Hot Rod Tow Truck
By noderel:
Bob Lusetti has 38 years of experience in the auto, equipment transportation and wrecker industries in the Cleveland, Ohio area. Towing is his bread and butter. Bob fixed cars before he towed them. Now, he is enjoying fixing up old tow trucks to exhibit in hot rod shows.
In the winter of 1976, Bob was working as an auto mechanic. A big snowstorm hit Cleveland and his car got stuck, so he borrowed a co-worker's tow truck to pull it out. Before he got to the car, people flagged him down. He made more money towing cars out of the snow that day than he made fixing them.
Bob quit his job and never looked back. He calls his business Bob's Towing Service and promotes it as "Your Total Transportation Company". Damage-free towing of automobiles is just one of the services BTS offers.
The company operates medium-duty tow trucks, heavy-duty wreckers, heavy-duty tilt beds. It handles towing of large vehicles and heavy equipment on Landoll trailers and low-boy service. Together with a sister company named B & D towing, Bob is involved with the operation of 14 tow trucks.
A few years back, Lusetti gained notoriety throughout the towing industry with the Pettibone wrecker he restored and brought to the National Towing Show. It was one of only a handful of wreckers constructed by Pettibone LLC, a heavy equipment manufacturer in Downers Grove, Ill. That truck was sold and is now in Wyoming, but Bob has since restored three additional tow trucks in hot rod style.
Bob raced stock cars on and off for about 10 years. Some of the high-performance tricks he learned in building racing cars were used in constructing his three hot rod tow trucks: a 1935 Dodge wrecker, a 1946 Ford wrecker and the truck seen here, a ‘51 Ford Cab-Over-Engine on which the wrecker bed lifts up.
All three vintage tow trucks have Manley hand-cranked cranes. Bob says there were four critical factors in building the ’51 Ford. “First, it takes a lot of fabrication work,” he noted. “Then, the Internet comes in handy for finding performance parts.” Lusetti believes that making trips to junkyards is critical. “You can’t get parts for trucks that old at your local auto supply store,” he told us. Last but not least, he finds some of the stuff he needs at old-car swap meets.
To construct his ’51 Ford wrecker, Bob mounted the Ford body on a frame from a newer Chevy pickup. A 350-cid small-block Chevy V-8 went under the hood. It has a Chevy transmission and a Camaro rear end. Everything is nicely painted to look like his heavy wrecker and dressed up with chrome. Bob did all of the work himself and emphasizes, “A lot of that ‘51 had to be custom fabricated.”
Bob exhibited his hot rod trucks at the Cleveland Autorama and two smaller custom car shows, the Choppers Rod & Custom Show and the American Cruiser’s Car Show. He took seven first class awards, as well as “Best of Show” and “Best Truck” honors. He plans to keep doing shows as long as the money holds out. “I enjoy seeing the people at the car shows,” Bob explained. “And it’s particularly nice when my truck puts a smile on their faces.”