truck up and bring it back with them,” he said. “He had the means and the equipment to do it with, and it just grew from one to another, and another, and another.” Dana said his father was always drawn to the more unique trucks. “I think the stranger, the more oddball the truck was, those were the ones he really liked,” he said, noting the Divco Milk Truck headed to the Fall Premier. “He grew up after the Depression, and those were just normal things—milk delivery trucks, the smaller trucks. They didn’t have the 53-foot semis delivering groceries and things like that; it was all small, single-axle trucks. That’s a lot of why he got into it.” As the head of a metal fabrication Don eventually took over as president and CEO of Tri City Fabricating and Welding Company Inc., where large liquid sugar tanks and dry flour silos were among the company’s creations. Dana explained that the company shipped large products all over the U.S., utilizing its own trucks and trailers, which provided his father with a new opportunity—the means to pick up and transport trucks to assemble a collection. “When my dad would hear about a truck, something he liked, if we were delivering a truck to California, for example, and he knew it was on the way back, they would go down and pick the company, Don had the means and knowhow to fabricate parts for the trucks he was purchasing, and he eventually set up a small shop on a piece of property they owned to handle fabrication for his trucks before he retired and sold the Tri City company. “He had set up a little shop and work area, with an office, in a building in southwest Davenport where we’d fabricate parts, and he had a couple of full-time people working for him,” Dana said. “We could make most of the sheet metal and parts; and then he had a mechanic, and if it was something they couldn’t do, like rebuild an engine, he’d have it done.” Several years back, Dana said Don decided he was done and was going to sell off his entire collection, which he did. However, it turns out Don wasn’t as finished with trucks as he thought he was at the time. “He was done. That was it. He was selling them all off,” Dana said. “And then it was, ‘Well, I’d like to have one of these,’ so then it started back up again.” While not as large as his previous collection, Dana said Don’s collection again grew into a healthy grouping of various cars and trucks, the vast majority of which are now set to join the Gone Farmin’ Fall Premier lineup in East Moline, Illinois, this November. Over the years, Dana said his father found a lot of enjoyment in not only owning his trucks, but in driving and sharing them with others as well, whether it be in parades or, most notably, at the annual MECUM.COM // 83
