The Pacific Northwest Truck Museum held its ninth annual Truck Show Aug. 25 at its location just off I-5 near Salem, Ore. Overdrive, sister publication of Truckers News made the show one of its stops during the five-week, cross-country tour celebrating the magazine’s 40th anniversary.

Like other attendees at this year’s event, Mick Moss has not forgotten the days when 16-foot-wide, unpaved roads were the freeways and low gears were his only engine brakes.

Moss, who began driving for USF Reddaway in Portland, Ore., after World War II, also remembers when everything in the state of Washington was regulated and companies didn’t cut one another’s rates. The state set tariffs and the only way you competed, he says, was with service. While the museum and truck show highlighted the “good ol’ days,” the classic trucks also reminded visitors how far truck technology has advanced.

One of the leading developers of new truck technology was Ken Sells, who started in 1947 as production manager of Freightliner at 1925 Quimby St. in Portland, Ore. Sells, who attended this year’s event, saw Freightliner grow from infancy to one of the top manufacturers of new trucks by the time he retired in the late ’70s as its second president and CEO. Sells was the general manager in 1956 and became president and CEO in 1959.

“Back in 1947, there were only five of us. It was pretty little, but it gave us a chance to grow it,” Sells says. Freightliner started full-scale production in 1947 when Leland James, owner of Consolidated Freightways, created a separate manufacturing company for the tractors he had been custom-building in the shops of Consolidated Freightways.

“He wanted someone else to build them, and went out of business in Salt Lake. He didn’t have any money,” Sells says. “We were mavericks, looking back on it.” Together with two engineers, Sells developed lightweight aluminum trucks strictly for the highway.