Milwaukee photographer's obsession with trucks remains in high gear.

By Rick Romell, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Dec. 21--Some men can't get enough golf. Some chase women. Bill Bedell likes trucks.

He rode in his first rig when he was 4. He still remembers it--a red GMC his father was shuttling around Minneapolis. It was the opening note in a lifelong love song.

By junior high school, after moving to Milwaukee, Bedell was collecting sales brochures from truck dealers. He drew pictures of the Mack bulldog in his notebooks. He and a friend used to sneak the keys out of the ashtray of the friend's father's semi and drive it around a parking lot in the Menomonee Valley.

"Other kids were interested in cars," Bedell said. "I was interested in trucks."

At 14, he took a fateful step. Down in the valley with a camera, Bedell spotted a truck picking up a load at a meat-packing plant along Canal Street. The semi was an old Autocar being driven for Frozen Food Express out of Texas.

"I thought, 'That's a neat little truck,'" Bedell said. …