The annual Wheels of Time Truck and Tractor show will be happening next weekend in our community at the Richland County Fairgrounds back this year with a return visit for our show.
Paul Posh and Bill Geer, good to see you fellas.
You doing well?
Good morning.
Good to see you.
It seemed like it should be Wheels of Time show time again,
Paul.
Yeah, it's been there.
We've had plenty of things to do and plenty of things to do yet.
I mean, we're getting ready to go.
We got everything pretty much in place.
Hope to have a really good show.
We got Alice Chalmers this year.
And we usually have a really good turnout of trucks, many old, all the way to brand new ones.
And we welcome all.
How do you decide which brand of tractor, Bill, that you're going to feature?
You rotate those?
It's a rotation.
We look back on the records, who's been here, when, and then as we turn the clock and see, OK, it's time to have this year's Alice.
Last year, we had
case out there next year be John Deere's coming in and We just were talking and we got to figure out what's come the year after because we always like to advertise ahead of time for people know what's up up and coming at the show
You're a member of the the truck club Paul.
Can you tell us about that?
Yes, I belong to the southern Wisconsin chapter ATHS is a fairly
widespread organization.
We have members all the way from northern Minnesota to southern Illinois to southwestern Iowa.
We've got some that come up from Ohio.
It's a very widespread group and we have a very nice wide selection of trucks, everything from reels to Kenworth's and Peterbilt's.
You name it, we get all kinds of different odd ones to show up.
lots of different ages of those
trucks to tremendous amount of ages.
We, we have some, uh, that clear back in the 1909, all the way forwards, uh, you know, a lot of them in the fifties, sixties and seventies.
Um, I happened to know for sure that there's a 31 real flying cloud car that's going to be there this year, a
car,
a car, real made cars for a number of years.
And, uh,
I just happen to know that there's a 1931 that's going to should be there as far as I know.
When I look at those trucks and I think about not that it's, it's a comfortable job now, but I think about those over the ride truck or over the road truckers back then.
And man, that had to be a bumpy ride sometimes.
They earn their money.
Them men earn their money.
They were, they just.
do you look at what they had for sleepers a little shelf about a foot wide behind the seats and they were expected to sleep on that or they just slept in the seat draped over the steering wheel and and uh you know i've seen a number of trucks some of these early 50s trucks that they went coast to coast every week and boy i sure hate to ride that coast to coast in them old trucks
you know with tractors a lot of times it's the ones that we grew up
you know, using our dad's head.
Is that kind of the way it is with trucks as well?
Oh, kind of.
You kind of see a tendency there that a lot of people is what they grew up with.
And so that's what they kind of collect.
And some as time goes by, they get themselves a little bit nicer one to drive to and from the show and haul the old one on the trailer behind.
probably get here a little faster that way
a little bit faster yes and more comfortable
sure so do you get correspondence do you know about how many are coming at this point or do they just show up
mostly it's just people know about the show and they just every year they plan on it we have many of the club members that they actually plan their vacation for this weekend so that they're here they come in a lot of nowadays are coming in on Thursday so they can go on the truck drive on Friday morning
to benefit a relay for life, and they just thoroughly enjoy it.
We're not going to have as much color this year as we normally do, but Richland County is still a very pretty place to go for a drive-through with them old trucks, and the group really, really enjoys it.
It's a chance for people to kind of watch the parade, so to speak.
So when will they be leaving on Friday next week?
They usually leave around 9 to 9.30 in the morning.
They'll leave the fairgrounds.
And I haven't been informed what direction they're going this year.
Kelly Schaefer is usually the one in charge of that.
And they try to go a different direction every year, so it's not the same.
I know last year they went up towards Rockton.
and up through that way and one year they went out through Gays Mill out on 171 and all the trucks couldn't when they before they left they didn't know why we kept telling them you really don't want to put take your trailer on this you want a Bob tail and when they come around the corner coming out of Gays Mills and you could see the back end of the trailer while you were going around the corner they decided maybe it was a good should have brought the trailer with a couple of them
How come I'm thinking of a CW McCall song, you know, about Wolf Creek Pass or something like
that?
That's kind of what it is over there going up through Gaze Mills there.
