What are the odds?
Long-lost Ford truck finds its high school owner four decades later
Eric Machado often thought about his first truck: a 1957 third-generation Ford, nicknamed “the fridge” by aficionados because of its square, boxy shape that resembled the kitchen appliances of the time.
He bought the truck in 1984 from his boss, John Butler, a local mechanic and Petaluma Speedway racing legend. Eric worked for Butler at Precision Automotive all through high school, even lying about his age to get hired at 15.
A year later, Eric T-boned a different neighborhood mechanic who unexpectedly did a U-turn on Lohrman Lane right in front of him.
Thankfully, no one was injured. However, the front end was smashed. Eric parked the truck, hoping to restore it. He never had the money. He got busy launching Machado Brothers, Inc., an excavation and demolition business in Petaluma he started in 1989 with his brother, Craig Machado, and ended up selling the truck to the brother-in-law of a friend.
He never knew what became of the old Ford, and always regretted selling it.
Fast forward almost four decades. Eric’s buddy, Tony Durenburger, visited a friend in 2024 on a dead-end road in Weed, 280 miles north of Petaluma. Driving by a storage yard, he couldn’t get over the resemblance of the truck gathering dust in the yard. He sent Eric a photo.
“This sure looks like your old truck,” Durenburger said.
Eric recognized it right away. Sure enough, it was his old truck from his days at Petaluma High School. Same license plate. Same DMV sticker from 1985. Even some of the same damage from the ancient accident.
Long story short, he tracked down the owner – not the same guy he sold it to – and bought the truck back for the same price he sold it for, $1,500. The price included a used trailer that Eric used to haul it back home.
Eric and company are now working on the truck at the Machado Brothers shop on Horn Avenue, where the cab and the bed are removed from the chassis. It is awaiting a paint job and installation of a shiny, rebuilt 429 big-block engine with a C6 transmission, details that sound cool to car lovers.
If all goes well, the restored truck will be parked alongside all the other old vehicles at the American Graffiti car show in downtown Petaluma. Maybe not next summer, but the year after.
By then, Eric hopes to be driving the same old Petaluma streets of his youth, in the same old truck, reminiscing about those high school days. Maybe he will be extra careful when driving through the intersection of Horn Avenue and Lohrman Lane, where that fateful accident occurred 41 years ago.
(Full disclosure: Eric happens to be a family friend, who told me this story at the birthday party of his brother, local contractor Joe Machado. Happy birthday, Joe!)
Tobias Young is a reporter and editor at Petaluma Voice. He can be reached at tyoung@petalumavoice.org.
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