Updated Jun 1, 2021
The following story was originally penned in 2016 by the most enthusiastic among trucking-culture enthusiasts, former American Trucker television series host and producer Robb Mariani, about a history-making event that year. It was updated slightly from its original form in June 2021 as part of Overdrive s 60th-anniversary celebration and its series of lookbacks at trucking history.
Contemporary trucking seems about a million miles away from what trucking was even a decade ago, much less 50 years or so. But on a day in 2016 in Lincolnton, North Carolina, the past met the present as vintage truck owners got together to fellowship and pay homage to the equipment of yesteryear, much of it still in hardworking order today. While that wasn’t particularly unique – it happens all around the country at a myriad of truck shows all summer long every year – what was special about that September day in Lincolnton was that five of the most famous trucks of the 1970