Dan Carmine loves all kinds of vehicles. The retired Gloucester resident has been collecting and restoring vehicles of all types for most of his life, from two World War II era bikes that he and his brother rode as children to vintage Ford Mustangs and Chevrolet Camaros.
But it’s perhaps Carmine’s collection of pedal cars, trucks, tractors and wagons that occupies most of his time. For over 30 years, he’s been collecting these toy vehicles, beginning in the early 1990s with a car his wife found on a trash heap and wanted. Carmine bought it for $20 and restored it to like-new condition.
“It got me started,” he said.
What followed was a lifelong hobby that has taken long hours and filled up a storage building on Carmine’s property. Rows of vehicles line the floor of the largest room in the building or fill up shelves built specially to hold them. The vehicles are in a variety of colors and shapes, but all are made essentially the same—a low-slung body with a child-sized steering wheel th...