While traveling the highways and byways of the country aboard our motor home, I have a great time watching for unusual trucks of all kinds. The bigger the better, as long as I’m not being held up! There are some real monsters to be seen on the interstates, and here are a few examples:
September, 2017 as we headed east along I-80 in Wyoming, this monster 13 axle rig was parked on the westbound side. I believe that load is a huge transformer. (Click to enlarge, click again for an even larger photo.)

Large mining dump trucks are so big that they must be shipped in pieces to the site they’ll work, and are assembled there. Here, its weight and length spread over 13 axles(!), the front of one (note grill and headlights) heads east on I-80 in Wyoming. (June 2017)
On the same trip but heading west on I-80, we encountered this super sized mining truck dump bed that blocked two lanes of traffic and was accompanied by several pilot cars and even the highway patrol – and another identical load. (June 2017)
September, 2016: Along Wyoming’s remote Highway 51, we pulled over for the widest wide load I had ever encountered along a two lane road. All northbound vehicles had to pull to the shoulder to let this behemoth by. It was a large dump body for a monster mine dump truck.
I loved trucks since I was a kid…
As an elementary school kid back in the 50s I would get into trouble for drawing trucks in class. I loved ’em even then and from those days I always wanted to be a truck driver. Then in the 60s after I was out of high school, I could find no way to learn the trade. There were no truck driving schools back then, at least none I knew about.
I worked a number of other jobs until I was 28 years old. I met a veteran log hauler in Red Bluff, CA at the truck outfit’s yard that was in my neighborhood. I was selling Fuller Brush products door to door at the time, and did Ok doing that, but I still wanted to drive trucks for a living.
Here’s the rig I learned on and identical to the one I drove waaay back in the 70s. The logging trucks of today are much improved but still have about the same appearance as this old timer. This logger had walking beam suspensions that rode like a tractor. They were powered by Cummins 335 engines and had the old 5X4 main/Brownie transmissions.
That fine fellow, Paul Fox, put up with me for three months as he taught me how to drive a 1960s era Peterbilt logging truck. It had a Cummins 335 and two transmissions; the main which was five speeds and the Brownie which was four speeds. I learned how to shift the old “main and Brownie” twin sticks in the woods and mountains, and we shifted gears virtually all day long. If we weren’t driving off road, we were driving along two lane mountain highways. It was “old skool” truckin’ and it was hard, dirty work. We drove many miles off road to and from the landings where the logs awaited loading, then we hauled them to the mills.
Click to view some of the old iron I used to drive – and the captions.

The old milk tanks I pulled with a Freightliner powered by a Detroit 318 with 4X4 transmissions. That old Jimmy sang to me all day long. Here I’m unloading at the old, long ago closed Carnation canned milk plant in Gustine, Calif.