Jimmy Means' 1975 Chevy C60: Old School NASCAR Hauler Stuck In Time! (The Owner-Driver Era)

On the other compartment over there, there's a case of oil that's been there for 40 years. What year did you buy this truck? I'm thinking 79 maybe. I bought it from Bob Ray Hill that ran Bob Ray Hill and Butch Mock. Yeah. they raced out of Miami. And I flew to Miami from Alabama. I still live in Alabama to pick it up and the first first night saw when I flew into Miami Airport that spoke English was Butch Mock cuz everything was was Latino. Good. So. Yeah, it's it's got a decal in here that says Ray Hill and Grady Racing Engines. that's the the engine company. So this would have been like before there was Ray Mock and it was just Ray Hill. Was this when they were building power boat engines? Yeah. Yep. Didn't you say you sold this truck and then went and bought it back? Yeah, I sold it to Bill Sedwick out in California. Uh he only used it like three or four times. Um I think it's even been one of those Fast and Furious movies as as as a backdrop. Really? Yeah. He sent me pictures of where it was in the lot or in the in the the scenes and stuff. Like yeah. I think he had it probably 32 to 35 years. And uh like I said, he only he kept it inside. And I got wind that it was for sale and uh and we did all the brakes and put new tires on it cuz it still had the original tires. I did it before I you know I bought it. So he got all that updated and drove it back from California. You drove it all the way here. When was that? Uh year and a half ago. Really? That recent? The last place it painted is drove it from California to to paint it and then we drove it the rest of the way back. I remember it back in 1979 that was drove a whole lot nicer than it did. Yeah. And uh uh 2021 so 20 year but yeah, I just want to stop here. It was a My kid used to stand up and sleep in the in the lookout thing. The windows on the top. So, there's a legend there? No, actually no. It's a sleeper in there and this is the sleeper is a 5 or 6 year old tall. Oh, okay. 5 or 6 year old can stand up in there and and look out. Is this the truck that you pulled the engine out of and put the race car engine in a different one? No, that was '77. That was a one-ton Chevrolet box truck. Okay. What engine's in this one? It's got a 366 cubic inch truck motor. It's a big block. Okay, yeah. You're not going to use a race car engine to take this one home. Cruise control back in the day and the air worked. That's what I ran back then, you know. And it wasn't that old then, 3 or 4 years, so but then it was been another 35 down the road so since then, but we've we've done a little bit of work to it. Got the seats redone and the carpet and uh Bill put a brand new hood on it, but he never painted it. So, we painted parts of it and you know, had to tune up the carburetor and stuff, but we're working on it. We're going to My intention was to take it to Darlington throwback time, but we never got it where I needed to. So, we used to carry everything in that truck, you know. All our pit equipment, everything we had. Spare motors and pit you know, back then our uh pit equipment consisted of two air wrenches and two hoses and two bottles. And when we lay the bottles on the ground, we put them on a Coca-Cola box, so we didn't have this fancy uh pit boxes and all that stuff, but it served the purpose and it worked. Is the inside still the way it was, like how you can you can pull a car in it, the way it Yeah. You know, I know I'm not going to hit the right one the first time. Huh? I told her I'm going to pick the first right key the first time. If it even turn. Is that the same padlock that you had on there back Wow, they really didn't change at all. Nope. Did you put one of these equipped with worn accessory stickers on your car, too? No. Actually, I got it back. You know. It's going to It's going to melt melt the melt the uh winch and never got around to it. Yeah, tire rack in the back. Put in tires. Oh, this thing is This is really cool. I had room to put a motor in. Used that sitting in that corner. And you know, pull the car in. And back then we drove the car in cuz we didn't have a winch. And you could open the door to the sleeper. See how big the sleeper is? Okay. And you could open the door to that, check on things back here. The car's back here doing this all the blah blah blah. So, yeah, it's All right, yeah. There's there's a You can crawl back through there into the driver compartment. You can't see that from down here, so It was a lot thinner back then. Now it's a little thinner back then. It was easier to get in, but you still get in it. Just so someone in the comments is like, "You're driving around with your kid in the back of the truck. You can't like No, he could go through there. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Cuz I mean, even if you did, it was a different era back then. So, it was probably normal for people to ride around in the back of box trucks. you rode around back then with the kids kids standing up between the seats and you holding them with your arm, you know? So, that's You go to sleep in the back package tray of your car. So, little different times. So, Verheely had this truck outfitted like this when you got it? Uh Yep, basically. I mean, didn't Apparently, it wasn't as nice and the sleeper wasn't as nice. What would you have driven that got pulled around in this thing but so I can find pictures of them. Probably 77 Monte Carlos. Uh 78 Monte Carlo. I think probably 82 Buick 82 Buick. Cuz uh I think I sold this thing probably anywhere from 83 to 84. So whatever we were running back then. Huh. So you had this when you moved here to this building you were Did you drive here for the first time in this truck? Yeah, actually I uh This is my moving van. Really? moved up, you know, when I'm when I actually moved, I mean it I came here I said before my family. But uh Like I said, I was looking for a house and all that sort of stuff. So I found all that. And my family didn't move till right after the Daytona 500. And I drove from Daytona to Huntsville. Uh picked my family up and whatever we didn't have already here we uh Huh. Actually moved here right after Daytona 500 in this truck. That's awesome. Does it have a name? Not really. We never It never got a name. Never got a name. Never got a name or anything. It's the truck. It's just the truck. You know, unlike JD's uh other truck, his old truck was old blue. Yeah. and we uh won a bunch of races went to a bunch of races with him trying to save a buck. We'd put a car on the trailer behind his truck. Interesting. And we'd go to Riverside, California that way. I I've had one man with me, you