Excerpt from:
A Man and His Trucks: Dr. Bill Comcowich

by Don Chew

Dr. Bill Comcowich’s blue 1953 Mack W-71 attracted a lot of attention on the interstates during Bill’s many trips to antique truck shows. “What’s that old Mack?” always brought a cheerful reply from Bill, known as the “dentist with diesel fuel running through his veins.” In recent years, Bill enlarged his fleet to include a 1939 GMC painted in R. B. “Dick” Wilson’s colors and the 1953 White Freightliner P•I•E rig shown on the cover. A fourth truck, a 1951 Diamond T COE tractor-trailer combination, was intended to be restored as a tribute to the Watson Bros. operation. Unfortunately, it was not completed before Bill passed away.

Born in New York State in 1933, Bill developed his passion for trucking very early in life. At the age of 14 while visiting Gaspé, Quebec, he persuaded some local road builders to teach him to drive their dump truck. By 1950 he was working summers driving trucks on construction projects in New York State. Later, while attending Creighton University in Omaha, NE, Bill obtained a summer job driving with Gene Blackmore as a two-man team. They hauled beef to California and produce back to Denver, CO. His years in medical school were interspersed with jobs driving for Morehouse, Omaha, and R. B. “Dick” Wilson’s tanker fleet, all of which managed to fill his summers till he earned his D.D.S. degree in 1957.

After fulfilling his military obligations by serving in the U.S. Navy in Japan, Bill opened his dental practice in Aspen, CO, a sleepy little mountain town in 1962. Although dentistry was his profession, trucks remained his passion as he remembered the wonderful summer experiences he’d had during college. He decided he wanted a W-71 Mack with a 275 Cummins and 5+3 speed Brownie, just like the one he’d driven back then.

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