Posted by David Sherman on Thursday, November 24, 2005 at 0:55AM :
In Reply to: Re: PACIFIC posted by John Eickhof on Tuesday, November 22, 2005 at 10:28AM :
I remember my father negotiating with PacCar/KW for custom trucks to haul Minuteman missiles around the country back in the 1970s when he worked on Minuteman at Boeing. There were a bunch of different programs going on to shuffle the missiles around away from fixed silos so they'd be harder for the Ruskies to target. The wildest scheme had them being moved around underground on a vast "subway" system with the capability to have them burst up through the roof of the tunnel at any point and quickly be launched. I don't know the weight or length of the Minuteman missiles offhand, but presumably the shipping weight included fuel since they were solid-fueled rockets.
I also don't know why they picked Kenworth rather than some other make unless it was simply that PacCar was in Seattle, as was Boeing in those days, and the higher-ups in both companies were on friendly terms. At one time, Kenworth was also the most common make of logging trucks around here, perhaps because PacCar had always worked closely with the timber industry, including making the "Carco" winches that are found on the backs of most old cats commonly used for skidding logs. PacCar is the modern name for the company that I still remember as Pacific Car and Foundry.