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