You find the most amazing things in out of the way places. Irricana, Alta., barely a spot on the map resting about 30 miles northeast of Calgary, houses an unparalleled collection of antique trucks. I can think of a couple of other museums with more trucks — like the Hays Antique Truck Museum in Woodland, Calif. They have over 100 antiques on display — but few I’d bet can claim as many truly rare old beauties.

The rarest is a 1911 or maybe 1912 Benz Gaggenau. It was found at a lumber mill somewhere in New Zealand and brought back to Calgary for restoration. Its owner, Ron Carey, says there isn’t another like it in the world.

There’s also a very rare 3/4-ton Federal Model 8 truck. This one is so rare that its very existence is the subject of some debate. As its owner — Ron Carey, again — tells the story, the Federal Model 7 was a fairly common truck in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The two are similar in appearance, but the Model 8 was built with a larger 72-hp, 205 cu-in. six-cylinder Hercules gasoline engine — like the one on ­display at Irricana. The problem is, no data exists to prove any were ever made, and there’s certainly no record of how many might exist ­elsewhere today.

The man to thank for the truck collection is Calgary’s Ron Carey. He’s a down-to-earth, blue-jeans-and-cowboy-boots kind of guy who built a substantial fortune making drilling bits for the oil service industry. He’s a regional vice president of the American Truck Historical Society (ATHS), and admits to a fondness for AC model Macks.

He funded a 12,000 sq ft building at Pioneer Acres to house his collection, and through the Alberta chapter of ATHS, initiated the construction of a second 10,800 sq ft building to house trucks belonging to other local collectors.

Interestingly, many of the trucks in the collection are dressed up with tools, parts, and other bits of equipment appropriate to the era, if not the year. Carey is one of those attention-to-detail ­people that insists the props be of the period. There’s a 1953 Diamond T tow truck complete with chains, wrenches, jacks, etc., that would have been found on a truck of the time. It’s really quite remarkable.

Carey has a shop in Calgary where he does the restoration work, and a crew of talented people doing the work. Walking through his shop is at least as interesting as the museum itself. While I visited in late August, he was working on his second 1932 AP Mack dump truck. The first is already on display at the museum; both were built specifically for work on the Boulder Dam in Colorado in the 1930s. They were specially designed variations on the standard AP, with a huge dump box — for the time — that required bigger engines, bigger rads, bigger everythings. Nineteen were built for the project, and two remain. He has them both. Carey and his crew put nearly 3,000 hours of work into the first one.

I’m certainly no expert on antique trucks, but having put a couple of years into gathering pictures for highwaySTAR’s (Today’s Trucking’s sister magazine) Classic Series, I’m familiar with some of the old name plates. I still couldn’t tell a 1922 Rumely from a 1920 AB Mack (the museum has both), but I’ve developed an ­appreciation for the things.

I find the technology of the time fascinating, if for nothing more than the sheer ingenuity. Take Carey’s ’29 AC Mack chain-drive tandem: it’s got a pair of crude differentials, but rather than drive axles, the wheels are turned by chains and sprockets. Of course, one can only imagine what these old trucks must have been like to work with. Today’s drivers certainly have little to complain about.