Evel Knievel’s driver and the 1973 Overdrive interview

Wichita, Kan.-based medical equipment salesman Mike Draper, 59, has been doing his current work, traveling all over the state of Kansas in a four-wheeler, for around 16 years, he says, after many years working as an officer with the Wichita Sheriff’s office. Before that, as a green 19-year-old working with Hugo Shea, owner of a series of Harley-Davidson dealerships around Oklahoma and Kansas, he lucked his way into the driving gig of a lifetime.

Daredevil Evel Knievel (pictured here around the time of his Snake River Canyon jump in 1974) had been driving his touring haul rig himself – with his wife and kids in tow – when Draper first met him at a promotional event at one of Shea’s dealerships. “Shea had a Chevy Titan 90 semi that I drove,” as well as another truck, says Draper, to move equipment and inventory around between dealerships and other locations.

Knievel asked Shea if he had someone who might be willing to drive the truck for him. Draper wasn’t the only big-rig-capable hauler in the outfit, and ultimately Knievel got two drivers out of the deal, Draper and a man Draper taught to drive diesels himself, Lee Ratliff.

Draper and Ratliff are both mentioned in a story American Trucker TV show host Robb Mariani got wind of and which we dug up from the archive in Overdrive‘s Tuscaloosa, Ala., office. Download a pdf of the 1973 Overdrive interview with Knievel via this link, or click through the opening page image below.

The story reveals the man known for beating death in spite of the odds. Describing the then-in-planning “SkyCycle” steam rocket-on-wheels jump to Overdrive in 1973, Knievel had this to say: “I open the valve, let the water from the heater into the rocket, and when it drops from 500 [psi degrees] to 420, the engineer, Bob Truax, points at me. I’m looking right up the ramp over the canyon. I go at 350 miles an hour in eight seconds and hope like hell I get there. If I do, I drop down to both knees, grab a handful of dirt and thank God Almighty that I’m still alive. If I splat against the [canyon wall], I just get somewhere quicker where you’re going someday and I’ll wait for you. Dying is part of living.”

The daredevil had kind words for Draper and Ratliff in that story, too. In 1973, Knievel’s Post Coach living quarters was mounted on and his new trailer toted by a custom-designed Kenworth cabover, which would be swapped for the Mack currently undergoing restoration late that year or early in 1974.

“Mike and Lee,” Knievel told Overdrive in 1973 when asked about the drivers who kept up with the Kenworth’s maintenance. “They’re great guys. I never look at [the rig] because I know that it’s going to be taken care of like I take care of it myself. They drive it all over the United States and they’ve never put a single scratch on it.”