With 47 years of experience as a diesel mechanic – and with a few years as an owner-operator mixed in during that time – Walla Walla, Washington-based Mike Flake knows his way around a truck.
In the early 90s, he operated a 1966-model needlenose Peterbilt, which was one of the first aluminum tilt hoods sold in the Pacific Northwest when it was built. Flake was only the second owner when he ran it as an owner-operator.
He now works in the shop of 65-truck Tate Transportation, also based in Walla Walla. “We don’t run any junk,” Flake said.
He has used his knowledge of trucks to stretch somewhere around 75 trucks through the years, he estimates. But his most challenging project to date was the full-on rebuild of a 1960 Mack B75, which Flake believes is either the only or one of only a couple long-hood B-model Macks in existence.
The 64-year-old Flake said he remembers seeing the exact truck he bought running for a logging operation when he was a child in eastern Washington.
“I had a little history with the truck seeing it run when I was a kid,” he said. “It came up on Craigslist for sale, and I thought it looked like a truck out of eastern Washington – and it turns out it was. Graham Bros. Logging ordered it new from Mack in 1960.”
He said he believes the truck hauled logs up until around 1977 or 1978, running about 18 years as a logger before it did “a lot of sitting since then.”
