Robert Amado, of Middletown, beside his red 1949 F-2 pickup. Amado has a collection of 13 vintage and custom trucks. Below, the hood ornament on the 1934 Chevy hightop.

The providence journal / Steve Szydlowski

MIDDLETOWN

Bob Amado fell into his collection of antique trucks.

He said he bought his first truck, a 1931 Ford Model A, from a friend who had restored it and needed to sell it.

Amado put a sign on it and used to promote his high-end painting business, The Meticulous Paint Job. Amado works in the Salve Regina neighborhood of Newport and his clients range from The Breakers on down.

Ten years later, he got the collecting bug.

“You fall for the beauty of them,” he said. “Then you read a good book about Henry Ford and get the bug.”

“I had the (1931) truck for about ten years before I bought my second – a 1934 Chevrolet High Top,” he said.

Actually, he bought three trucks in two weeks – a red 1949 F2 Ford and a blue 1957 Studebaker Teamster Deluxe in addition to the Chevy High Top.

He said he bought all three at car shows in Pennsylvania. “(New England) is not car country,” he said. “If you want vehicles you gotta go find them.”

He said he bought the Chevy High Top at one of the many auto shows at the Carlisle Fairgrounds at Carlisle, Penn. A week later he drove back down to another show at Hershey, Penn., to buy the other two at another auto show.

“It’s all done in a field and it’s all cash,” he said.

He said he met up with a friend the first time he went down. “Did you bring the cash like I told you?” his friend asked him. “These guys are not going to take a check.”

Amado said he had brought cashier’s checks but found his friend was right. “All these guys were walking around with money (in their pockets),” he said. He said his friend lent him $22,000 in cash to buy the 1949 F2 Ford.

“It’s a classic Ford work truck with a low gear ratio,” he said. “The acceleration is terrible – they’re Granny gears.”

Amado started it up on a recent visit, but made sure to spray some gas into the carburetor before turning the key. “You sit me for two weeks with no love, you’re gonna have to give me a shot,” he imagined the truck saying.

He said most of his 13 trucks were fully restored when he bought them and he keeps them in show condition. They include a 1931 black Ford panel delivery truck, which is the only one he bought in Rhode Island; a pistachio green and cream 1959 Ford F-100 that has been hot rodded with a 460 engine bored out to 502, and a white 1948 Chevrolet Thriftmaster with rear corner windows.

He said a Chevy hot rod with bits from 1937 and 1938 models sits on a Corvette engine and drivetrain. It has shaved doors (no handles) and they have been reversed to put the hinge at the rear.

“(The restorer) reversed the doors to make them old-style suicide doors,” he said. “That’s a big job. Just reverse the doors? You don’t JUST reverse the doors.”

In addition, he has a number of trucks that have not been restored at all or at least not recently. They include a dark blue 1941 Ford panel truck everyday driver that was restored about 20 years ago with the name of its previous owner – Humble – on the side. In addition, a light blue 1957 International, a bronze 1949 suburban GMC and a green 1950 GMC Canopy Express. Farmers would use the GMC’s covered rear with open sides to sell their produce.

He said he recently sold his original 1931 Ford Model A, but is looking to add to his collection, spending a few hours on eBay every evening. As he’s searching for the ideal truck, he’s searching for someone to ride around with.

“I’m looking for a woman who can fix a car; that would round me out,” he said.

Amado’s garage is neat and full of auto memorabilia, car magazines and books. He also has a number of pictures of Marilyn Monroe that friends and relatives have given him over the years.

Amado’s neatness reflects his occupation as painter to the Newport high society. He said his company has worked on such top end houses as The Breakers, Marble House and The Elms as well as for Salve Regina and private clients for 30 years.

“They have their own paint crews but bring me in when the budget fits,” he said.

“I’ve been working mostly on Bellvue Avenue since my early twenties,” he said. He said that when he started he had a black van with gold lettering. “It looked like a class act,” he said. “I wanted to look like I knew what I was doing, that I could work over the grand piano and around the antiques.”

He said he did not want to project the image of a fly-by-night operation, with “broken down vans and Bud cans tumbling out when the doors open.”

At the same time, he said his friends sometimes call his company The Ridiculous Paint Job because of all the ladders he uses around a house when he works on it. “But I hope it reflects intelligence.”

He explained that painting a house requires many trips up and down ladders so he decided to keep the house surrounded rather than moving them each time.

“That leads to lousy quality because (the work crews) don’t want to move the ladders,” he said.

Amado, 53, grew up in Newport. He said his father ran “Leo’s First and Last Stop,” a well-known bar at the end of Long Wharf, which his grandfather Leo opened after Prohibition ended in 1933.

“The Navy guys were going crazy with the moonshine,” he said.

He said for sailors coming in from out of town, the bar was located at the first stop on the railroad line and it was also the last stop before they boarded launches to take them to their ships anchored in the bay.

“It’s all cleaned up now,” he said. “No more go-go dancers.”

Amado said he enjoyed collecting trucks because antique trucks are harder to come by than cars because fewer of them survived.

“Millions were made but being trucks they were worked hard and then scrapped or forgotten in the rear of the barn,” he said. “It’s the Duesenbergs that were parked in the front of the barn.”

He said he found truck collectors to be straight arrows. “This is the last of honest America, the good side of America,” he said. “Cars are expensive and (you’d better) know what you are doing or bring someone who does.”

He said true collectors love to tell the stories of their trucks, where they found them and what they did to them.

“So this is for fun,” he said. “I have no mechanical expertise. I don’t even change the oil. I had a few extra bucks and kept buying.”

pelsworth@projo.com