Bill, on Saturday, what are the events?
Are they going to do something similar with tractors that day?
Yes, we have our tractor ride Saturday morning.
Lineups around nine.
We leave the fairgrounds 930.
We got about a 16, 17 mile route we take this year.
We would.
Taking a different same route.
We did about five years ago We've been asked to go down to Pine Valley for we go through the parking lot for residents can view the tractors.
We have some formal former members down there and they Specifically asked us to come down there.
So that's the plan this year.
So We'll be leaving the fairgrounds heading in the rich and center and you know county
Y and up around down through the Ash Creek area and down to Pine Valley.
So I bet those residents can tell you probably all about those tractors and I'm sure some of history.
No doubt.
So that's going to be coming up next week.
And then when can people start bringing their implements into the fairgrounds area, Bill?
We will start accepting things on Wednesday.
We'll be out there working.
And if they need special arrangements, get there earlier, call Paul or
Kelly or myself so and we can make arrangements out there.
Some people bring more than one they bring a lot don't they?
Yes Some local Alice people that probably have half the Alice line up there.
I can imagine
and Any idea of the numbers like what's the greatest number of trucks and tractors you've had through the years you remember
Paul?
Usually we range in 110 to 130 trucks
And the tractors are kind of in that same range that we run in that 110, 120, 130 tractors.
We, you know, that just seems to be the number we seem to hit.
We have many guys, you know, I have one particular group that they belong to the truck club and the tractor club and they'll bring their trucks and they'll just leave the tractors on the trailer and they'll usually parked under the grandstands with them and, you know,
but they show up every year and we're happy to have
them.
Pretty convenient that they can do that.
We
try to help anybody that we can.
If you don't want to unload it, we will find you a place to park so that you can leave your tractor or implement whatever you happen to be hauling on the trailer if that's what you prefer to do.
A couple of years we had somebody that was bringing in a whole bunch of Sears stuff
He had a 35 or 40 foot trailer loaded down with everything that you could buy out of the Sears catalog for, for car, for tractors and plows and lawn and garden stuff.
He, you know, it's just amazing the stuff he had on that trailer.
I've learned over the years too, um, Bill, that the implements like the cultivators and those kinds of things, those are a lot more rare than the tractors.
Uh, at this point, yeah, a lot of those influence from way back.
are hard to find.
My son's actually working with a David Bradley line, and he's been running over Southwest Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, picking up, implements the amount to this piece of equipment.
It's
on a David Bradley.
On a David Bradley.
Okay, wow.
It's kind of like a oversized over a rototiller, what I call it, but but that's
It's got several implements to it, and he's been collecting them, so.
Everybody has their ones that they love.
I can't help but think of the show, Paul, without thinking of Danny Schaefer and how this all started.
Maybe you could talk about the history a little bit for
us.
Well, this all started with Danny Schaefer and Mark Welty, basically, and there was another gentleman over at Blogenville.
He just passed away recently that they all got together one
Sunday or Saturday afternoon and decided to have a little picnic.
And then the following, they actually had it at Loganville and the following year, then Danny and Mark had one out here and the following year, then it's just, they kept telling more, a few people and more and more people started showing up.
And then finally about the fourth or fifth year, uh,
The Dursts and the Maglins started asking, well, could we bring some tractors down there?
And, oh, you know, Danny, he was such a generous person.
Sure, go ahead.
And so they started lining up tractors down by the road and all of these trucks that were coming in.
And, you know, and it's just kind of exploded from there until the unfortunate passing of Danny.
And then we had moved to the fairgrounds because of the family didn't want to host it there any longer because Danny, he did so much for this club.
I mean,
The person doesn't realize it until you got to do it.
How many things he always did?
It amazed me, Paul, how they could get so many vehicles in Danny and Penny's yard because they found a way to fit them all in there, didn't they?
Well, that's kind of the deal with that one, though, that once you were in that main yard, you were there pretty much until Sunday.
You weren't going to get out.
So if you didn't tell Danny that you had to go early,
You weren't going to get out of there until Sunday because they had a packed in there that you there's no way out without till somebody in the front moves.
Nobody really
cared though.
