50 YEARS - ROCK SOLID
International:
North America:
50 YEARS - ROCK SOLID
International:
North America:
Would You Buy a Used Truck from This Man?
It was 1979, a year best remembered for disco, polyester, and the widespread belief that Jimmy Carter could fix things. “Hot Stuff” and “Message in a Bottle” blared from radios. Videotape was futuristic. If you wanted to call someone, you found a phone. If you wanted to get lost, you simply went outside.
Against this backdrop, a young man named Eddie Frank -possessing the confidence of the young and the judgment of youth – found himself in Munich buying surplus military vehicles. Not one or two, but four: two massive German Army M.A.N. and Mercedes trucks, a Mercedes Unimog, and a Peugeot 404. His plan was simple, elegant, and insane: drive them south through Europe, ferry them across the Mediterranean, cross the Sahara, sell them in West Africa, and make a tidy profit.
This plan had not been tested by reality.
A Buggered Block
Eddie’s business partner was a giant Yorkshireman whose mechanical philosophy could be summarized as “Clogged diesel filters are for idiots.” Predictably, the man’s refusal to use a fuel filter resulted in his engine knocking itself to death in Tozeur, Tunisia. When he attempted to fix this, he rammed the camshaft through the engine block, an act known in professional circles as buggering it beyond redemption.
Eddie, having invested all his savings, reacted calmly – by towing the dead truck 800 miles through the Sahara to Ain Salah, Algeria, where they abandoned it like a body in the desert, promising to return later when hope, money, or a miracle might arrive.
Two Down, Two to Go.
They continued south with three vehicles. In Agadez, Niger, they attempted to sell the Peugeot. Instead, the Yorkshireman burned a hole in the radiator, and attempted a repair using oatmeal. This clogged the flow of water and destroyed it completely.
This led to a fistfight.
Eddie, smaller but motivated, won. The Peugeot did not.
Rust Never Sleeps
Down two vehicles, Eddie did what young men with too much pride and too little sense always do: he doubled down. They limped toward West Africa, fried the Unimog’s clutch in the sand, and towed it 400 miles to Kano, Nigeria. At this point, Eddie boarded a plane back to Munich.
Rust Never Sleeps (but it does seize engines). In Munich, Eddie bought another M.A.N., another Unimog, and a replacement engine for the abandoned truck in Algeria. He then drove 2,287 miles back into the desert. The partner wisely quit. As payment, he took the one truck he hadn’t destroyed – proof that quitting while you’re ahead is an underrated virtue.
The replacement engine Eddie bought turned out to be rusted solid. With no alternatives, Eddie attempted to strip it down rebuild it using a wire brush, a paint scraper and a couple wrenches. This was less a repair than a philosophical argument with entropy. For two weeks, under an Algerian Saharan sun, he scraped rust, slept in the truck, and lived on one can of sardines a day. Eventually, his hands locked into a claw shape. He diagnosed himself, bought eggs, ate the shells for calcium, and carried on.
Doctors hate this one weird trick.
The engine worked.
A Throne of Gold
Down to his last twenty bucks, Eddie reached Bangui, capital of the Central African Empire. Here a man approached him and said his boss wanted to see the trucks. The boss was Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa. Bokassa had crowned himself emperor in a $20 million ceremony, owned a solid-gold throne, outlawed drumming on weekdays, and was rumored to eat people. He was tolerated by the West because he hated communists, and by Eddie because Eddie needed cash. Plus it seemed like a cool thing to do.
When Bokassa entered the room in full regalia, he and his ministers indulged Eddie in small talk, and then asked the price. Eddie told him. Bokassa left. Eddie waited, hoping not to be invited to dinner. Ten minutes later, Bokassa returned with $70,000 in cash and asked if Eddie could also supply jet aircraft. He answered, “yes your majesty.”
Shortly after that, he murdered schoolchildren over uniform fees and allegedly ate some of them. Even the Cold War had its limits. Eddie had already taken the money and gone.
The Outer Limits of Common Sense
Shakespeare believed our beginnings know not our endings. Experience suggests he lacked exposure to cannibal emperors with cash.
From this journey, Eddie learned several life lessons:
And perhaps most important: if you ever find yourself broke in the Sahara, eating eggshells and negotiating with cannibals, you have already committed yourself. You’re too far to quit – so you might as well finish the job. Which, improbably, Eddie did.
He went on to found Tusker Trail as an early pioneer of Adventure Travel.
READY FOR ADVENTURE?
