My Dad was a Hauenstein beer distributor and
My Dad was a Hauenstein beer distributor and
saw this truck parked at the brewery in New Ulm, Minnesota in 1953. The truck spun a bearing in the rear end and was parked around 1946.
After nearly 20 years of trying to buy the truck and being told it wasn ' t for sale, the brewery went out of business. Three years after the brewery closed, the owners of the property sold off some of the land. The building where this truck was stored was on this land and was going to be torn down. The president of the brewery-Roger Schmidt- and my Dad were good friends. Roger told my Dad that many people had expressed serious interest in this truck over the years and had offered a lot of money for the truck. Roger then told my Dad how much he liked him and what a great job he did to support Hauenstein ' s beer. He then gave my dad the truck for free- under one condition- He must restore the truck.
In Sept. 1972, My Dad, sister and myself( a whopping 4 years old) made the 90 mile journey to New Ulm to pick up this truck. Since by now the engine was seized, and the wheels were froze up, getting this truck on a low-boy was no pick nick. I still remember that trip to New Ulm! I remember it was a long Saturday, and I think I learned a few new words that I wasn ' t supposed to learn yet.
As a boy I used to sneak into the building were we stored the truck and hop inside and pretend I was the driver. As the 1970 ' s rolled by several people tried to get the truck running but with no luck. My dad would always tell me how one day we would get that old truck running and drive it in parades.
The one thing my dad and I did do was snowmobile together. In fact, He called me his crew chief. I rebuilt my first engine in fourth grade for an extra credit project. One cold December night while we were getting the snowmobiles ready for our annual New Years trip to Crane Lake, My dad looked at that old truck and told me that if anything ever happened to him, It would be my job to one day get it running.
The next week my Dad headed up to Crane lake to bring 3 of our 7 snowmobiles there for New years. He never came home. He and his best friend broke through thin ice and died.
We buried my Dad on Christmas Eve 1981. I was thirteen. After some time to absorb what had just happened, I recalled what my Dad told me. From that day on, my only purpose in life was to fulfill my promise to my Dad, and his promise to Roger Schmidt.
By 1991 I had started to get tired of being laughed at, or told I was nuts to fix up that piece of junk truck. I knew that this level of project was well out of my ability and everyone I talked to said because it wasn ' t a Mack, Ford or Chevy, getting parts would be too difficult and thus, no one was interested. I found that everyone was wrong about parts being difficult to find. Parts were impossible to find!!!!
The truck is a 1932 White model 602. I have found that from 1931-1934 only 274 were ever made. As far as I can tell, mine is the last one.
After years of trying, I finally met my man-totally by accident. Mike Mickkelson owned Prairie Auto Restoration. I could go on forever about this genius but that ' s another article.
Four years after meeting Mike, I had raised enough money to start the restoration. I also managed to get the wheels loosened up enough to move the White out of the building it sat in since 1972. On June 20, 1995 the truck rolled on its own wheels for the first time in about 49 years. The next day it was loaded an a flat bed and hauled to Northfield MN for restoration.
The full restoration took 17 months and included a team of about 12 people including my self. The whole restoration is another long story filled with incredible high points and also times were I thought the truck would have to be scrapped. The engine, a white 4A was in bad shape. The cast aluminum oil pan was cracked in almost 180 places. the block had a 18 inch jagged crack, but when you find out that the people you hire are geniuses, nothing is a problem. I documented the total restoration on video. As previously mentioned, we couldn ' t find parts for this truck, so anything that couldn ' t be repaired was re-fabricated. I also am convinced that we had some Divine intervention as parts that I did have were all thoroughly inventoried before restoration and we later found some brand new parts, in original " Genuine