Dave Reed is a collector. Over the years, he has accumulated pottery, crocks, old books, model cars, toy construction equipment and every Minnesota license plate ever issued for a car. They are joined by a collection of toy trucks that fills several rooms.
He spent his life running a welding supply company that eventually had branches all over the central part of Minnesota. Since he ran approximately 25 real trucks during this time and did a lot of business with construction companies, he knows when toy trucks are authentic and when they’re not. So he especially likes the toy trucks built approximately between 1946 and 1965.

“In 1945, I was about 8 years old,” he explained. “During World War II, there were no toys being made other than what my dad would make out of peach crates. But after the war, the toy manufacturers got done building their defense items and went back to toys, and they put a lot of energy into them. They were very play-active—they would steer, they would dump, they had a lot of hydraulics, like the real ones.”
He proves this point by demonstrating his Metalcraft trucks. The ones with the trailers advertising Rice Flakes and Heinz products have lights that turn on. His big Tru-Scale International Harvester hauler came with steering controls. A little instruction sheet showed how you could put a little pressure on top of the cab to make the wheels turn. 
His Doepke fire truck has real Goodyear tires, scaled to the exact size of the real ones, with identical treads. The wheels are exact replicas of steel hubs, the extension ladders go up with a turn of a crank, the pump sprays real water and the siren screeches authentically.
He explained further the effort that was put into making authentic toys: “For example, Tonka trucks looked like Fords, and Tonka changed them every year as the real ones changed. They would have a wraparound windshield they didn’t have the year before to keep up with the actual truck. Rather than single headlights on each side, in 1958 and ’59, real trucks went to high beam and low beam with two headlights on each side and so did the toys. Tru-Scale made all IH trucks that are absolutely picture-perfect models of the real ones.
“The IH pickups were exact replicas of real IH pickups, which they no longer make. Doepke made mostly model construction equipment, but they were exact replicas of a Woolridge, of a unit crane, of a Jaeger cement mixer or a CAT D-6, and they made them in complete detail with everything working.” 

To read the rest of this story, call (701) 883-5206 or 1-800-533-8293 to order the Dec. TT&C 2011 issue.

Whether he’s precisely pruning trees at Oldani Landscape Nurseries or perfecting a model truck in his workshop, Norb Oldani has an obsession for detail.
He takes pride in both his nursery business and his hobby of restoring and rebuilding trucks, cranes and other models, where details matter.
“I get over the top on these things,” he says. “When I’m trimming spruce, if I see one branch out of the way, I have to get down and cut that. I like things done in detail.”
Norb’s attention to detail was apparent when he was a high school freshman and created a history project—a model of the Notre-Dame Cathedral built out of toothpicks, a structure he still has. For a history project the next year, he built a detailed, 4-foot-long Mississippi paddleboat steamer with working parts.
Norb discovered another passion when he was just a youngster—plants.
“While all the other guys wanted to go play baseball—which I did, but I wasn’t crazy about it—I was pruning roses,” he says with a laugh.
He and his wife, Delia, bought a farm in 1978 in North Branch, Mich., to start a nursery.
 “We never looked back. We moved from the hustle and bustle of the suburban Detroit area,” he says. Today, their daughter, Ellen, is part of the nursery business, while their son, Norb Jr., lives in North Carolina. Oldani Landscape Nurseries is one of the few Midwestern nurseries that does its own grafting of rare and dwarf woody ornamentals. Norb has propagated more than 300 rare and dwarf conifer varieties using the grafting method
During the summers, Norb meticulously prunes each branch of the 62 acres of trees at the nursery. But when winter arrives, he puts away the pruning tools and spends more time in his workshop, meticulously building models.

Founded in 1920 by John H. Odenbach, Dolomite has grown through expansion and acquisition into one of the largest materials suppliers in upstate New York. The Dolomite Group, as it is now called has its corporate offices in Rochester, N.Y. The corporation consists of six separate but cooperative divisions. They are: DOlomite Products Co., Inc., suppliers of crushed stone; Rochester Asphalt Materials, Incl, suppliers of hot mix asphalt; Manitou Construction Co., Inc, suppliers of central mix concrete; Iroquois Rock Products, Inc., suppliers of crushed stone and hot mix asphalt; Keystone Builders Supply Col, Inc., suppliers of materials, products and equipment for the contracting industry; and The Shadows, a beautiful golf and sports club consisting of three gold courses and two fine restaurants.

