Updated June 28, 2021, as part of Overdrive's ongoing weekly series of 60th anniversary lookbacks.
The video above showcases my 2017 talk with 20-truck tanker fleet owner Anthony Fox of Rome, Georgia, also proud owner and caretaker of the piece of trucking and film history that Fox and I were discussing -- one of the original 1970 Mack RS700 models used in the classic “Convoy” trucking film, released on today's date 43 years ago in 1978.
[Related: An era's social unrest finds an unlikely anthem in the rebellious 'Convoy']
What’s better, the rig is attached to a likewise original trailer used in the film. It's a 1960s 5,800-gallon Trailmobile tank trailer with the battle scars, and prop-worthy mods, to prove it.
I met Fox upon arrival early at the Southern Classic Truck Show in September of that year, where the rig was set to reprise the “Hollywood Hill” Robb Mariani memorably wrote about here in Overdrive – a piece honoring the American cultural legacy of five famous trucks of the 1970s and '80s that got together at the Southern Classic the prior year, all together for the first time.
