We love to give you guys the first-hand narrative from a truck’s owner. Hannah Wheat tells us the story of her Cummins-powered ‘59 Viking that she and her husband, Cory, put together…
“We always have a project going, most of the time to fix up and sell. Cory and I enjoy spending time building things together in the garage. This project was different – we actually built the truck for me. I’ve been wanting one for a while.
We found the truck on Facebook Marketplace and bought it for $500. The guy we bought it from tried making something out of it but lost interest. When we got it, the truck was really rough. The floorboards were pretty much gone other than a few license plates pieced together. It also had an old rusted bed on it from a 59 Apache. The truck originally started life as a 2-ton grain truck. As we were cleaning it out, we found the original registration, and the address of the first owner was only about a 45 minute drive from us. After we finished the truck, we decided to go by the address from the registration to show him the truck. He couldn’t believe that was his old truck. At first he was in denial until he opened the door and knew right away when he had seen a clip on the dash that he would hang his grain tickets on. He even found a picture of the truck when he used it back in the 80’s on his farm. He now comes to the local car shows to see his old truck.
My most cherished memory of the build was driving it for the first time. We took it to the Music City Showdown show. Knowing nothing about it, we loaded it on the trailer in the driveway, straight out of the garage. Actually, Cory was still welding the foot pedals on it as it sat on the trailer an hour before we left for the show!”