and pup both, for hogs. I even hauled some hogs to Chicago in that truck and pup. Dad was handling feed at the time—Arcadia Feed, was the name of it, made in Chicago—and I’d haul feed back. But, those weren’t very good paying deals. The rate to haul livestock to Chicago was probably about 30 to 35 cents a hundred. I probably hauled 20,000 pounds, so that’s about $70.00 to go to Chicago with a double deck load of hogs on the truck and pup. With those old Mississippi mud and cotton tires, I’d probably blow out a tire on the way. I remember one time I blew one out when I got to Tiffin and I had to wait at Tiffin until somebody brought me a new wheel and tire out of Brooklyn.

Somewhere about this period of time, Charlie Drake had a tractor and Ross Ramsey had a 28' trailer that they used to haul livestock to Chicago all the time. Fred Griffith bought Charlie’s tractor and I bought Ramsey’s trailer. I didn’t have the 28' trailer very long; I went to the unheard of length of 34' with a tandem trailer. For several years, Fred and I hauled livestock to Chicago. Fred pulled my trailer; eventually I sold out to Fred.
Also, about this period, I think it was 1952, my smart brother, Merlin, graduated from college, and he wanted to do something. I don’t know where I got a few bucks, but anyway, we went in the implement business together. We sold Massey Harris farm machinery and then we took over the New Idea from dad and New Holland. There was a good dealer in Grinnell, and we couldn’t get a franchise at Brooklyn. So, we operated our franchise out of Victor; Merlie was down there all the time and I kind of operated a sub-franchise out of an old shop here in Brooklyn, as well as running my trucks.
When I look back, it seems I was doing so many things, I can’t even think how I got all these things done—’course I probably wasn’t doing any of them right. We stayed in the implement business till about 1958. My brother Clare and I had trucks together by then and we were getting into the construction business some. We sold out of the implement business and Merlie came in with Clare and I to help us in the construction business, ‘cause we really had more than we could do by then.