Mechanical Mind
Donnie Parsons gives the same attention to his business and customers that he does to keeping his antique restoration in tip-top shape for the road.
By James Jaillet
Dreama Parsons first saw the 1971 Peterbilt 359 parked in a field not far from her Knoxville, Tenn., home in the mid-1990s. She and her husband, Donnie, a seasoned owner-operator, had stopped to look at the old rig a few times, too, but when it showed up in her driveway, she fretted.
“I thought ‘Oh, no,’ on this project,” she says of her worry that Donnie wouldn’t be able to do what he wanted with it – turn it into a full-time working rig for his nationwide flatbed operation with Mason and Dixon Lines.
But when he finished the two-year project in 1998 (while still running his 1982 Peterbilt 359 he bought brand new), the antique beauty turned into a testament of his mechanical abilities.
“He could visualize it,” Dreama says. “I couldn’t. But he’s always done things like that. He’s just got a talent for it.”
