You're looking at a 1967 Peterbilt 351. In the summer of 1977 I drove one very similar to this solo for 6 weeks in Houston.
My Dad was leased to a trucking company that had a yard in one of the sleazier parts of Houston, 59 & 610. One of my Dad's buddies ran the place. The yard was a mess with a portable building for an office. There was an old condemed building, piles of scrap and hundreds of old tires littering the place.
My summer job was to clean up the yard. I had my faithful old '68 Ford F100 and a cattle trailer. I was to haul off all the old tires and junk and get paid by the hour. Manual labor in the Houston sun. Ah, fun times...
I drove all night the sunday after school was out to get there. I started work at 7am and began stacking the old truck tires onto the trailer. I did that for about 15 minutes when the yard boss (my Dad's friend) asked if I could hook up a truck to a trailer. Pffft, nothing to it!
That was the last time I touched a junk tire that summer.
I quickly became the local delivery driver for them. I took trailers into and out of the Port of Houston, refineries, chemical plants and steel factories all across the metro area. I did all this on my own with no supervision. I was 15 with a hardship "daylight only" drivers license. I wasn't legal by any stretch of the imagination.
It was the greatest summer of my life. I worked my tail off driving a worn out old Pete with a 318 Detroit and a 13 speed. No a/c, no power steering, no sleeper, no stereo (it did have an AM). The old girl was strictly business. I'd work 12 hours a day during the week and all night on Saturday. I slept in the office with a gun as nightwatchman to the lullaby of sirens and gunshots.
Every other night I got to rent a motel room. The place I stayed at had a killer bar that never once carded me. The Safari Room!
It was a miracle I didn't kill someone. I was a big kid for my age, so the physical part was no problem. It was the skill level I lacked in. Would you want YOUR 15 year old driving an 18 wheeler solo on Houston freeways? The driving tips I got from other drivers were along the lines of "turn your signal on, count to 4 and change lanes without looking in the mirror... they'll get out of the way". They did...
I was having a blast! Here I was doing a man's job making a man's wage. I was treated as an equal at the yard and at the docks. If you tried something like that today Homeland Security would go ballistic. There would be helicopters and camera crews everywhere.
Everything was going smooth as silk until the company owner caught wind of what was going on and promptly canned me. But, I had already experienced one of the greatest adventures a young man could dream of. Unfortunately, when I got home none of my friends would believe me.
Who in their right mind would turn a kid loose in an 18 wheeler?
I swear to you on a stack of bibles, every word is the truth.
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