66 10-4 Magazine / December 2025 The Brockway’s restoration was finalized in 2021, in time to take it to Cortland for the show. A few months before that trip, Mike’s 761 attended a show in Bethlehem, CT. Also on display at that show was Bob Manchester, who has a large trucking business nearby. Mike has always appreciated Bob’s trucks, especially a blue Brockway 760 tractor. At the show, Bob told Mike that his 761 was a real show truck, and he thought it could be a winner. Mike was happy with the compliments coming from Manchester and commented to me that the Brockway owners and fans at the shows are all really nice people. While at the show in Bethlehem, a man spent quite a while photographing Tony’s 761. Mike began talking to him and discovered he made toy trucks. The following year, the man came to the show in Bethlehem and showed Mike pictures of the model he made of the Brockway. Mike said the detail was amazing. The man said it would cost a fortune to sell the model, and that he had built it for his own personal collection of trucks. Fast forward to Homer a few months later and, it turns out, the 761 won People’s Choice and, a year later, it earned the same trophy again! Needless to say, the Archieres were ecstatic. The 761 isn’t shown at too many truck shows but regularly attends and wins trophies around the Danbury area. Mike only showed the 761 once at the Bethlehem show, but Mike’s father exhibits his B-model Mack regularly there. Another show is one in nearby Norwalk, whose director is suffering from pancreatic cancer – this one raises money for early cancer detection. For the Archiere family, attending the Cortland and now Homer show is the main truck show activity for them. Father Pat takes his B-model Mack to the Macungie show, organized by the Antique Truck Club of America, but the 761 has yet to make that trip. Mike has been married to Patty Ann for 44 years and they have two sons, Patsy and Mike Jr. Patsy’s wife is Kayla and they share daughter Brooklyn and son Patsy Jr., who at age seven, already loves working on the truck. Mike Jr. is divorced and has a son named Jayden. Mr. Archiere works at Earthmovers, Inc, which does excavation work, road building and paving plus aggregate material handling. Mike drives a straight truck tanker with all the service items on the rear maintaining the large earth moving machinery in the field. He was recently provided with a new Mack MD with a 1,000-gallon tank, powered by a Cummins engine, and an automatic transmission. Not only does he refuel diesel, but he also performs oil changes, does greasing, and even mechanical work, when needed. The company has all types of earth working machinery, including crushers, to recycle cement, asphalt, and other types of debris. Michael’s Uncle Cary, brother to Pat and Tony, was also in the trucking business and had a 1974 Autocar. Cary wanted to restore the tractor at the same time Mike was working on the 761. One night after working on it together, Mike went home to find that Cary had suffered a fatal heart attack in his pickup truck on the way home. Since then, the old Autocar has been parked at Mike’s house, so it was decided to start working on it last summer. He and the boys began cleaning it up, but Mike stated that he works at a regular job and money can be tight, saying, “I won’t go as crazy with this restoration as the Brockway, but I’m trying to finish it before something happens to me. I know I don’t have the years I had with the Brockway, but we’re still trying to get it cleaned up.” Tackling this and the many other restoration projects is a testament to the closeness of the Archiere family, along with dear friends, who banded together for a single cause and through grit, hard work, and determination (and money), were able to successfully restore Uncle Tony’s award-winning Brockway 761. Mike said he will continue to attend the Brockway show, and despite his cancer levels going up, he’s managing it well. He gets tested every three months and hopes he’ll continue to have good health for the foreseeable future. Thank you to Mike and the entire Archiere family for providing photos of the 761 during restoration. For more details about Brockway trucks, refer to my colleague Mark Harter’s history of the brand in the June 2024 issue of 10-4 Magazine. But, in the meantime, enjoy these pics I took of the Archiere Brockway at the show in Homer, PA last year. Built to honor their Uncle Tony, this beautiful ride is a testimony to their love and closeness as a family and will forever be a symbol of what the Archiere family is all about. n
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