PAT CROSSLEY/Sun-Gazette Members of the Diesel Performance Club and instructor Mark Sones, stand next to the 1959 truck that they helped bring back to life as a winner at drag racing competitions. Members of the club–all students at the Pennsylvania College of Technology–are left to right, Mike Poorman, Aiden Nunan, Sones, TJ Buck, Drew Macey and Gio Barbarossa.

When a truck once dubbed, “The Drag Truck,” because it literally had to be dragged everywhere it went, starts winning races and gaining the respect of the truck manufacturing industry, it’s a testimony of what can happen when students at the Pennsylvania College of Technology use their skills to give an old truck a new life as a drag racing star.

“It’s an innovation tool. So (you) learn a lot with it-unique troubleshooting aspects involved with the truck. It’s a very unique application so that helps with learning a lot,” said Gio Barbarossa, acting president of the Diesel Club at Penn College. Club members work on the truck and also drive it during races.

As a tool for learning the truck is a 1959 Mack B-61 semi.The truck actually was used in the 1970’s to move heavy equipment in the college’s heavy equipment operations program.

“They had this old Mac that they used to move the equipment down at our training site, our facility where they did heavy equipment operations, and they were going to put it out to pasture,” said Mark Sones, an instructor in Diesel Equipment Technology at the college and advisor for the club.

It was suggested that it be donated to the diesel program.

“So they did, and what are you going to do with it? We’re going to restore it. Okay, so we tore it into a million pieces. That’s really easy to encourage students to rip things apart. So it got torn into a million pieces, and then all of a sudden, well, what are we going to do ,we’re going to restore it. We’re going to set it down here and plant flowers in it till it rusts up, and then we restore it again,” Sones said.

At the time there were a couple of instructors in the program who were drag racing and so the students decided they wanted to race the truck.

“That was a big joke. It was like, Yeah, right. We’re gonna time it in a quarter mile with a sundial. That’s so slow,” Sones said.

Then Sones started working for Mack trucks in Maryland through the college for about eight years. He made a lot of good friends in the industry, he said, and began trading teaching time and actually became part of the human resources team there on the technical side.

“I traded my teaching time for two engines, and then started work in the industry. And we took this old 1959 truck, and at the time, put the latest technology available. So we got donations coming from every different direction, and we were able to put together a truck that would easily be a $125,000 investment,” Sones said.

“The club works very hard. They put a lot of money into it. I’ve got some out of pocket money in it myself, but really, the big things are from the industry. Our partners that have helped us out thought it was cool and you know, it’s a snowball effect. Now that it’s popular, it’s getting a lot of press. You know, everybody’s willing to jump on board,” he continued.

“So the cool thing that just happened, just this past week, our arch rivals, our engineers from the Hagerstown, Maryland factory, and they are factory-supported, and they’re drag racers. They’re the ones that beat us. They have the fastest truck…we just were on the phone with them last week, and they gave us a set of tires, a set of slicks, racing tires that are probably $1,500 a piece,” he said.

“They think it’s really cool what we’re doing…they see a bunch of young men and women attacking this old truck and making it competitive. And they want to help,” he added.

Speaking with members of the club, there is an obvious love for the vehicle and an excitement and dedication to seeing how they can utilize the skills they’ve acquired at the college to increase its capabilities.

“This truck was not made for what we’re doing,” said T. J. Buck, a member of the club and the current driver during competitions..

“From the factory, this truck probably topped out at like 55 miles an hour and we’ve doubled that to 106. So, we’re pushing the limits,” Buck said, adding that’s the speed achieved by the end of the drag strip during a race.

When the truck arrives at the track, people turn and look, Buck said, which is followed by a “wow,” according to Barbarossa.

“There’s so many different reactions-it’s amazing. The old farts that have been driving the truck for a long long time say ‘wow’ because that was their childhood. That’s what they did back in the day. Before it was slow,” Barbarossa said.

The next wow, Barbarossa said, comes from the industry partners that are amazed that “this is a college with a bunch of students that theoretically just learned to work on these trucks and they’re now making this old truck go really fast.”

“There’s a bunch of complications with that and the industry partners understand that,” he said.

“And then there are the outsiders and the spectators who are just, wow, this is a group of kids that before this year, you know, we didn’t know what we were doing. And here we are winning. I just think there’s just a bunch of different layers of ‘wow’ and it’s a really, really impressive atmosphere to be a part of,” Barbarossa said.

But winning is not the only significant aspect of the Drag Truck. It offers a laboratory on steroids for the students to spend time applying what they have learned in their classes.

“It’s one thing to go to the classroom and learn, and then go to lab and learn a little bit. But you take what you learn in the classroom and you have to apply it to something in the real world- because there’s nothing less real world than the drag truck. It physically goes out, works races. You can see what you do in real time. There’s the measurable impact because of how fast it goes,” Buck said.

The club members shared that it’s not unusual for them to come back to the garage where the truck is kept at the Earth Sciences Building at Allenwood during their off-time in the evening and spend four hours working on the truck.

“There’s definitely a lot of things you learn off the Drag Truck you wouldn’t learn otherwise-uniqueness to the truck. Unique ways the fuel system in this truck works, how the turbo system works. You don’t necessarily learn in class, because it’s not super common. But should you venture into the performance field becomes very important you know the things on this truck,” Buck said.

At a Penn College Board of Trustees meeting earlier this year, Sones shared that the truck really started out as a marketing tool for the program.

“We really wanted to find that white elephant, that thing that really stuck out. You know, the old 1959 B-61 Mac is kind of like the great-grandfather of the trucking industry to begin with, and it’s very unique,” Sones said.

“Any old timer that’s familiar with them knows that they’re extremely slow. To take this extremely slow truck and make it one of the fastest trucks that shows up at the drag strip-that’s very unique,’ he said.

He admitted that they could have used something more modern and cool, “but so is everybody else.”

“And that’s where the idea came for this. Back in 1998 is how this evolved so and then these guys brought it back from a roller coaster of enthusiasm. It was in a low for a very long time, and two years ago the interest spiked and this thing really took off. That was our first driver, which was Mike Sormilic and Jake Spinoza, was the second driver. Those two guys really pushed, and they got these guys involved. So the passing of the torch, that’s what has happened for us. It’s amazing,” he added.

Before winning races, Sones said that representatives of the program would go to races like the national event at Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey, and set up a booth to market what Penn College had to offer.

“Watching all of this, you know, literally 1000s of trucks and I was like, wow, it’d be cool just to, just to make the show, you know. And then we made the show. And the first time we went to the nationals, we won everything. And that was that, just, I was in tears. I’m a crier,” Sones said.

The club has about 20 to 25 members, and yes, there are girls in the club. Pretty much all of the club plus people from the college come out to support the racers as well as a number of alumni.

For Barbarossa, the truck was part of the reason that he chose to come to Penn College.

During a tour of the college before he applied, he said that he saw the truck in the lab.

“I saw it, and I was like, wow, that is cool that students out of class time can build that. I wanted a piece of that, so I came here and the truck started to move again,” Barbarossa said.

“I’ve had a couple friends and family actually come up here, and the first thing they ask anytime they come up here, when can we get to the diesel shop, to see the truck. That’s the first question all the time,” said Michael Poorman, another club member.

“And I think it’s a big factor in who we are, taking something that probably shouldn’t have happened and we ended up over achieving. So it’s definitely a big selling factor as a school, as a club, and for students, it’s a really big accomplishment for all of us,” Poorman added.