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Handyman Special
Lee Kaufman doesn't go over the road any more, but he still needs a truck. He couldn't find what he wanted, so he built it.
The 59-year-old from Roscommon, Mich., collects and exhibits old tractors. He and his wife, Gloria, also spend a lot of time touring the country with a travel trailer. He needed a vehicle to haul his tractors and the trailer. He had a 1-ton farm truck, but it lacked power and gulped gas.
"Once you've been in trucking it kinda stays in your blood," says Kaufman, who hauled doubles and gravel before starting a small-engine repair business 25 years ago. He considered building a conventional, but after seeing a fellow tractor buff's new Kenworth cabover, he realized that was the vehicle for him.
Well, not quite. Driving a full-size Class 8 would mean more paperwork than he wanted. But a scaled-down version, now . . .
"I got the frame from a '73 GMC 1-ton stake truck and bought an old Kenworth K100 tandem axle tractor. I took off the cab and other stuff I needed and sold the rest to help finance the whole thing," he says.
He cut the cab vertically, took a foot out of the middle to narrow it to fit the frame and riveted it all back together. Then he dropped in a DT466 diesel and Roadranger 13-speed tranny and installed a motor home front axle.
"This has a comfortable sleeper and good power and mileage. I get around 10 to 12 mpg instead of the 4 to 5 mpg I got with the 1-ton," he says.
The vehicle is registered as a 1-ton truck, so he doesn't need his still-current CDL to drive it. It's perfect for pulling a 12-foot Haulmark trailer loaded with the antique tractors and farm equipment he and his wife, Gloria, collect and show.
"I lived on a farm when I was young, and my dad had a John Deere dealership, so tractors were always around. I just started collecting and restoring them." He currently has eight — the oldest is a 1938 model and the newest is a '47.
It took him three years, off and on, to build the truck, but it wasn't that hard, he says. "Being a mechanic is my business. I was the only boy, and my dad gave me a wrench when I was in the cradle practically, so that's all I know. I've driven trucks and been a mechanic all my life."
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