Nicholas Fluhart

Here’s a cool old truck I bought last summer. I love old trucks! It’s a 1969 Mack R611ST with a fully rigged oil field winch bed utilizing two massive winches (one Tulsa and one Braden), rolling tail board, telescoping poles, and a fifth wheel. I’d love to hear from some Mack guys on this truck, because I know very little about Mack’s. Although I haven’t done extensive research on it yet (that will come when I get the truck to my shop), I haven’t seen much in terms of history or specs on the R611ST.

This truck has been setting up for a few years and obviously needs some work to return it to roadworthy status. I’ve always wanted a winch truck for loading heavy equipment, and this one is larger than anything I imagined owning (you can see a much smaller version of winch truck that I also bought last summer here), but the price was right and the bed is in good shape for its age. Very cool old rig.

So once purchased, the first order of business was moving this monster. At first, I checked into getting it running and driving it home. However, upon close inspection I found the brakes, as well as other components, had taken a beating from the weather and it would take more time than I had to get it going. I thought about hauling it, but I didn’t have access to the type of trailer that would likely be required. The most viable solution was to have it towed. I called a local towing company and we immediately got to work. Concerned that the rear brakes may be stuck, we opted to tow it from the rear…

Once we got it rigged up, we hit the road. Since the yard at my shop isn’t quite big enough to have much non-running equipment present, I decided to have it towed to my friend’s property until I have time to get started on it. We had to get it into some tight places to reach its final parking place.

It was a tight squeeze for the wrecker to back out of the road we dropped the Mack on, but he got it done. Once the wrecker let it down, we used a 2006 Caterpillar D3 to move the truck into place. I jumped up into the cab of the Mack to steer. Below you’ll see some pics and a video clip of the process.

There are a few projects on the list before the old Mack, but once I thin some of those out, we’ll move it to my shop and get started. Until then….