According to the company’s promotional brochere, they have been “instrumental in shaping Rochester’s skyline.” They have provided materials for the Xerox Tower, Marine Midland, The Lincoln Tower, First Federal Plaza and Kodak to name a few.

Manitou Construction Co., Inc., the concrete division of Dolomite has plants which are designed to produce high volume and consistent quality central mix concrete to satify the exacting needs of their commercial and civil construction customers. Manitou is a nationally recognized leader in computer systems technology for batching control, deispatching and job tracking. All Manitou systems are fully integrated to provide a high degree of control and their fleet modernization program provides optimal availability of delivery equipment.

​The pressed-steel toys from the Nylint Tool and Manufacturing Company are considered by many as being among the best American toys ever made. Over the years, their line has featured dozens of models of construction equipment, trucks and cars, many of which had action features that enhanced their play value and provided countless hours of constructive fun for thousands of young boys and girls.
One toy that stands out among the group is their classic mid-1950s Michigan T-24 truck-mounted crane which became a must-have for every kid with a backyard and an imagination. With its lifelike operation and tough durability, this lattice boom crane was adored by sandbox excavators, Lincoln Log architects and playtime foremen everywhere.
The T-24 Michigan crane wasn’t born overnight. It was the result of decades of innovation by a heavy-equipment manufacturing company diversifying its product line and a second company making kitchen utensils in response to the unique demands of the post-war baby boom. Together, these companies brought out one of the most popular construction toys in history to the market.
The story of the T-24 crane begins with the Clark Equipment Company, a manufacturer of industrial machinery and equipment from Benton Harbor, Mich., with roots reaching back to 1903 as the George R. Rich Manufacturing Company. This company was owned by executives of the Illinois Steel Company in Chicago, Ill.
Illinois Steel employee, Eugene B. Clark, found a number of inefficiencies in Rich Manufacturing’s business model. Over time, he suggested implementing business techniques to improve management and basic operations; as production increased, Clark became an equal partner. 
After spearheading mergers with several other manufacturing businesses, George R. Rich Company became Clark Equipment Company. By the mid-1920s, Clark owned four plants, producing drills, reamers, electric steel castings, axles, wheels and transmissions.
By the 1950s, Clark’s sales were primarily driven by the automotive industry in Michigan. The company earned nearly three-quarters of its total revenue from axles and transmissions produced for six major U.S. car companies. In an effort to reduce its single-industry business dependence, Clark began diversifying its product line through additional company acquisitions.
In 1953, Clark acquired Ross Carrier Company, a local manufacturer of large lift trucks, straddle carriers and cable cranes. Ross Carrier sold its products under the Michigan trademark and had a well-established distribution network.  
Using the manufacturing capabilities of Ross Carrier, Clark developed a new line of rubber-tired front-end loaders and marketed them under the Michigan brand name. Clark’s Michigan lineup soon featured elevating scrapers, wheel loaders, tractor scrapers, compaction equipment, truck shovels, trench hoes and the crane that would soon become a toy legend. 
Just like Clark, the Nylint Company faced a crossroads in the postwar era. Prior to World War II, the Rockford, Ill.-based company produced simple kitchen utensils, like cheese slicers, flour sifters and gravy strainers. As the war neared its end in 1945, Nylint was compelled to establish a new direction as its old manufacturing focus grew stagnant. 
Nylint already possessed modern metal-stamping facilities, so the company chose to manufacture metal toys in anticipation of the millions of soldiers who would be returning home to start families.
Nylint first made waves with the introduction of a windup toy car, a staple of toy boxes to this day. Its innovative mechanism allowed the car to start and stop, move forward or backward and turn side to side. The success of the Nylint toy car prompted a new generation of toy development.

​​​To read the rest of this story, call (701) 883-5206 or 1-800-533-8293 to order the Oct. TT&C 2011 issue.

Other features included in the Nov. 2011 issue:
• Exciting Models From Europe by Carsten Bengs
• The World of Tekno by Martin Smits
• Nylint Scale Models Once Ruled Backyard Roads by Larry LeMasters