know, Sandy Jones and JD had uh uh Jimmy Bird with him, you know. And and cuz JD had a crew cab pickup truck, no air and all that. And JD's favorite say saying was let's run 100, which means 100 miles, because that's all he could run cuz he had to get fuel after 100 miles. So, but we do what we had to do to survive. So, you were like race car pooling, I guess. Car pooling or race car pooling. Like a bunch of gypsies. Do you know where JD's old blue is now? I heard Ken Schrader has it. a lot of her too, but I don't know if maybe I heard something maybe that maybe asked the lady might have ended up with him. I'm Schrader might have gave it to him. So, I'm not sure. I'll have to do some digging on that. See if I can find it. Well, they do Darlington every year. So, I think you can still there'll there'll be something for you to take it to when you're ready. If I'm still in the sport, you know, it's It's you know, it's you know, it's Are you talking about using this to actually haul a active race car to Darlington? And work at a Yeah. Okay, so no, I I thought you were just talking about like take it there just to have it there, but you're talking about using this thing as your rig to pull the car off and go race with. And my pit equipment, my two nitrous bottles, put them on a Coke can. That's all you need. That needs to happen. I would hope I'm still I don't know where I'm still around or not to do that. I don't know. If somebody watching this wanted to sponsor your team or wanted to drive a car that had a sponsor, how would they get a hold of you? Well, I'm just Google me. It's easy. Okay. There you go. Yeah, I've never heard of somebody doing that before like using you know, not as just a show piece, but just taking their current car to the track in a a hauler like like this. That's that's my plan. Yeah. Wow. A lot of stuff this big teams do, you know, for show. Uh who's got to have the biggest pit box, you know, hold the most people. You don't need that to win a race, you know, or to qualify or all that, so. Most of the people up there aren't even on a team anyway, they're just like people. On the other compartment over there, there's a case of oil that's been there for 40 years. You want to see what's still in there? I want to see it. Is it one of the free Union Oil cases? Yes, it is. Oh, it's a Pull that flap back there. This one? Yeah. Well, that's it. That's even got What weight is it? 50. So, now we run 030 or 020, so yeah. That is awesome. This thing's been bouncing around in there twice my lifetime. Yep. I It's Right at 40 years. And this is what I'm holding right now is probably the first time it's come out of there since you put it in there. Yes. I feel like you got to put it back nicely. It's like I feel like it'd be bad luck to take those things out now. Like you don't rename a ship kind of thing. It's part of the truck now. Did you ever have anything on the side, or was it just that's all we ever had on it. The guy I feel like he painted the side when he had it, so Who was Broadway? That is Stud Murray. He He had a car wholesaler dealership. Not a dealership, but he wholesaled cars. We got hooked up when I first moved here, and he was my sponsor for 2 or 3 years. Gave me $500 a race. So, but at the time I got that, that was a big deal. It got us from you know, from one race to the next. So, it's hard to do what we did without Huh. I mean, back then we had We could buy with one room. We might have had eight people sometimes or six people. So, And did you ever back the car out and then have people sleeping on the floor where you parked the car? No, never did. Huh. We were fortunate we never had to do that, but And they have showers and stuff in the infield for guys that were sleeping in rigs? Oh. Or did everybody just We never We never stayed at the racetrack back then. That's going to allow when you know, they're going to allow truck drivers if they park, you know, the night before they'll allow the truck drivers now to stay in their trucks. Oh. But they didn't back then. Hm. And most time back then we went in 7:00 in the morning. We never parked the night before. Huh. We'd load up here, drive all night to where we were racing, and get there in time to go to go in the racetrack. When we went in the racetrack, we went to work. You know, they wouldn't allow parking the day before. You drive overnight cuz it's easier, less people on the road, and drove overnight cuz we didn't get done. It's the only way we could get there. Oh. And one less hotel bill, too. Well, you know, we would probably left, you know, had a motel if we could leave early enough, but we never did. Just too much work to And the back door of this thing got that Winston Cup decal on it. This is incredible. You can see the faint outline of the car here. This is actually pretty much what's on the back of the hoodie I'm wearing right now. It's all old Winston Cup style. I don't know if you can I'll put in a picture. But, uh, if you like what we do, you want to support the history, you can go to stapletonautoworks.com. Get one of these hoodies. We have it in t-shirt form, too. Matching hat. It's actually a like the Winston type eagle on the side, but his wings are boom tubes and he's holding a wrench. If you think this stuff is neat, you can hit the subscribe button and that'll just notify you when we post a new video. It's not like, you know, we got a lot of older people. I'm 26. I know a lot of you guys watching this video are more than twice my age. So, you may think subscribing means you got to pay for it like a magazine. It doesn't work that way. All subscribing means is when you open YouTube, it will show you a new video. So, if you like these videos, hit that button and watch the next ones, too. So, there's the current hauler. Is there a backstory on this trailer? Uh, no. You don't know where what it was used for before you had it? Uh, well, there is a backstory. It's a I think it came from uh uh Rick Crawford's truck team. Really? Yeah. My dad was friends with his manager and when we'd go to Michigan, we'd go in there and I'd crawl up to the top and go in the back of the truck and poke buttons. So, this might be the trailer that I was crawling around in when I was 8 years old. And Rick Crawford had it for his truck team and then I think Mark Smith had it. And then I bought it from uh uh Maybe JTG. That might not be the right words, but they had expanded the team. I I bought it from them. After Mother Hall of Burnup. Huh? The one I had before this. Does is the lounge area changed around in there at all or does it probably look the same as it used to? used to have a table in there and I took it out. Oh. Yeah, I wonder if I'd recognize it.