I don't think nobody's ever never had anybody really stand there complaining and grumble about it.
I've never heard them anyway.
But you know and we still do that today.
There's some some places we park trucks that you know it's not possible probably to get out till sometime on Sunday.
But you know if you tell us.
When you come in, that you got to leave at a certain time, we will park you someplace so you can go.
So the question is, Bill, how do you guys put this on?
Because it's, it's free admission and how do you do it?
Well, we get money from our pie stand up there.
The ladies, the
ladies from the pie stand, they are such a tremendous help.
And they're the ones that fund the whole thing.
We got to give them credit.
Yes, we do.
They and they and they sell the pie through the the weekend.
They're
all the way through the weekend.
Uh-huh members are required to furnish two pies I don't know we Nancy's kind of into it and she's gone 12 14 pies whatever She's just make sure we got plenty of pies at the fair to sell and that's I've made basic income coming from the show Biggest challenge for Nancy
is keeping you out of them in the meantime probably
yeah, I
Just get up there fairgrounds.
I'm bacon
today.
So look for the pie stand any other food that will be available through the weekend.
The four eaters will be there and they've done an excellent job in recent years for us.
They have brats and burgers and and hot dogs and usually some beans and
pulled pork.
Sometimes they have pulled pork and you know they just have a tremendous menu.
I feel they do us an outstanding job.
They also be cooking breakfast on Saturday and Sunday morning out there.
They have usually pancakes and sausage on one morning, and then they were doing eggs and sausage on the
other.
One morning they had biscuits and gravy.
And what are the hours?
When can people start browsing?
When the sun comes up and when that sets.
Basically how it works.
Ample
hours.
I'm usually there from daylight to a way after
dark.
Tell me about the threshing.
Are you going to be doing that again this year?
We will be threshing on Saturday and Sunday.
Saturday, we hope to be started by one o'clock or whenever I get off the tractor ride and give it up to help them again.
And Sunday, we start 12 o'clock or if weather is moving in, we will move it up and start at 11, 1130 whenever we can get it done up there.
Do you find, who's machine do you use?
Ray Swenson owns the Thrasher.
And he, usually they're helping us.
Tom McGlynn is one of them that gets the bundles for us from the Amish.
And then we get a crew working at it.
So we like to get more younger people in helping us.
And actually we had a good crew in there.
I took a good crew to unload three wagons last year.
This year we only got two, so.
it's a good thing to see
though and watch
and
yes it
is part of our
history right it's history out there so
very important i think paul that the young people see this kind of thing and then you know early agriculture
well this is what we're trying to encourage you know both both early agriculture and also early trucking industry i mean you know when you look at some of these trucks you really understand that was not the
the easiest job in the world driving these trucks, no power steering, no air conditioning.
I mean, you roll the windows down, that's as cool as it gets.
I mean, many of the roads were so bad at the time, 25, 30 miles an hour is all you could do on the roads.
I mean, these, these people earn their money.
Were they tough to drive?
I
mean, without power steering, driving down the road, going, you know, actually driving forward.
They're not too bad to drive.
But when you pull into the, into the yard and you got a back up to the loading dock, now you're going to wrestle with that truck quite a bit because you don't have power steering.
It's all arm strong.
Yeah.
Can you imagine backing into an alley in downtown Chicago or somewhere like that back in the day?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Actually, I've driven a truck without power steering with along the Mark Welty and, and long as you were out on the road, it wasn't a bad truck to drive.
But when you pulled into the yard and had the back up to the loading dock,
It was a whole other story.
Some of the tractors were like that with white front ends and no power steering.
That's true.
I mean, I never had to experience that with a white front without power steering.
but i know there's a several mouth there i was always narrow front tractors they were pretty easy hand a separate getting plowed ground in a very different end out there once in a
while once in a while right so what uh... what brand or what really excites you about the show bill when you look at uh... wheels of time
just to walk through and see all the different tractors and implements that come out there i mean it's amazing people dragging in this implemented that implement we've never seen it before so
This year, hopefully, we get our new tractor we recently inherited.
My son's got a 300 utility international with a very rare loader on it.
It's a one-of-a-kind loader.
The engineer was building it at the plant down there, and it's the only one that was ever built like that.
So it's your new tractor.
It's like 70 years old.
Yeah, that's correct.
It's about 70 years old.
So is there a limit tractors before a certain year
or
just bring anything
anything and it doesn't have to run if you got got an old rusty one that you got to drag it in on a chain and you're proud of it.
Bring it in.
We welcome everything.
There's been years we've had rusty old trucks brought in there.
They were trying to complete a line of international trucks one year.
And some of the trucks they bought in, they were a sight to behold.
So all stages of restoration and some not.
That's correct.
It's fine with us.
We are not, we don't give trophies for best or worst or anything else.
It's just all about having fun.
Just loads of fun to listen to some of the stories behind some of these trucks and tractors and things like that.
I mean, it's just amazing what you can learn from these people.
What truck excites you the most, Paul?
Well, I own a Diamond Reel, 73.
Unfortunately, it's in the shop for working on it right now, so it won't make it this year.
I did a dummy.
I thought I was going to do something simple and take the old rusty roof air conditioner off.
By the time I got that off, I got the headliner out of the inside of the cab and the lights off of it in order to get to it.
And I just decided, okay, now I got to get busy and just get busy sanding it and put some paint on it so it looks a little nicer.
Are they easy to find parts for?
No, it's getting harder and harder, especially here about 10 years ago, the price of scrap iron went up so high.
and so many of these old trucks in Salvi Jards just got crushed.
I mean they just turned them into iron so it is getting more and more difficult to find parts.
If you don't know somebody to hook you up with some parts it may be a real struggle so don't go by just any old truck.
make sure how complete it is, or that you know somebody that knows where to find parts.
Indeed.
Or talk to somebody like yourself that has a little experience.
Well, I might be able to help point you in the right direction because I don't know where to find all the parts you might need.
Indeed.
Always appreciate it.
Now, Bill comes bearing gifts here.
He's got something.
Oh, a bottle of ski.
How about that?
Wow.
Where did you get that, Bill?
I purchased it up in International Falls, Minnesota.
Oh, I better let it set before I open it.
It might have shook a little bit on the way.
It's been sitting around for
a couple weeks.
And a couple of big apples too.
I don't know if I've ever seen an apple that big.
No, that's a honey crisp.
They come from the Oakwood fruit farm
up
there.
If I had taken this to the teacher, I surely wouldn't have had to sit in the corner that day.
Well, that's why I brought two.
One for Hank, the teacher, so.
Oh, you'll
get one
for Hank
too.
Anything else either you want to add about wheels of time?
Just don't forget to thank the ladies at the pie stand.
They do such a tremendous job for us.
We have a special area set up for young people that want to bring in an exhibit.
If it's a tractor or something, we have a special place right in front of the building for them to park their vehicles and they can put their own sign on it.
We'll provide them with a sign for it.
We have word that there's going to be some dioramas show up that we're at the fair.
We'll also be there.
Plus, anybody has got some toys they want to display.
We have all the display cabinets there.
If the ladies have something they'd like to display,
We've got plenty of display cabinets that are available at the fairgrounds there that they can set up things inside there.
If you have a large display that needs a building, we have the use of the buildings.
We can set you up someplace in one of the buildings if nothing else.
Well, the trucks and tractors be kind of on display like they have been in the past.
In the past, it'll be pretty much the same.
You'll have the Alice Chalmers right inside the gate there in the first row.
and then the trucks we just plug them in as much many places we can get them big trucks be into
perfect anything you want to add bill
uh it's handicap accessible out there if you don't feel you can walk we've got golf carts uh utv's people give you rides otherwise if you don't want to get out of your vehicle you can you're welcome to drive around up there it's all black top and it's easy to get around and
We welcome everybody out there for the show.
Good to know.
Just drive slow that you don't run over any pedestrians.
Yep.
Take
it slow.
All right.
Well, we'll keep plugging it.
We'll try to keep reading a good forecast for you next weekend too.
So sounds good.
Good luck guys.
Thank you.
Thanks for coming in.
Bill Gehr and Paul Posh and the In Wheels of Time heading to our community, Richland County Fairgrounds next weekend.